IVAN YEFREMOV
FOREIGN
LANGUAGES PUBLISHING HOUSE
MOSCOW
хбюм етпелнб
(мюсвмн-тюмрюярхвеяйхи
пнлюм)
хгдюрекэярбн
кхрепюрспш мю хмнярпюммшу ъгшйюу
лняйбю
═
TRANSLATED
FROM THE RUSSIAN BY GEORGE HANNA
DESIGNED BY N.
GRISHIN
х.
етпелнб
рслюммнярэ
юмдпнледш
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1. THE IRON STAR
CHAPTER 2. EPSILON TUCANAE
CHAPTER 3. CAPTIVES OF THE
DARK
CHAPTER 4. THE RIVER OF TIME
CHAPTER 5. THE HORSE ON THE
SEA BED
CHAPTER 6. THE LEGEND OF THE
BLUE SUNS
CHAPTER 7. SYMPHONY IN
F-MINOR, COLOUR TONE 4.75 μ
CHAPTER 8. RED WAVES
CHAPTER 9. A THIRD CYCLE
SCHOOL
CHAPTER 10. TIBETAN
EXPERIMENT
CHAPTER 11. THE ISLAND OF
OBLIVION
CHAPTER 12. THE
ASTRONAUTICAL COUNCIL
CHAPTER 13. ANGELS OF HEAVEN
CHAPTER 14. THE STEEL DOOR
CHAPTER 15. THE ANDROMEDA NEBULA
GLOSSARY
CHARACTERS IN THE STORY
Men: Erg Noor, Commander of
the Expedition
Pour Hyss,
astronomer
Eon Thai,
biologist
Pel Lynn,
astronavigator
Taron, mechanical
engineer
Kay Bear,
electronic engineer
Women: Nisa Greet,
astronavigator
Louma Lasvy, ship's physician
Ingrid Dietra, astronomer
Beena Ledd, geologist
CHARACTERS ON EARTH:
Men: Grom Orme, President of
the Astronautical Council
Diss Ken, his son
Thor Ann, son of
Zieg Zohr, Ken's friend
Mir Ohm,
Secretary of the Astronautical Council
Darr Veter,
retiring Director of the Outer Stations
Mven Mass,
successor to Darr Veter
Junius Antus,
Director of the Electronic Memory Machines
Kam Amat, Indian
scientist (In a former age)
Liao Lang,
palaeontologist
Renn Bose,
physicist
Cart Sann,
painter
Frith Don,
Director of the Maritime Archaeological Expedition
Sherliss, mechanic to the expedition
Ahf Noot,
prominent surgeon
Grimm Schar,
biologist of the Institute of Nerve Currents
Zann Senn,
poet-historian
Heb Uhr, soil
scientist
Beth Lohn,
mathematician, criminal in exile
Embe Ong,
candidate for Director of the Outer Stations
Cadd Lite, engineer on Satellite 57
Women : Evda Nahl,
psychiatrist
Rhea, her daughter
Veda Kong, historian
Miyiko Eigoro, historian, Veda's assistant
Chara Nandi, biologist, dancer, artist's model
Onar, girl of the Island of Oblivion
Eva Djann, astronomer
Liuda Pheer, psychologist (in a former age)
EXTRATERRESTRIAL CHARACTERS:
Goor Hahn, observer on the
diurnal satellite
Zaph Phthet, Director of
External Relations of the planet of 61 Cygni
In the faint light emitted by the helical tube
on the ceiling the rows of dials on the instrument panels had the appearance of
a portrait gallery≈the round dials had jovial faces, the recumbent oval
physiognomies were impudently self-satisfied and the square mugs were immobile
in their stupid complacency. The light- and dark-blue, orange and green lights
flickering inside the instruments served to intensify the impression.
A big dial, glowing dull red,
gazed out from the middle of the convex control desk. The girl in front of it
had forgotten her chair and stood with her head bowed, her brow almost touching
the glass, in the attitude of one in prayer. The red glow made her youthful
face older and sterner, cast clear-cut shadows round her full lips and even
made her slightly snub nose look pointed. Her thick eyebrows, knitted in a
frown, looked jet black in that light and gave her eyes the expression of
despair seen in the eyes of the doomed.
The faint hum of the meters was interrupted by
a soft metallic click. The girl started and raised her head, straightening her
tired back.
The door opened behind her, a big shadow
appeared and turned into a man with abrupt and precise movements. A flood of
golden light sprang up, making the girl's thick, dark-auburn hair sparkle like
gold. She turned to the newcomer with a look that told both of her love for him
and of her anxiety.
"Why aren't you sleeping? A hundred
sleepless hours!" "A bad example, eh?" There was a note of
gaiety in his voice but he did not smile; it was a voice marked by high
metallic notes that seemed to rivet his words together. "The others are
all asleep," the girl began timidly. "and ... don't know anything
..." she added, whispering instinctively.
"Don't be afraid to speak. Everybody else
is asleep, we're the only two awake in the Cosmos and it's fifty billion1
kilometres to Earth≈a mere parsec and a half!"
"And we've got fuel for just one
acceleration!" There was fascinated horror in the girl's exclamation.
In two rapid strides Erg Noor, Commander of
Cosmic Expedition No. 37, reached the glowing dial.
"The fifth circle!"
"Yes, we've entered the fifth ... and ...
still nothing." The girl cast an eloquent glance at the loudspeaker of the
automatic receiver.
"And so I have no right to sleep, as you
see. I have to think over all the variants and all the possibilities. We must
find a solution by the end of the fifth circle."
"But that's another hundred
and ten hours."
"All right, I'll go to sleep in the
armchair here as soon as the effect of the sporamin wears off. I took it twenty-four
hours ago."
The girl stood deep in thought for a time but
at last decided to speak.
"Perhaps we should decrease the radius of
the circle? Suppose something's gone wrong with their transmitter?"
"Certainly not! If you reduce the radius
without reducing speed you'll break up the ship. If you reduce speed you'll be
left without anameson4... with a parsec and a half to go at the
speed of the ancient lunar rockets! At that rate we'd get somewhere near our solar
system in about a hundred thousand years."
"I know that. But couldn't they .."
"No, they couldn't. Aeons ago people could
be careless or could deceive each other and themselves. But not today!"
"That's not what I wanted to say."
The sharpness of her retort showed that the girl was offended. "I was
going to say that Algrab may have deviated from its course looking for
us."
"It couldn't have deviated so much. It must
have left at the time computed and agreed on. If the improbable had happened
and both transmitters had been put out of action it would have had to cross the
circle diametrically and we should have heard it on the planetary receiver.
There's no possibility of a mistake≈there it
is, the rendezvous planet."
Erg Noor pointed to the mirror screens in deep
niches on all four sides of the control tower. Countless stars burned in the
profound blackness. A tiny grey disc, barely illuminated by a sun very far away
from them, from the outer edge of the system B-7336-S+87-A, was crossing the
forward port screen.
"Our bomb beacons 5 are working
well although we put them up four independent years 6 ago." Erg
Noor pointed to a clear-cut line of light running along a glass panel that
stretched the whole length of the left-hand wall. "Algrab should have
been here three months ago. That means," Erg Noor hesitated as though he
did not wish to finish the sentence, "Algrab is lost!"
"But suppose it isn't, suppose it has only
been damaged by a meteoroid and cannot regain its speed?" objected the
auburn-haired girl.
"Can't regain its speed!" repeated
Erg Noor. "Isn't that the same thing? If there is a journey thousands of
years long between the ship and its goal, so much the worse≈instead of
instantaneous death there will be years of hopelessness for the doomed. Perhaps
they will call. If they do, we'll know ... on Earth ... in about six years'
time."
With one of his impetuous movements Erg Noor
pulled a folding armchair from under the table of the electronic computer, a
little MNU-11; on account of its great weight, size and fragility, the ITU
electronic brain that could make any computation was not fitted in spaceships
to pilot them unaided. A navigator had always to be on duty in the control
tower, especially as it was impossible to plot an exact course over such terrific
distances.
The commander's hands flashed over the levers
and knobs with the rapidity of a pianist's. The sharply defined features of his
pale face were as immobile as those of a statue and his lofty brow, inclined
stubbornly over the control desk, seemed to be challenging the elemental forces
that menaced that tiny world of living beings who bad dared penetrate into the
forbidden depths of space.
Nisa Greet, a young astronavigator on her first
Cosmic expedition, held her breath as she watched Erg Noor in silence, and the
commander himself seemed oblivious of everything but his work. How cool and
collected, how clever and full of energy was the man she loved. And she had
loved him for a long time, for the whole of the five years. There was no sense
in hiding it from him, lie knew it already, Nisa could feel that. Now that this
great misfortune had happened she had the tremendous joy of serving a watch
with him, three months alone with him while the other members of the crew lay
in deep hypnotic sleep. Another thirteen days and they, too, would be able to
sleep for six months while the other two watches≈the navigators, astronomers
and mechanics≈served their turns. The other members of the expedition, the
biologists and geologists who would only have work to do when they arrived at
their destination, could sleep longer, but the astronomers≈oh! theirs was the
greatest strain of all.
Erg Noor got up from his seat and Nisa's train
of thought was broken.
"I'm going to the charthouse. You'll be
able to sleep in≈" he looked at the clock showing dependent or ship's
time, "nine hours. I'll have time for some sleep before I relieve
you."
"I'm not tired, I can stay here as long as
is necessary ≈you must get some rest!"
Erg Noor frowned and wanted to object but was
captivated by the tenderness of her words and by the golden hazel eyes that
appealed to him so trustingly; he smiled and went out without another word.
Nisa sat down in the chair, cast an accustomed
glance over the instruments and was soon lost in deep meditation.
The reflector screens through which those in
the control tower could see what was happening in the space surrounding the
ship gleamed black overhead. The lights of differently coloured stars pierced
the eyes like needles of fire.
The spaceship was overtaking a planet and its
pull made the ship vacillate in a gravitation field of changing intensity. The
magnificent but malignant stars also made wild leaps in the reflector screens.
The outlines of the constellations changed with a rapidity that the memory could
not register.
Planet K2-2N 88, cold, lifeless, far from its
sun, was known as a convenient rendezvous for spaceships ... for the meeting
that had not taken place. The fifth circle≈ Nisa could picture her ship
travelling with reduced speed around a monster circle with a radius of a
thousand million kilometres and constantly gaining on a planet that crawled at
tortoise speed. In a hundred and ten hours the ship would complete the fifth
circle≈and what then? Erg Noor's tremendous brain was now strained to the
utmost to find the best solution. As commander both of the expedition and the
ship he could not make mistakes for if he did First Class Spaceship Tantra
with its crew of the world's most eminent scientists would never return from
outer space! But Erg Noor would make no mistakes.
Nisa Greet was suddenly overcome by a feeling
of nausea which meant that the spaceship had deviated from its course by a tiny
fraction of a degree, something possible only at the reduced speed at which
they were travelling: at full speed not one of the ship's fragile human load
would have remained alive. The grey mist before the girl's eyes had not had
time to disperse before the nausea swept over her again as the ship returned to
its course. Delicately sensitive feelers had located a meteoroid, the greatest
enemy of the spaceships, in the black emptiness ahead of them and had
automatically made the deviation. The electronic machines guiding the ship
(only they could carry out all manipulations with the necessary rapidity, since
human nerves arc unsuited to Cosmic speeds) had taken her off her course in a
millionth of a second and, the danger past, had returned her with equal speed.
"What could have prevented machines like
these from saving Algraby wondered Nisa when she had recovered. That ship had
most certainly been damaged by a meteoroid. Erg Noor had told her that up to
then one spaceship in ten had been wrecked by meteoroids, despite the invention
of such delicate locators as Voll Hoad's and the power screens that repelled smaller
particles. After everything had been so well planned and provided for, the loss
of Algrab
had placed them in a dangerous position. Mentally Nisa went over everything
that had happened since they had taken off.
Cosmic Expedition No. 37 had been sent to the
planetary system of the nearest star in the Ophiuchus Constellation whose only
inhabited planet, Zirda, had long been in communication with Earth and other
worlds through the great Circle. Suddenly the planet had gone silent, and for
over seventy years nothing more had been heard from there. It was the duty of
Earth, as the nearest of the Circle planets to Zirda, to find out what had
happened. With this aim in view the expedition's ship had taken on board a
large number of instruments and several prominent scientists, those whose
nerves, after lengthy testing, had proved capable of standing up to confinement
in a spaceship for several years. The ship was fuelled with anameson; only the
barely necessary amount had been taken, not because of its weight but because
of the tremendous size of the containers in which it was stored. It was
expected that supplies could be renewed on Zirda. In case something serious had
happened to Zirda, Second Class Spaceship Algrab was to have met Tantra
with fuel supplies on the orbit of planet K2-2N 88.
Nisa's attuned ear caught the changed tone in
the hum of the artificial gravitational field. The discs of three instruments
on the right began to wink irregularly as the starboard electron feeler came
into action. An angular mass flashed on to the screen, brightening it up. It
flew straight at Tantra like a shell which meant that it was a long way
away≈a huge fragment of material such as is seldom met with in cosmic space,
and Nisa hurried to determine its volume, mass, velocity and direction. She did
not return to her meditations until the spool of the automatic log gave a click
to show that the entries were finished.
Her most vivid memory was that of a blood-red
sun that had been steadily growing in their field of vision during the last
months of their fourth space-borne year. It had been the fourth year for the
inhabitants of the spaceship as it travelled with a speed of 5/6ths of the
absolute unit, the speed of light, but on Earth seven of the years known as
independent years had passed.
The filters on the screens were kind to human
eyes; they reduced the composition of the rays of any celestial body to what
they would have been had they been seen through the thick terrestrial
atmosphere with its protective screens of ozone and water vapours. The
indescribable ghostly violet light of the high temperature bodies was toned
down to blue or white and the gloomy greyish-pink stars took on jolly
golden-yellow hues, like our Sun. A celestial body that burned triumphantly
with bright crimson fire took on a deep, blood-red colour, the tone that a
terrestrial observer sees in stars of the spectral class M5.7
The planet was much nearer to its star than Earth is to the Sun and as the ship
drew nearer to Zirda the star grew into a tremendous crimson disc that
irradiated a mass of heat rays.
For two months before approaching Zirda Tantra
had begun attempts to get in touch with the planet's outer space station. There
was only one such station≈on a small natural satellite with no atmosphere that
was much nearer to Zirda than the Moon is to Earth.
The spaceship continued calling when the planet
was no more than thirty million kilometres away and the terrific speed of Tantra
had been reduced to three thousand kilometres a second. It was Nisa's watch but
all the crew were awake, sitting in anticipation in front of the control-tower
screens.
Nisa kept on calling, increasing the power of
the transmissions and sending rays out fanwise ahead of the ship.
At last they saw the tiny shining dot of the
satellite. The spaceship came into orbit around the planet, approaching it in a
spiral and gradually adjusting its speed to that of the satellite. Soon Tantra's
speed was the same as that of the fast-moving little satellite and it seemed as
though an invisible hawser held them fast. The ship's electronic
stereotelescope searched the surface of the satellite until the crew of Tantra
were suddenly confronted with an unforgettable sight.
A huge, flat-topped glass building seemed to be
on fire in the rays of the blood-red sun. Directly under the roof was something
in the nature of an assembly hall. There a number of beings≈unlike terrestrial
humans but unmistakably people≈were frozen into immobility. Excitedly, Pour
Hyss, the astronomer of the expedition, continued to adjust the focus. The
vague rows of people visible under the glass roof were absolutely motionless.
Pour Hyss increased the instrument's magnification. Out of the vagueness a dais
surrounded by instrument panels appeared, and on it a long table on which a man
sat cross-legged facing the audience, his crazy, terrifying eyes staring into
the distance.
"They're dead, frozen!" exclaimed Erg
Noor. The spaceship continued to hover over Zirda's satellite and fourteen
pairs of eyes remained fixed on that glass tomb, for such, indeed, it was. How
long had the dead been sitting there in their glass house? The planet had
broken off communication seventy years before and if we add to that six years
for the rays to reach Earth it meant three quarters of a century.
All eyes were turned on the commander. Erg
Noor, his face pale, was staring into the yellow, smoky atmosphere of the
planet through which the lines of the mountain ranges and the glint of the sea
were faintly discernible. But there was nothing to provide the answer they had
come there for.
"The station perished seventy-five years
ago and has not been re-established! That can only mean a catastrophe on the
planet. We must go down into the atmosphere, perhaps even land. Everybody is
present now so I'll ask your opinion."
The only objection was raised by Pour Hyss, a
man on his first Cosmic trip; he had been substituted for an experienced worker
who had fallen ill just before the start. Nisa looked with indignation at his
big, hawk-like nose and his ugly ears set low down on his head.
"If there has been a catastrophe on the
planet there is no possibility of our getting anameson there. If we circle the
planet at low level we shall reduce our supply of planetary fuel, if we land,
we reduce it to a still greater extent. Apart from that we don't know what's
happened, there may be some powerful radiations that will kill us."
The other members of the expedition supported
their commander.
"There is no planetary radiation that can
be dangerous to a ship with Cosmic shielding. Weren't we sent here to find out
what has happened? What are we going to tell the Great Circle? It isn't enough
to establish a fact, we have to explain it-excuse me if this sounds like a
lecture to schoolboys!" said Erg Noor and the usual metallic tones in his
voice now had a note of ridicule in them. "I don't imagine we can evade
doing what is our plain duty."
"The upper layers of the atmosphere have a
normal temperature!" exclaimed Nisa, happily, on completion of her rapidly
performed measurements.
Erg Noor smiled and began to put the ship down
in a spiral each turn of which was slower than the last as they neared the
surface of the planet. Zirda was somewhat smaller than Earth and no great speed
was needed to circumnavigate it at low level. The astronomers and the geologist
checked the maps of the planet with what was observed by Tantra's optical
instruments. There had been no noticeable change in the outlines of the
continents and the seas gleamed calmly in the red sun. Nor had the chains of
mountains changed the shapes that were known from former photographs≈but the
planet was silent.
The crew spent thirty-five hours at their
instruments, relieving each other occasionally.
The composition of the atmosphere, the
radiation of the red sun, everything agreed with formerly recorded Zirda data.
Erg Noor looked for the Zirda stratosphere tables in his reference book.
Ionization was higher than they showed. A vague and alarming concept was taking
form in Noor's mind.
On the sixth turn of the descending spiral the
outlines of big cities became clearly visible. And still not a sound was
recorded by the spaceship's receivers.
Nisa Greet was relieved from her post for a
meal and seemed to have dozed off for a while. She thought, however, that she
had not slept for more than a few minutes. The spaceship was crossing Zirda's
night disc at a speed no greater than that of a terrestrial helicopter. Below
them there should have been cities, factories and ports, but not a single light
showed in the pitch blackness no matter how thoroughly the powerful
stereotelescopes searched the ground. The thunder of the spaceship cutting
through the atmosphere should have been audible for dozens of miles. Another
hour passed and still no light was seen. The anxious waiting was becoming unbearable.
Noor switched on the warning sirens hoping that their awe-inspiring howl, added
to the roar of the spaceship, would be heard by the mysteriously silent
inhabitants of Zirda.
A wave of fiery light swept away the evil
darkness as Tantra
reached the daylight side of the planet. Below them everything was still black.
Rapidly developed and enlarged photographs showed that the earth was covered
with a solid carpet of flowers something like the velvety-black poppies that
grow on Earth. The masses of black poppies stretched for thousands of miles to
the exclusion of all other vegetation≈trees and bushes, reeds and grass. The
streets of the cities looked like the ribs of giant skeletons lying on a black
carpet; metal structures formed gaping rusty wounds. Not a living being, not a
tree anywhere, nothing but the black poppies!
Tantra
dropped an observation bomb beacon and again plunged into the night. Six hours
later the robot reported the content of the air, temperature, pressure and
other conditions obtaining on the surface of the planet. Everything was normal
for Zirda with the exception of increased radioactivity.
"What an awful tragedy!" muttered Eon
Thai, the expedition's biologist, in a dull voice as he recorded the data
supplied by the station. "They have killed themselves and everything on
their planet!"
"How could they?" asked Nisa, hiding
the tears that were ready to flow. "Is it as bad as that? The ionisation
isn't so very high."
"A long time has passed since then,"
answered the biologist, glumly. His manly Circassian face with its aquiline
nose assumed an expression of sternness, despite his youth. "Radioactive
disintegration is dangerous just because it accumulates unnoticed. For hundreds
of years the total radiation could increase corns by corus, the unit of
radiation; then suddenly there comes a qualitative change, heredity collapses,
the reproduction of the species ceases and added to that there are epidemics of
radiation diseases. This has happened more than once before, the Circle knows
of similar catastrophes."
"Such as the so-called 'planet of the
lilac sun,'" came Erg Noor's voice from behind them.
"Whose sun of spectral class A", with
a light intensity equal to 78 of our suns, provided its inhabitants with very
high energy," added the morose Pour Hyss.
"Where is that planet?" asked Eon
Thai, the biologist. "Isn't that the one the Council intends to
colonize?"
"That's the one, the lost Algrab
was named after its star."
"The star Algrab, that's Delta
Corvi," exclaimed the biologist. "But it's such a long way off!"
"Forty-six parsecs. But we're constantly
increasing the power of our spaceship...."
The biologist nodded his head and muttered that
it was hardly right to call a spaceship after a star that had perished.
"The star didn't perish and the planet is
still safe and sound. Before another century has passed we shall plant
vegetation there and settle the planet," said Erg Noor with confidence.
He had decided to perform a difficult
manoeuvre≈to change the ship's orbit from latitudinal to meridional, sending
the ship along a north-south line parallel to the planet's axis of rotation.
How could they leave the planet until they were sure that there were no
survivors? It might be that survivors were unable to communicate with the
spaceship because power installations had been wrecked and instruments damaged.
This was not the first time Nisa had seen her
commander at the control desk in a moment of great responsibility. With his
impenetrably expressionless face and his abrupt but always precise movements he
seemed like a hero of legendary times to the auburn-haired astronavigator.
Again Tantra continued her hopeless journey
round Zirda, this time from pole to pole. In some places, especially in the
temperate latitudes, there were wide belts of bare earth, a yellow haze hung
over them and through it, from time to time, appeared the lines of gigantic red
dunes from which the wind sent up clouds of sand.
Then again came the funereal pall of black
velvet poppies, the only plant that had withstood radioactivity or had produced
a mutation of its species viable under irradiation.
The whole picture was clear. It was not only
useless, it was even dangerous to search for supplies of anameson that had, on
the recommendation of the Great Circle, been laid in for visitors from other
worlds (Zirda had no spaceships of her own, only planetships). Tantra
began slowly unwinding the spiral away from the planet. She gained a velocity
of 17 kilometres a second using her ion trigger motors, the planetary motors
that gave her speed enough for trips between adjacent planets and for taking
off and landing, and drew away from the dead planet. Tantra turned her nose
towards an uninhabited system known only by its code name where bomb beacons
had been thrown out and where Algrab should have awaited her. The
anameson motors were switched on and in fifty-two hours they accelerated the
spaceship to her normal speed of 900,000,000 kilometres an hour. Fifteen
months' journey would take them to the meeting place≈eleven months of the dependent
time of the ship≈and the whole crew, with the exception of those on watch,
could spend that time in sleep. A month, however, passed in discussion, in
calculations and in the preparation of a report for the Council. From reference
books it was discovered that risky experiments had been made on Zirda with
partially disintegrating atomic fuels. They found references to statements by
leading scientists who warned the people that there were symptoms of the
adverse biological effect of the experiments and demanded that they be stopped.
A hundred and eighteen years before a brief
warning had been sent through the Great Circle; it would have been sufficient
for people of the higher intellectual categories but apparently it had not been
treated seriously by the government of Zirda.
There could be no doubt that Zirda had perished
from an accumulation of harmful radiations following numerous careless
experiments and the reckless use of dangerous forms of nuclear energy instead
of wisely continuing the search for other, less harmful sources.
The mystery had long since been solved, twice
the spaceship's crew had changed their three months' period of sleep for normal
periods of activity of the same length.
Tantra had
been circling round the grey planet for many days and with each passing hour
the possibility of meeting Algrab grew less and less. Something
terrible loomed ahead.
Erg Noor stood in the doorway with his eyes on
Nisa as she sat there in meditation≈her inclined head with its cap of thick
hair like a luxuriant golden flower, the mischievous, boyish profile, the
slightly slanting eyes that were often screwed up by restrained laughter and
were now wide open, apprehensively but courageously probing the unknown.... The
girl did not realize what a tremendous moral support her selfless love had
become for him. Despite the long years of trial that had steeled his willpower
and his senses, he sometimes grew tired of being commander, of having to be
ready at any moment to shoulder any responsibility for the crew, for the ship
and for the success of the expedition. Back there on Earth such single-handed
responsibility had long since been abandoned≈decisions there were taken
collectively by the group of people who had to carry them out. If anything
unusual occurred on Earth you could always get advice, and consultations on the
most intricate problems could be arranged. Here there was nobody to turn to and
spaceship commanders were granted special rights. It would have been easier if
such responsibility had been for two or three years instead of the ten to
fifteen years that were normal for space expeditions! Erg Noor entered the
control tower.
Nisa jumped up to meet him. "I've got all
the necessary material and the charts," he said, "we'll start the
machine working!"
The commander stretched himself in his armchair
and slowly turned over the thin metal sheets he had brought, calling out the
numbers of coordinates, the strength of magnetic, electric and gravitational
fields, the power of Cosmic dust streams and the velocity and density of
me-teoroid streams. Nisa, all her muscles tensed with excitement, pressed the
buttons and turned the knobs of the computing machine. Erg Noor listened to a
series of answers, frowned and lapsed into deep thought.
"There's a strong gravitational field in
our way, the area in the Scorpion where there is an accumulation of dark matter
near star 6555 CR+11 PKU," began Noor. "We can save fuel by deviating
this way, towards the Serpent. In the old days they flew without motors, using
the gravitational fields as accelerators, along their edges." "Can we
do the same?" asked Nisa.
"No, our spaceships are too fast. At a
speed of 5/6ths of the absolute unit or 250,000 kilometres a second our weight
would be 12,000 times greater in a field of gravitation and that would turn the
whole expedition into dust. We can only fly like this in the Cosmos, far from
large accumulations of matter. As soon as the spaceship enters a gravitational
field we have to reduce speed, the stronger the field the more we must reduce."
"So there's a contradiction here,"
said Nisa, resting her head on her hand in a childish manner, "the
stronger the gravitational field the slower we have to fly!"
"That's only true where velocities close
to the speed of light are concerned, when the spaceship is something like a ray
of light and can only move in a straight line or along the so-called curve of
equal tension."
"If I've understood you correctly we have
to aim our Tantra
light ray straight at the solar system."
"That's where the great difficulty of
space travel comes in. It's practically impossible to aim directly at any star
although we make all the corrective calculations imaginable. Throughout the
entire journey we have to compute the accumulating error and constantly change
the course of the ship so that no automatic piloting is possible. Our position
now is a dangerous one. We have nothing left to start another acceleration
going so that a halt or even a considerable reduction in speed after this
acceleration would be certain death. Look, the danger is here≈in area 344+2U
that has never been explored. Here there are no stars, no inhabited planets,
nothing is known except the gravitational field≈there is its edge. We'll wait
for the astronomers before we make the final decision ≈after the fifth circle
we'll wake up everybody but in the meantime...." The commander rubbed his
temples and yawned.
"The effect of the sporamin is wearing
off," exclaimed Nisa, "you can go to sleep!"
"Good, I'll be all right here, in this
chair. Suppose a miracle happens ... just one sound from them!"
There was something in Erg Noor's voice that
sent Nisa's heart palpitating with her love for him. She wanted to take that
stubborn head of his, press it to her breast and stroke the dark hair with its
prematurely grey threads.
Nisa got up, placed the reference sheets
carefully together and turned out the light, leaving only a dull green glow
that illuminated the instrument panels and the clocks. The spaceship was
travelling quite quietly in a complete vacuum as it described its gigantic
curve. The auburn-haired navigator silently took her place at the
"brain" of the giant ship. The instruments, tuned to a particular
note, hummed softly; the slightest disorder made them sing false. Today,
however, the quiet humming kept on the right note. On rare occasions she heard
soft blows, like the sounds of a gong≈that was the auxiliary planet motor
switching in to keep the ship truly on her curve. The powerful anameson motors
were silent. The peace of a long night hung over the sleepy ship as though no
serious danger threatened her and her inhabitants. At any moment the
long-awaited call signal would be heard in the loudspeaker and the two ships
would begin to check their unbelievably rapid flight, would draw closer on
parallel courses and would at last so equalize their speeds that they would be
as good as lying still beside each other. A wide tubular gallery would connect
the two ships and Tantra would regain her tremendous strength.
Deep down in her heart Nisa was calm, she had
faith in her commander. Five years of travel had not seemed either long or
tiring. Especially since Nisa had begun to love.... But even before that the
absorbingly interesting observations, the electronic recordings of books, music
and films gave her every opportunity to increase her fund of knowledge and not
feel the loss of beautiful Earth, that tiny speck of dust lost in the depths of
the infinity of darkness. Her fellow-travellers were people of great erudition
and then, when her nerves were exhausted by a surfeit of impressions or
lengthy, strenuous work, there was continued sleep. Sleep was maintained by
attuning the patient to hypnotic oscillations and, after certain preliminary
medical treatment, big stretches of time were lost in forgetfulness and passed without
leaving a trace. Nisa was happy because she was near the man she loved. The
only thing that troubled her was the thought that others were having a harder
time, especially Erg Noor. If only she could ... no, what could a young and
still very green astronavigator do, compared with such a man! Perhaps her
tenderness, her constant fund of good will, her ardent desire to give up
everything in order to make easier that tremendous labour would help.
The commander of the expedition woke up and
raised his sleep-heavy head. The instruments were humming evenly as before,
there were still the occasional thuds of the planetary motors. Nisa Greet was
at the instruments, bending slightly over them, the shadows of fatigue on her
young face. Erg Noor cast a glance at the clock showing spaceship time and in a
single athletic bound leaped out of the deep chair.
"I've been asleep fourteen hours! And you
didn't wake me, Nisa! That's...." Meeting her radiant glance he cut
himself short. "Off to bed at once!"
"May I sleep here, like you did?"
asked the girl. She took a hurried meal, washed herself and dropped into the
deep armchair. Her flashing hazel eyes, framed in dark rings, were stealthily
following Erg Noor as he took his place at the instrument panels after a refreshing
wave bath and a good meal. He checked up the indicators on the electronics
communications protector and then began to walk up and down with rapid strides.
"Why aren't you sleeping?" he asked
the navigator. She shook her red curls that were by then in need of
clipping≈women on extra-terrestrial expeditions did not wear long hair.
"I was thinking ..." she began
hesitantly, "and now, when we are faced with great danger I bow my head
before the might and majesty of man who has penetrated to the stars, far, far
into the depths of space! Much of this is customary for you, but I'm in the
Cosmos for the first time. Just think of it, I'm taking part in a magnificent
journey through the stars to new worlds!"
Erg Noor smiled wanly and rubbed his forehead.
"I shall have to disappoint you, or rather, I must show you the real
measure of our might. Look ..." he stopped beside a projector and on the
back wall of the control tower the glittering spiral of the Galaxy appeared.
Erg Noor pointed to a ragged outer branch of the spiral composed of sparse
stars looking like dull dust and scarcely perceptible in the surrounding
darkness.
"This is a desert area in the Galaxy, an
outer fringe poor in light and life, and it is there that our solar system is
situated and where we are at present. That branch of the Galaxy stretches, as
you can see, from Cygnus to Carina and, in addition to being far removed from
the central zone, it contains a dark cloud, here.... Just to travel along that
one branch of the Galaxy would take our Tantra 40,000 independent years. To cross
the empty space that separates our branch from our neighbours would take 4,000
years. So you see that our flights into the depths of space are still nothing
more than just marking time on our own ground, a ground with a diameter of no
more than fifty light years! How little we should know of the Universe if it
were not for the might of the Great Circle. Reports, images and ideas
transmitted through space that is unconquerable in man's brief span of life
reach us sooner or later, and we get to know still more distant worlds.
Knowledge is constantly piling up and the work goes on all the time!"
Nisa listened in silence.
"The first interstellar flights ..."
continued Erg Noor, still lost in thought. "Little ships of low speed with
no powerful protective installations ... and people in those days lived only
half as long as we do≈that was the period of man's real greatness!"
Nisa jerked up her head as she usually did when
she disagreed.
"'And when new ways of overcoming space
have been discovered and people don't just force their way through it like we
do, they'll say the same about you≈those were the heroes who conquered space
with their primitive methods!"
The commander smiled happily and held out his
hand to the girl.
"They'll say it about you, too,
Nisa!"
"I'm proud to be here with you!" she
answered, blushing. "And I'm prepared to give up everything if I can only
travel into the Cosmos again and again!"
"I know that," said Erg Noor,
thoughtfully, "but that's not the way everybody thinks!"
Feminine intuition gave her an insight into the
thoughts of her commander. In his cabin there were two stereoportraits,
splendidly done in violet-gold tones. Both were of her, Veda Kong, a woman of
great beauty, a specialist in ancient history; eyes of that same transparent
blue as the skies above Earth looked out from under long eyebrows. Tanned by
the sun, smiling radiantly, she had raised her hands to her ash-blonde hair. In
the other picture she was seated, laughing heartily, on a ship's bronze gun, a
relic of ancient days....
Erg Noor lost some of his impetuosity≈he sat
down slowly in front of the astronavigator.
"If you only knew, Nisa, how brutally fate
dealt with my dreams, there on Zirda!" he said suddenly, in a dull voice,
placing his fingers cautiously on the lever controlling the anameson motors as
though he intended accelerating the spaceship to the limit.
"If Zirda had not perished and we had got
our supplies of fuel," he continued, in reply to her mute question,
"I would have led the expedition farther. That is what I had arranged with
the Council. Zirda would have made the necessary report to Earth and Tantra
would have continued its journey with those who wanted to go. The others would
have waited for Algrab, it could have gone on to Zirda after its tour of
duty here."
"Who would have wanted to stay on
Zirda?" exclaimed the girl, indignantly. "Unless Pour Hyss would.
He's a great scientist though, wouldn't he be interested in gaining further
knowledge?"
"And you, Nisa?"
"I'd go, of course."
"Where to?" asked Erg Noor suddenly,
fixing his eyes on the girl.
"Anywhere you like, even..." and she
pointed to a patch of abysmal blackness between two arms of the starry spiral
of the Galaxy; she returned Noor's fixed stare with one equally determined, her
lips slightly parted.
"Oh, no, not as far as that! You know,
Nisa, my dear little astronavigator, about eighty-five years ago. Cosmic
Expedition No. 34, the so-called 'Three-Stage Expedition' left Earth. It
consisted of three spaceships carrying fuel for each other and left Earth for
the Lyra Constellation. The two ships that were not carrying scientists passed
their anameson on to the third and then came back to Earth. That is the way
mountain-climbers reached the tops of the highest peaks. Then the third ship, Parus...."
"That's the ship that never
returned!" whispered Nisa excitedly.
"That's right, Parus didn't return. It
reached its objective and was lost on the return journey after sending a
message. The goal was the big planetary system of Vega, or Alpha Lyrae, a
bright blue star that countless generations of human eyes have admired in the
northern sky. The distance to Vega is eight parsecs and people had never been
so far away from our Sun. Anyway, Parus got there. We do not know the cause
of its loss, whether it was a meteoroid or an irreparable break-down. It is
even possible that the ship is still moving through space and the heroes whom
we regard as dead are still alive."
"That would be terrible!"
"Such is the fate of any spaceship that
cannot maintain a speed close to that of light. It is immediately separated
from the home planet by thousands of years." "What message did Parus
send?" asked the girl. "There wasn't much of it. It was interrupted
several times and then broke off altogether. I remember every word of it: 'I am
Parus.
I am Parus,
travelling twenty-six years from Vega ... enough ... shall wait... Vega's four
planets ... nothing more beautiful... what happiness...."
"But they were calling for help, they
wanted to wait somewhere!"
"Of course they were calling for help,
otherwise the spaceship wouldn't have used up the tremendous energy needed for
the transmission. But nothing could be done, not another word was received from
Parus."
"'They were twenty-six independent years
on their way back and the journey from Vega to the Sun is thirty-one years.
They must have been somewhere near us, or even nearer to Earth."
"Hardly, unless, of course, they exceeded
the normal speed and got close to the quantum limit.8 That would
have been very dangerous!"
Briefly Erg Noor explained the mathematical
basis for the destructive change that takes place in matter when it approaches
the speed of light, but he noticed that the girl was not paying any great
attention to him.
"I understand all that!" she
exclaimed the moment the commander had finished his explanation. "I would
have realized it at once if your story of the loss of the spaceship hadn't
taken my mind off it. Such losses are always terrible and one cannot become
reconciled to them!"
"Now you realize the chief thing in the
communication," said Erg Noor gloomily. "They discovered some
particularly beautiful worlds. I have long been dreaming of following the route
taken by Parus;
with modern improvements we can do it with one ship now: I've been living with
a dream of Vega, the blue sun with the beautiful planets, ever since early
youth."
"To see such worlds ..." breathed
Nisa with a breaking voice, "but to see them and return would take sixty
terrestrial or forty dependent years ... and that's ... half a lifetime."
"Great achievements demand great
sacrifices. For me, though, it would not be a sacrifice. My life on Earth has
only been a few short intervals between journeys through space. I was born on a
spaceship, you know!"
"How could that have happened?" asked
the girl in amazement.
"Cosmic Expedition No. 35 consisted of
four ships. My mother was astronomer on one of them. I was born halfway to the
binary star MN19026 +, 7AL and managed to Contravene the law twice over.
Twice≈firstly by being born on a spaceship and secondly because I grew up and
was educated by my parents and not in a children's school. What else could they
have done? When the expedition returned to Earth I was eighteen years old. I
had learnt the art of piloting a spaceship and had acted as astronavigator in
place of one who was taken ill. I could also work as a mechanic at the
planetary or the anameson motors and all this was accepted as the Labours of
Hercules I had to perform on reaching maturity." "Still I don▓t understand
..." began Nisa. ''About my mother? You'll understand when you get a bit
older! Although the doctors didn't know it then, the Anti-T serum wouldn't
keep.... Well, never mind what the reason was I was brought to a control tower
like this one to look at the screens with my uncomprehending baby eyes and
watch the stars dancing up and down on them. We were flying towards the Lupus
Constellation where there was a binary star close to the Sun. The two dwarfs,
one blue and the other orange, were hidden by a dark cloud. The first tiling
that impinged on my infant consciousness was the sky over a lifeless planet
that I observed from under the glass dome of a temporary station. The planets
of double stars are usually lifeless on account of the irregularity of their orbits.
The expedition made a landing and for seven months engaged in mineral
prospecting. As far as I remember there were enormous quantities of platinum;
osmium and iridium there. My first toys were unbelievably heavy building blocks
made of iridium. And that sky, my first sky, was black and dotted with the pure
lights of unwinking stars, and there were two suns of indescribable beauty, one
a deep blue and the other a bright orange. I remember how their rays sometimes
crossed and at those times our planet was inundated with so much jolly green
light that I shouted and sang for joy!" Erg Noor stopped. "That's
enough, I got carried away by my reminiscences and you have to sleep."
"Go on, please do, I've never heard
anything so interesting," Nisa begged him, but the commander was
implacable. He brought a pulsating hypnotizer and, either because of his
impelling eyes or the sleep-producing apparatus, the girl was soon fast asleep
and did not wake up until the day before they were to enter the sixth circle.
By the cold look on the commander's face Nisa Greet realized that Algrab
had not shown up.
"You woke up just at the right time!"
he said as soon as Nisa had taken her electric and wave baths and returned
ready for work. "Switch on the animation music and light. For
everybody!"
Swiftly Nisa pressed a row of buttons sending
intermittent bursts of light accompanied by a specific music of low, vibrant
chords that gradually increased in intensity, to all the cabins where members
of the Cosmic expedition were sleeping. This initiated the gradual awakening of
the inhibited nervous system to bring it back to its normal active state. Five
hours later all the members of the expedition gathered in the control tower;
they had by then fully recovered from their sleep and had taken food and nerve
stimulants.
News of the loss of the auxiliary spaceship was
received in different ways by different people. As Erg Noor expected, the
expedition was equal to the occasion. Not a word of despair, not a glance of
fear. Pour Hyss, who had not shown himself particularly brave on Zirda heard
the news without a tremor. Louma Lasvy, the expedition's young physician, went
slightly pale and secretly licked her dry lips.
"To the memory of our lost comrades!"
said the commander as he switched on the screen of a projector showing Algrab,
a photograph that had been taken before Tantra took off. All rose to their feet.
On the screen one after another came the photographs of the seven members of Algrab▓s
crew, some serious, some smiling. Erg Noor named each of them in turn and the
travellers gave him the farewell salute. Such was the custom of the astronauts.
Spaceships that set off together always carried photographs of all the people
of the expedition. When a ship disappeared it might keep travelling in Cosmic
space for a long time with its crew still alive. But this made no difference,
the ship would never return. There was no real possibility of searching for the
ship and rendering it aid. Minor faults never, or seldom, occurred and were
easily repaired, but a serious break-down in the machinery had never been
successfully repaired in the Cosmos. Sometimes ships, like Parus, managed to send a
last message, but in the majority of cases such messages did not reach their
destination on account of the great difficulty of directing them. The Great
Circle had, for thousands of years, been investigating exact routes for its
transmissions and could vary them by directing them from planet to planet. The
spaceships were usually in unexplored areas where the direction for a message
could only be guessed.
There was a conviction amongst astronauts that
there existed in the Cosmos certain neutral fields or zero areas in which all
radiation and all communications sank like stones in water. Astrophysicists,
however, regarded the zero areas to be nothing more than the idle invention of
Cosmic travellers who were, in general, inclined to monstrous fantasies.
After that sad ceremony and a very short
conference, Erg Noor turned Tantra in the direction of Earth and
switched on the anameson motors. Forty-eight hours later they were switched off
again and the spaceship began to approach its own planet at the rate of 21,000
million kilometres in every twenty-four hours. The journey back to the Sun
would take about six terrestrial, or independent, years. Everybody was busy in
the control tower and in the ship's combined library and laboratory where a new
course was being computed and plotted on the charts.
The task was to fly the whole six years and use
anameson only for purposes of correcting the ship's course. In other words the
spaceship had to be flown with as little loss of acceleration as possible.
Everybody was worried about the unexplored area 344 +2U that lay between the
Sun and Tantra.
There was no way of avoiding it: on both sides of it, as far as the Sun, lay
belts of free meteoroids and, apart from that, they would lose velocity in
turning the ship.
Two months later the computation of the line of
flight had been completed. Tantra began to describe a long, flat
curve.
The wonderful ship was in excellent condition
and her speed was kept within the computed limits. Now nothing but time, about
four dependent years, separated the ship from its home.
Erg Noor and Nisa Creet finished their watch
and, dead tired, started their period of long sleep. Together with them two
astronomers, the geologist, biologist, physician and four engineers departed
into temporary forgetful-ness.
The watch was taken over by an experienced
astronavigator, Pel Lynn, who was on his second expedition, assisted by
astronomer Ingrid Dietra and electronic engineer Kay Bear who had volunteered
to join them. Ingrid, with Pel Lynn's consent, often went away to the library
adjoining the control tower. She and her old friend, Kay Bear, were writing a
monumental symphony. Death of a Planet, inspired by the tragedy
of Zirda. Pel Lynn, whenever he grew tired of the hum of the instruments and
his contemplation of the black void of the Cosmos, left Ingrid at the control
desk and plunged into the thrilling task of deciphering puzzling inscriptions
brought from a planet in the system of the nearest stars of the Centaur whose
inhabitants had mysteriously quit it. He believed in the success of his
impossible undertaking....
Twice again watches were changed, the spaceship
had drawn ten billion kilometres nearer Earth and still the anameson motors had
only been run for a few hours.
One of Pel Lynn's watches, the fourth since Tantra
had left the place where she was to have met Algrab, was coming to an
end.
Ingrid Dietra, the astronomer, had finished a
calculation and turned to Pel Lynn who was watching, with melancholy mien, the
constant flickering of the red arrows on the graded blue scales of the
gravitation meters. The usual sluggishness of psychic reaction that not even the
strongest people could avoid made itself felt during the second half of the
watch. For months and years the spaceship had been automatically piloted along
a given course. If anything untoward had happened, something that the
electronic machines were incapable of dealing with, it would have meant the
loss of the ship, for human intervention could not have saved it since the
human brain, no matter how well trained it may be, cannot react with the
necessary alacrity.
"In my opinion we are already deep in the
unknown area 344 + 2U. The commander wanted to take over the watch himself when
we reached it," said Ingrid to the astronavigator. Pel Lynn glanced up at
the counter that marked off the days.
"Another two days and we change watches.
So far there doesn't seem to be anything to worry about. Shall we see the watch
through?"
Ingrid nodded assent. Kay Bear came into the
control tower from the stern of the ship and took his usual seat beside the
equilibrium mechanism. Pel Lynn yawned and stood up.
"I'll get some sleep for a couple of
hours," he said to Ingrid. She got up obediently and went forward to the
control desk.
Tantra was
travelling smoothly in an absolute vacuum.
Not a single meteoroid, not even at a great
distance, had been registered by the super-sensitive Voll Hoad detectors. The
spaceship's course now lay somewhat to one side of the Sun, about one and a
half flying years. The screens of the forward observation instruments were of
an astounding blackness, it seemed as though the spaceship was diving into the
very heart of universal darkness. The side telescopes still showed needles of
light from countless stars.
Ingrid's nerves tingled with a strange
sensation of alarm.
She returned to her machines and telescopes,
again and again checked their readings as she mapped the unknown area.
Everything was quiet but still Ingrid could not take her eyes off the malignant
blackness ahead of the ship. Kay Bear noticed her anxiety and for a long time
studied and listened to the instruments.
"I don't see anything," he said at
last, "aren't you imagining things?"
"I don't know why, but that unusual
blackness ahead of us bothers me. It seems to me that our ship is diving
straight into a dark nebula."
"There should be a dark cloud here,"
Kay Bear agreed, "but we shall only scratch the edge of it. That's what
was calculated! The strength of the gravitational field is increasing slowly
and regularly. On our way through this area we should pass close to some centre
of gravity. What does it matter whether it's light or dark?"
"That's true enough," admitted
Ingrid, more
calmly.
"We've got the finest commander and
officers there are. We're proceeding along a set course even faster than was
computed. If there are no changes we'll be out of our trouble and we'll get
safely to Triton despite our short supply of anameson."
Even at the thought of the spaceship's station
on Triton, Neptune's satellite on the fringe of the solar system, Ingrid felt
much happier. To reach Triton would mean that they were home.
"I was hoping we'd be able to work on the
symphony together but Lynn's asleep. He'll sleep six or seven hours so I'll
think over the orchestration of the coda of the second movement≈you know, the
place where we couldn't find a means of expressing the integrated accession of
the menace. This piece...." Kay sang a few notes.
"Tee-ee-e, tee-ee-e, ta-rara-ra,"
came the immediate response from the very walls of the control tower. Ingrid
started and looked round, but a moment later realized what it was. There had
been an increase in the force of gravity and the instruments had responded by
changing the melody of the artificial gravitation apparatus.
"What an amusing coincidence,"
laughed Ingrid, with an air of guilt.
"There is stronger gravitation, as there
should be in a black cloud. Now you can calm yourself altogether and let Lynn
sleep."
Kay Bear left the control tower and entered the
brightly-lit library where he sat down at a tiny electronic violin-piano. He
was soon deeply immersed in his work and, no doubt, several hours must have
passed before the hermetically sealed door of the library flew open and Ingrid
appeared.
"Kay, please wake up Lynn."
"What's wrong?"
"The strength of the gravitation field is
much more than was computed."
"What is ahead of us?"
"The same blackness!" Ingrid went
out.
Kay Bear woke the astronavigator, who jumped up
and ran to the instruments in the control tower.
"There's nothing especially dangerous.
Only where does such a gravitational field come from in this area? It's too
strong for a black cloud and there are no stars here." Lynn thought for a
time and then pressed the knob to awaken the commander of the expedition and
after another moment's thought pressed the knob of Nisa Creel's cabin as well.
"If nothing extraordinary happens they can
simply take over their watch," Lynn explained to the anxious Ingrid.
"And if something does happen? Erg Noor
won't return to normal for another five hours. What shall we do?"
"Wait quietly," answered the
astronavigator. "What can happen here in five hours when we are so far from
all stellar systems?"
The tone of the measuring instruments grew
lower and lower telling of the constantly changing conditions of the flight.
The tense waiting dragged out endlessly. Two hours dragged by so slowly that
they seemed like a whole watch. Outwardly Pel Lynn was still calm but Ingrid's
anxiety had already infected Kay Bear. He kept looking at the control-tower
door expecting Erg Noor to appear with his usual rapid movements although he
knew that the awakening from prolonged sleep is a lengthy process.
The long ringing of a bell caused them all to
start. Ingrid grasped hold of Kay Bear.
Tantra was
in danger! The gravitation was double the computed figure!
The astronavigator turned pale. The unexpected
bad happened and an immediate decision was essential. The fate of the spaceship
was in his hands. The steadily increasing gravitational pull made a reduction
in speed necessary, both because of increasing weight in the ship and an
apparent accumulation of solid matter in the ship's path. But after reducing
speed what would they use for further acceleration? Pel Lynn clenched his teeth
and turned the lever that started the ion trigger motors used for braking.
Gong-like sounds disturbed the melody of the measuring instruments and drowned
the alarming ring of those recording the ratio of gravitational pull to
velocity. The ringing ceased and the indicators showed that speed had been
reduced to a safe level and was normal for the growing gravitation. But no
sooner had Pel Lynn switched off the brake motors than the bells began ringing
again. Obviously the spaceship was flying directly into a powerful gravitation
centre which was slowing it down.
The astronavigator did not dare change the
course that had been plotted with such great difficulty and absolute precision.
He used the planetary motors to brake the ship again although it was already
clear that there had been an error in plotting the course and that it lay
through an unknown mass of matter.
"The gravitational field is very
great," said Ingrid softly, "perhaps...."
"We must slow down still more so as to be
able h turn," exclaimed the navigator, "but what can we accelerate
with after that?..." There was a note of fatal hesitancy in his words.
"We have already passed the zone of outer
vortices," Ingrid told him, "gravitation is increasing rapidly all
the time.''
The frequent clatter of the planet motors
resounded through the ship; the electronic ship's pilot switched them on
automatically as it felt a huge accumulation of solid matter in front of them. Tantra
began to pitch and toss. No matter how much the ship's speed was reduced the
people in the control tower began to lose consciousness. Ingrid fell to her
knees. Pel Lynn, sitting in his chair, tried to raise a head as heavy as lead.
Kay Bear experienced a mixture of unreasoning brute fear and puerile
hopelessness.
The thuds of the motors increased in frequency
until they merged into a continual roar≈the electronic brain had taken up the
struggle in place of its semi-conscious masters; it was a powerful brain but it
had its limits, it could not foretell all possible complications and find a way
out of unusual situations.
The tossing abated. The indicators showed that
the supply of ion charges for the motors was dropping with catastrophic
rapidity. As Pel Lynn came to he realized that the strange increase of gravity
was taking place so fast that urgent measures had to be taken to stop the ship
and then make a complete change of course away from the black void.
Pel Lynn turned the handle switching on the anameson
motors. Four tall cylinders of boron nitride that could be seen through a slit
in the control desk were lit up from inside. A bright green flame beat inside
them with lightning speed, it flowed and whirled in four tight spirals. Up
forward, in the nose of the spaceship, a strong magnetic field enveloped the
motor jets, saving them from instantaneous destruction.
The astronavigator moved the handle
farther≈through the whirling green wall of light a directing ray appeared, a
greyish stream of K-particles." Another movement and the grey stream was
cut by a blinding flash of violet lightning, a signal that the anameson had
begun its tempestuous emission. The huge bulk of the spaceship responded with
an almost inaudible, unbearable, high-frequency vibration....
Erg Noor had eaten the necessary amount of food
and was lying half asleep enjoying the indescribably pleasurable sensation of
an electric nerve massage. The veil of forgetfulness that still covered mind
and body left him very slowly. The music of animation changed to a major key
and to a rhythm that increased in rapidity....
Suddenly something evil coming from without
interrupted the joy of awakening from a ninety-day sleep. Erg Noor realized
that he was commander of the expedition and struggled desperately to get back
to normal consciousness. At last he recognized the fact that the spaceship was
being braked and that the anameson motors were switched on, all of which meant
that something serious had occurred. He tried to get up. His body still would not
obey his will, his legs doubled under him and he collapsed like a sack on the
floor of his cabin. After some time he managed to crawl to the door and open
it. Consciousness was breaking through the mist of sleep≈in the corridor he
rose on all fours and made his way into the control tower.
The people staring at the screens and
instrument dials looked round in alarm and then ran to their commander. He was
not yet able to stand but he muttered:
"The screens ... the forward screen ...
switch over to infrared ... stop the motors!"
The borason cylinders were extinguished at the
same time as the vibration of the ship's hull ceased. A gigantic star, burning
with a dull reddish-brown light, appeared on the forward starboard screen. For
a moment they were all flabbergasted and could not take their eyes off the
enormous disc that emerged from the darkness directly ahead of the spaceship.
"Oh, what a fool!" exclaimed Pel Lynn
bitterly, "I was sure we were in a dark nebula! And that's...."
"An iron star!" exclaimed Ingrid
Dietra in horror.
Erg Noor, holding on to the back of a chair,
stood up. His usually pale face had a bluish tinge to it but his eyes gleamed
brightly with their usual fire.
"Yes, that's an iron star," he said
slowly and the eyes of all those in the room turned to him in fear and hope,
"the terror of astronauts! Nobody suspected that there would be one in
this area."
"I only thought about a nebula," Pel
Lyn said softly and guiltily.
"A dark nebula with such a gravitational
field would contain comparatively large solid particles and Tantra would
have been destroyed already. It would be impossible to avoid a collision in
such a swarm," said the commander in a calm firm voice.
"But these sharp gravitational changes and
these vortex things≈aren't they a direct indication of a cloud?"
"Or that the star has a planet, perhaps
more than one...."
The astronavigator bit his lip so badly that it
began to bleed. The commander nodded his head encouragingly and himself pressed
the buttons to awaken the others.
"A report of observations as quickly as
possible! We'll work out the gravitation contours."
The spaceship began to rock again. Something
flashed across the screen with colossal speed, something of terrific size that
passed behind them and disappeared.
"There's the answer, we've overtaken the
planet. Hurry up, hurry up, get the work done!" The commander's glance
fell on the fuel supply indicator. His hands gripped the back of the chair more
tightly, he was going to say something but refrained.
The faint tinkle of glass that came from the
table was accompanied by orange and blue lights. Varicoloured lights sparkled
up and down the transparent partition. Darr Veter, Director of the Outer
Stations of the Great Circle, was observing the lights on the Spiral Way. Its
huge arc curved into the heights and scored a dull yellow line along the
sea-coast. Keeping his eyes on the Way, Darr Veter stretched out his hand and
turned a lever to point M, ensuring himself solitude for meditation. A great change
had on that day come into his life. His successor Mven Mass, chosen by the
Astronautical Council, had arrived that morning from the southern residential
belt. They would carry out his last transmission round the Circle together and
then ... it was precisely this "then" that had not yet been decided
upon. For six years he had been doing a job that required superhuman effort,
work for which the Council selected special people, those who were outstanding
for their splendid memories and encyclopaedic knowledge. When attacks of
complete indifference to work and to life began recurring with ominous
frequency≈and this is one of the most serious ailments in man≈he had been
examined by Evda Nahl, a noted psychiatrist. A tried remedy≈sad strains of
minor music in a room of blue dreams saturated with pacifying waves≈did not
help. The only thing left was to change his work and take a course of physical
labour, any sort of work that required daily, hourly muscular effort. His best
friend, Veda Kong, the historian, had offered him an opportunity to do
archaeological work with her. Machines could not do all the excavation work,
the last stages required human hands. There was no lack of volunteers but still
Veda had promised him a long trip to the region of the ancient steppes where he
would be close to nature.
If only Veda Kong ... but of course, he knew
the whole story. Veda was in love with Erg Noor, Member of the Astronautical
Council and Commander of Cosmic Expedition No. 37. There should have been a
message from Erg Noor ≈from the planet Zirda he should have reported and said
whether he was going farther. But if no message had come -and all space nights
were computed with the greatest precision≈then ... but no, he must not think of
winning Veda's love! The Vector of Friendship, that was all, that was the
greatest tie that there could be between them. I Nevertheless he would go and
work for her.
Darr Veter moved a lever, pressed a button and
the room was flooded with light. A crystal glass window formed I one of the walls
of a room situated high above land and sea, giving a view over a great
distance. With a turn of another lever Darr Veter caused the window to drop
inwards leaving the room open to the starry sky; the metal frame of the window
shut out from his view the lights of the Spiral Way and the buildings and
lighthouses on the sea-coast.
Veter's eyes were fixed on the hands of the
galactic clock with three concentric rings marked in subdivisions. The
transmission of information round the Great Circle followed galactic time, once
in every hundred-thousandth of a galactic second, or once in eight days, 45
times a year according to terrestrial time. One revolution of the Galaxy around
its axis was one day of galactic time.
The next and, for him, the last transmission
would be at 9 a.m. Tibetan Mean Time or at 2 a.m. at the Mediterranean
Observatory of the Council. A little more than two hours still remained.
The instrument on the table tinkled and flashed
again. A man in light-coloured clothing made of some material with a silk-like
sheen appeared from behind the partition.
"We are ready to transmit and
receive," he said briefly, showing no outward signs of respect although in
his eyes one could read admiration for his Director. Darr Veter did not say a
word, nor did his assistant who stood there in a proud, unrestrained pose.
"In the Cubic Hall?" asked Veter, at
last, and, getting an answer in the affirmative, asked where Mven Mass was.
"He is in the Morning Freshness Room,
getting tuned up after his journey and, apart from that, I think he's a bit
excited."
"I'd be excited myself if I were in his
place!" said Darr Veter, thoughtfully. "That's how I felt six years
ago."
The assistant was flushed from his effort to
preserve his outward calm. With all the fire of youth he was sorry for his
chief, perhaps he even realized that some day he, too, would live through the
joys and sorrows of great work and great responsibility. The Director of the
Outer Stations did not in any way show his feelings for to do so at his age was
not considered decent. "When Mven Mass appears, bring him straight to
me." The assistant left the room. Darr Veter walked over to one corner
where the transparent partition was blackened from floor to ceiling and with an
easy movement opened two shutters in a panel of polished wood. A light
appeared, coming from somewhere in the depths of a mirror-like screen. It did
not, however, possess the gloss of a mirror ≈it gave the impression of a long
corridor leading into the far distance.
Using selected switches the Director of the
Outer Stations switched on the Vector of Friendship, a system of direct
communication between people linked by the ties of profound friendship that
enabled them to contact each other at any moment. The Vector of Friendship was
connected with a number of places where the person concerned was likely to
be≈his house, his place of work, his favourite recreation centre.
The screen grew light and in the depths there
appeared familiar panels with columns of coded titles of electronic films that had
succeeded the ancient photocopies of books.
When all mankind adopted a single alphabet≈it
was called the linear alphabet because there were no complicated signs in it≈it
became easy to film even the old books, so that eventually the process was
fully mechanized. The blue, green and red stripes were the symbols of the
central film libraries where scientific research works were stored, works that
had for centuries been published only in a dozen copies. It was merely
necessary to select the a code number and symbols and the film library would
transmit, automatically, the full text of the book. This machine was Veda's
private library. A snap of switches and the picture faded, it was followed by
another room which was also empty. Another switch connected the screen with a
hall in which stood a number of dimly lighted desks. The woman seated at the
nearest desk raised her head and Darr Veter recognized the thick, widely
separated eyebrows and the sweet, narrow face with its grey eyes. As she
smiled, white teeth flashed in a big mouth with bold lines and her cheeks were
chubbily rounded on either side of a slightly snub nose with a childish, round
tip to it that made the face gentle and kindly.
"Veda, there are two hours left. You have
to change and I would like you to come to the observatory a little before
time."
The woman on the screen raised her hands to her
thick, ash-blonde hair.
"I obey, my Veter," she smiled.
"I'm going home." Veter's ear was not deceived by the gayness of her
tones.
"Brave Veda, calm yourself. Everybody who
speaks to the Great Circle had to make a first appearance."
"Don't waste words consoling me,"
said Veda Kong, raising her head with a stubborn gesture. "I'll be there
soon.
The screen went dark. Darr Veter closed the
shutters and turned to meet his successor. Mven Mass entered the room with long
strides. The cast of his features and his smooth, dark-brown skin showed that
he was descended from African ancestors. A white mantle fell from his powerful
shoulders in heavy folds. Mven Mass took both Darr Veter's hands in his strong,
thin ones. The two Directors of the Outer Stations, the new and the old, were
both very tall. Veter, whose genealogy led back to the Russian people, seemed
broader and more massive than the graceful African.
"It seems to me that something important
ought to happen today," began Mven Mass, with that trusting sincerity that
was typical of the people who lived in the Era of the Great Circle. Darr Veter
shrugged his shoulders.
''Important things will happen for three people.
I am handing over my work, you are taking it from me and Veda Kong will speak
to the Universe for the first time."
"She is beautiful?" responded Mven
Mass, half questioning, half affirming.
"You'll see her. By the way, there's
nothing special about today's transmission. Veda will give a lecture on our
history for planet KRZ 664456 + BS 3252."
Mven Mass made an astonishingly rapid mental
calculation.
"Constellation of the Unicorn, star Ross
614, its planetary system has been known from time immemorial but has never in
any way distinguished itself. I love the old names and old words," he
added with a scarcely detectable note of apology.
"The Council knows how to select
people," Darr Veter thought to himself. Aloud he said:
"Then you'll get on well with Junius
Antus, the Director of the Electronic Memory Machines. He calls himself the
Director of the Memory Lamps. He is not thinking of the lamps they used for
light in ancient days but of those first electronic devices in clumsy glass
envelopes with the air pumped out of them; they looked just like the electric
lamps of those days."
Mven Mass laughed so heartily and frankly that
Darr Veter could feel his liking for the man growing fast.
"Memory lamps! Our memory network consists
of kilometres of corridors furnished with billions of cell elements." He
suddenly checked himself. "I'm letting my feeling run away with me and
haven't yet found out essential things. When did Ross 614 first speak?"
"Fifty-two years ago. Since then they have
mastered the language of the Great Circle. They are only four par-sees away
from us. They will get Veda's lecture in thirteen years' time."
"And then?"
"After the lecture we shall go over to
reception. We shall 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 uniform of the
Astronautical Council as that worn by Veter's assistant entered the room. He
was of medium height, sprightly and aquiline-nosed; people liked him for the
keenly attentive glance of his jet-black eyes. The newcomer stroked his
hairless head.
"I'm Junius Antus," he said,
apparently to Mven Mass. The African greeted him respectfully. The Directors of
the Memory Machines exceeded everybody else in erudition. They decided what had
to be perpetuated by the machines and what would be sent out as general
information or used by the Palaces of Creative Effort.
"Another brevus," muttered
Junius Antus, shaking hands with his new acquaintance.
"What's that?" inquired Mven Mass.
"A Latin appellation I have thought up. I give that name to all those who
do not live long≈vita breva, you know≈workers on the Outer Stations, pilots
of the Interstellar Space Fleet, technicians at the spaceship engine plants....
And ... er ... you and I. We do not live more than half the allotted span,
either. What can one do, it's more interesting. Where's Veda?"
"She intended coming earlier," began
Darr Veter. His words were drowned by disturbing chords of music that followed
a loud click on the dial of the galactic clock.
"Warning for all Earth. All power
stations, all factories, transport and radiostations! In half an hour from now
cease the output of all energy and accumulate it in high-capacity condensers till
there is enough for a radiation channel to penetrate the atmosphere. The
transmission will take 43 per cent of Earth's power resources. The reception
will need only 8 per cent for the maintenance of the channel," explained
Darr Veter.
"That's just as I imagined it would
be," said Mven Mass, nodding his head. Suddenly his glance became fixed
and his face glowed with admiration. Darr Veter looked round. Unobserved by
them Veda Kong had arrived and was standing beside a luminescent column. For
her lecture she had donned the costume that adds mostly to the beauty of women,
a costume invented thousands of years before at the time of the Cretan
Civilization. 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 the bosom was open and supported by a corsage of cloth of gold. A
wide, short silver skirt embroidered with blue flowers, exposed bare,
sun-tanned legs in slippers of cherry-coloured silk. Big cherry-coloured stones
brought from Venus, set with careful crudeness in a gold chain, were like balls
of fire on her soft skin and matched cheeks and tiny ears that were flaming
with excitement.
Mven Mass met 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 following a custom.
Communications for the different 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.
"You wanted to talk to me?" she
asked, turning to Darr Veter. The friends went out on to the circular verandah
and Veda welcomed the touch of the fresh sea breeze on her face.
The Director of the Outer Stations told her of
his decision to go to the dig; he told her of the way he had wavered between
the 38th Cosmic Expedition, the Antarctic submarine mines and archaeology.
"Anything, but not the Cosmic
Expedition!" exclaimed Veda and Darr Veter felt that he had been rather
tactless.
Carried away by his own feelings he had
accidentally touched the sore spot in Veda's heart.
He was helped out by the melody of disturbing
chords that reached the verandah.
"It's time to go. In half an hour the
Great Circle will be switched on!"
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 had the appearance of velvet divided into panels 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 semicircles,
giving the broad walls an appearance of strained, quivering expectation.
The furniture consisted of a few chairs and a
big black-wood table, one end of which was pushed into a huge hemispherical
screen the colour of mother-of-pearl set in a massive gold frame.
Veda Kong and Mven Mass examined everything
with rapt attention for this was their first visit to the observatory of the
Outer Stations.
Darr Veter beckoned to Mven Mass and pointed to
high black armchairs for the others. The African came towards him, walking on
the balls of his feet, just as his ancestors had once walked in the sunbaked
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 people would join their thoughts and their
knowledge to that of their brothers in other worlds. This tiny group of five
represented terrestrial mankind before the whole 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. He had probably
only at that moment realized what a burden of responsibility he had undertaken
when he had 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.
A deep, ominous rumble sounded, as though a
huge gong had been struck. Darr Veter turned round swiftly and threw over a
long lever. The gong ceased and Veda Kong noticed that a narrow panel on the
right-hand wall laid lit up from floor to ceiling. The wall seemed to have
disappeared into the unfathomable distance. The phantom-like outlines of a
pyramidal mountain surmounted by a gigantic stone ring appeared. Below the cap
of molten stone, patches of pure white mountain snow lay here and there.
Mven Mass recognized the second highest
mountain in Africa, Mount Kenya.
Again the strokes of the gong resounded through
the underground chamber making all present alert and compelling them to
concentrate their thoughts.
Darr Veter took Mven's hand and placed it on a handle
in which a ruby eye glowed. Mven obediently turned the handle as far as it
would go. All the power produced on Earth by 1,760 gigantic power stations was
being concentrated on the equator, on a mountain 5,000 metres high. A
multicoloured luminescence appeared over the peak, formed a sphere and then
surged upwards in a spearheaded column that pierced the very depths of the sky.
Like the narrow column of a whirlwind 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 kilometres 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.
There was another satellite, Number 57, revolving around the 90th meridian at a
height of 57,000 kilometres and communicating with the Tibetan Receiving and
Transmitting Observatory. The conditions for the formation of a transmission
channel were better at the Tibetan station but communication was not constant.
These two giant satellites also maintained contact with a number of automatic
stations situated at various points round Earth.
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, pearl screen lit up. In its centre
appeared a monstrously enlarged figure that grew clearer and then smiled with a
big mouth. 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 turned in all directions into the Universe. The
planet of a dull red star in the Unicorn Constellation that had shortly before
sent out a call, had 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.
Veda Kong, at a sign from Darr Veter, stood
before the screen on a gleaming round metal dais. Invisible rays poured down
from above and noticeably deepened the sun-tan of her skin. Electron machines
worked 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, electron machines would translate the symbols into the living
speech of the planet's inhabitants.
"All the same, it is a pity that those
distant beings will not hear the soft melodious voice of a woman of Earth and
will not understand its expressiveness," thought Darr Veter. "Who
knows how their ears may be constructed, they may possess quite a different
type of hearing. But vision, which uses that part of the electromagnetic
oscillations capable of penetrating the atmosphere, is almost the same
throughout the Universe and they will behold the charming Veda in her flush of
excitement...."
Darr Veter did not take his eyes off Veda's
tiny 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 were in
constant conflict owing to the economic and ideological hostility that divided
their countries. She spoke very briefly and gave the era the name of the Era of
Disunity. People living in the Era of the Great Circle were not interested in
lists of destructive wars and horrible sufferings or the so-called great rulers
that filled the ancient history books. More important to them was the
development of productive forces and the forming of ideas, the history of art
and knowledge and the struggle to create a real man, the way in which the
creative urge had been developed, and people had arrived at new conceptions of
the world, of social relations and of the duty, rights and happiness of man,
conceptions that had nurtured the mighty tree of communist society that
flourished throughout the planet.
During the last century of the Era of Disunity,
known as the Fission Age, people had at last begun to understand that their
misfortunes were due to a social structure that had originated in times of
savagery; they realized that all their strength, all the future of mankind, lay
in labour, in the correlated efforts of millions of free people, in science and
in a way of life reorganized on scientific lines. Men came to understand the
basic laws of social development, the dialectically contradictory course of
history and the necessity to train people in the spirit of strict social
discipline, something that became of greater importance as the population of
the planet increased.
In the Fission Age the struggle between old and
new ideas had become more acute and had led to the division of the world into
two camps≈the old and the new states with differing economic systems. The first
kinds of atomic energy had been discovered by that time but the stubbornness of
those who championed the old order bad almost led mankind into a colossal
catastrophe.
The new social system was bound to win although
victory was delayed on account of the difficulty of training people in the new
spirit. The rebuilding of the world on communist lines entailed a radical
economic change accompanied by the disappearance of poverty, hunger and heavy,
exhausting toil. The changes brought about in economy made necessary an
intricate system to direct production and distribution and could only be put
into effect by the inculcation of social consciousness in every person.
Communist society had not been established in
all countries and amongst all nations simultaneously. A tremendous effort had
been required to eliminate the hostility and, especially, the lies that had
remained from the propaganda prevalent during the ideological struggle of the
Fission Age. Many mistakes had been made in this period when 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 way
out of man's difficulties in a return to that past.
With inevitable persistence the new way of life
had spread over the entire Earth and the many races and nations were 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 Lingual
Disunity, the Age of Power Development and the Age of the Common Tongue.
Society developed more rapidly and each new age
passed more speedily than the preceding one as man's power over nature
progressed with giant steps.
In the ancient Utopian dreams of a happy future
great importance was attached to man's gradual liberation from the necessity to
work. The Utopians promised man an abundance of all he needed for a short
working day of two or three hours and the rest of his time lie could devote to
doing nothing, to the doice far niente of the novelists. This
fantasy, naturally, arose out of man's abhorrence of the arduous, exhausting
toil of ancient days.
People soon realized that happiness can derive
from labour, from a never-ceasing struggle against nature, the overcoming of
difficulties and the solution of ever new problems arising out of the
development of science and economy. Man needed to work to the full measure of
his strength but his labour 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. The development of cybernetics, the technique of automatic control, a
comprehensive education and the development of intellectual abilities coupled
with the finest physical training of each individual, made it possible for a
person to change his profession frequently, learn another easily and bring
endless variety into his work so that it became more and more satisfying.
Progressively expanding science embraced all aspects of life and a growing
number of people came to know the joy of the creator, the discoverer of new
secrets of nature. Art played a great part in social education and in forming
the new way of life. Then came the most magnificent era in man's history, the
Era of Common Labour consisting of four ages, the Age of Simplification, the
Age of Realignment, the Age of the First Abundance and the Age of the Cosmos.
A technical revolution of the new period was
the invention of concentrated electricity with its high-capacity accumulators
and tiny electric motors. Before this, man had learned to use semi-conductors
in intricate weak-current circuits for his automated cybernetic machines. The
work of the mechanic became as delicate as that of the jeweller but at the same
time it served to subordinate energy on a Cosmic scale.
The demand that everybody should have
everything required the simplification of articles of everyday use. Man ceased
to be the slave of his possessions, and the elaboration of standard components
enabled articles and machines to be produced in great variety from a
comparatively small number of elements in the same way as the great variety of
living organisms is made up of a small number of different cells: the cells
consist of albumins, the albumins come from proteins and so on. Feeding in
former ages had been so wasteful that its rationalization made it easy to feed,
without detriment, a population that had increased by thousands of millions.
All the forces of society that had formerly
been expended on the creation of war machines, on the maintenance of huge
armies that did no useful labour and on propaganda and its trumpery, were
channelled into improving man's way of life and promoting scientific knowledge.
At a sign from Veda Kong, Darr Veter pressed a
button and a huge globe rose up beside her.
"We began," continued the beautiful
historian, "with the complete redistribution of Earth's surface into
dewelling and industrial zones.
"The brown stripes running between thirty
and forty degrees of North and South latitude represent an unbroken chain of
urban settlements built on the shores of warm seas with a mild climate and no
winters. Mankind no longer spends huge quantities of energy warming houses in
winter and making himself clumsy clothing. The greatest concentration of people
is around the cradle of human civilization, the Mediterranean Sea. The
subtropical belt was doubled in breadth after the ice on the polar caps had
been melted. To the north of the zone of habitation lie prairies and meadows
where countless herds of domestic animals graze. The production of foodstuffs
and trees for timber is confined to the tropical belt where it is a thousand
times more profitable than in the colder climatic zones. Ever since the
discovery was made that carbohydrates, the sugars, could be obtained
artificially from sunlight and carbonic acid, agriculture has no longer had to
produce all man's food. Practically speaking, there is no limit to the
quantities of sugars, fats and vitamins that we can produce. For the production
of albumins alone we have huge land areas and huge fields of seaweed at our
disposal. Mankind has been freed from the fear of hunger that had been hanging
over it for tens of thousands of years.
"One of man's greatest pleasures is
travel, an urge to move from place to place that we have inherited from our
distant forefathers, the wandering hunters and gatherers of scanty food. Today
the entire planet is encircled by the Spiral Way whose gigantic bridges link
all the continents." Veda ran her finger along a silver thread and turned
the globe round. "Electric trains move along the Spiral Way all the time
and hundreds of thousands of people can leave the inhabited zone very speedily
for the prairies, open fields, mountains or forests.
"At last the planned organization of life
put an end to the murderous race for higher speeds, the construction of faster
and faster vehicles. Trains on the Spiral Way proceed at 200 kilometres an
hour. Only on rare occasions do we use aircraft with a speed of thousands of
kilometres an hour.
"A few centuries ago we made extensive
improvements to the surface of our planet. The energy of the atomic nucleus had
been discovered long before, in the Fission Age, when man learned to liberate a
tiny part of its energy to produce a burst of heat but with the harmful
radiation of the fall-out. It was soon realized that this meant danger to life
on the planet and nuclear power possibilities were greatly curtailed. Almost at
the same time astronomers studying the physics of distant stars discovered two
new ways of obtaining nuclear energy, Q and F, that were more effective than
the old methods and involved no harmful radiation.
"These two methods are now in use on Earth
although our spaceships use another form of nuclear energy, the anameson fuel,
that became known to us from our observations of the great stars of the Galaxy
through the Great Circle.
"It was decided to destroy all the stocks
of thermo-nuclear materials that had been accumulating a long time≈radioactive
isotopes of uranium, thorium, hydrogen, cobalt and lithium≈as soon as a method
of ejecting them beyond Earth's atmosphere had been devised.
"In the Age of Realignment artificial suns
were made and 'hung' over the north and south polar regions. These greatly
reduced the size of the polar ice-caps that had been formed during the ice ages
of the Quaternary Period and brought about extensive climatic changes. The
level of the oceans was raised by seven metres, the cold fronts receded sharply
and the ring of trade winds that had dried up the deserts on the outskirts of
the tropic zone became much weaker. Hurricanes and, in general, stormy weather
manifestations ceased almost completely.
"The warm steppelands spread almost as far
as the sixtieth parallels north and south and beyond them the grasslands and
forests of the temperate zone passed the seventieth parallels.
"Three-quarters of the Antarctic Continent
was freed from ice and proved a treasure-house of minerals that were invaluable
because resources on the other continents had been almost completely exhausted
by the reckless destruction of metals in the universal wars of the past. The
Spiral Way was completed by carrying it across the Antarctic.
"Before this radical change in climate had
been achieved canals had been dug and mountain chains had had passages cut
through them to balance out the circulation of air and water on the planet.
Even the high mountain deserts of Asia had been irrigated by constantly
operating dielectric pumps.
"The potential output of foodstuffs had
grown very considerably and new lands had become habitable.
"The frail and dangerous old planetships,
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
laboured 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 evolved methods for the directed transmission of energy over
great distances without any form of conductor. This became possible when ways
were found to concentrate the stream of energy in non-divergent rays. The
clusters of parallel rays then transmitted provided constant communication with
the artificial satellites, and, therefore, with the Cosmos. Long, long ago,
towards the end of the Era of Disunity, our scientists established the fact
that powerful radiation streams were pouring on to Earth from the Cosmos. Calls
from the Cosmos and the transmission round the Great Circle of the Universe
were reaching us together with radiation from the 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.
"Kam Amat caught a transmission from the
planetary system of the binary star that had long been known as
61 Cygni. There appeared on the screen a man, who was not like us but was
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 read 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 machines 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 centre 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 Centre, but we
do not understand them, and have not yet deciphered them. They have been
recorded by the memory machines and passed on to the Academy of the Bounds of
Knowledge, an institution that works on problems that our science can as yet
only hint at. We are trying to understand ideas that are far from us, millions
of years ahead of us, ideas that differ very greatly 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 thirteen years later.
"Such is our history, such 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 to carry 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 loudly. Even
those well acquainted with the method of the complex interference of light
waves by means of which this exceptional expanse and depth of vision was
achieved, found the spectacle amazing.
The dark surface of another planet was
advancing from the distance, growing in size with every second. It belonged to
an extraordinarily rare system of binary stars in which two suns so balanced
each other that their planet had a regular orbit and life was able to emerge on
it. The two suns, orange and crimson, were smaller than ours, and they lit up
the ice of a frozen sea that appeared crimson in colour. A huge, squat building
standing on the edge of a chain of flat-topped black hills, was visible through
a mysterious violet haze. The centre of vision was focussed on a platform on
the roof and then seemed to penetrate the building until the watchers saw a
grey-skinned man with round eyes like those of an owl surrounded by a fringe of
silvery down. He was very tall and exceedingly thin with tentacle-like limbs.
The man jerked his head ridiculously as though he were making a hurried bow;
turned listless, lens-like eyes to the screen and opened a lipless mouth that
was covered, by a flap of soft flesh that looked like a nose.
"Zaph Phthet, Director of External
Relations of 61 Cygni. Today we are transmitting for yellow star STL 3388 + 04
JF.... We are transmitting for ..."- came the gentle, melodious voice of
the translation machine.
Darr Veter and Junius Antus exchanged glances
and Mven Mass squeezed Darr Veter's wrist for a second. That was the galactic
call sign of Earth, or rather, of the entire solar system, that observers in
other worlds had formerly regarded as one big planet rotating round the Sun
once in 59 terrestrial years. Once in that period Jupiter and Saturn are in
opposition which displaces the Sun in the visible sky of other systems
sufficiently for astronomers on the nearer stars to observe. Our astronomers
made the same mistake in respect of many planetary systems that a number of
stars had long been known to possess.
Junius Antus checked up on the tuning of his
memory machine with greater celerity than he had shown at the beginning of the
transmission and also checked the watchful accuracy indicators.
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.
"We get these unexplained interruptions in
transmission, perhaps due to the passage of the astronauts' legendary neutral
fields between us," Junius Antus explained to Veda.
"Three-tenths of a galactic second≈that
means waiting six hundred years," muttered Darr Veter, morosely. "A
lot of good that will do us!"
"As far as I can understand they are in
communication with Epsilon Tucanae in the southern sky that is ninety parsecs
away from us and close to the limit of our regular communications. So far we
haven't established contact. with anything farther away than Deneb," Mven
Mass remarked.
"But we receive the Galactic Centre and
the globular clusters, don't we?" asked Veda Kong.
"Irregularly, quite by chance, or through
the memory machines of other members of the Great Circle that form a circuit
stretching through the Galaxy," answered Mven Mass.
"Communications sent out thousands and
even tens of thousands of years ago do not get lost in space but eventually
reach us," said Junius Antus.
"So that means we get a picture of the life
and knowledge of the peoples of other, distant worlds, with great delay, for
the Central Zone of the Galaxy, for example, a delay of about twenty thousand
years?"
"Yes, it doesn't matter whether they are
the records of the memory machines of other, nearer worlds, or whether they are
received by our stations, we see the distant worlds as they were a very long
time ago. We see people that have long been dead and forgotten in their own
worlds."
"How is it that we are helpless in this
field when we have achieved such great power over nature?" Veda Kong
asked, petulantly. "Why can't we find some other means of contacting
distant worlds, something not connected with waves or photon ray
equipment?"
"How well I understand you, Veda!"
exclaimed Mven Mass.
"The Academy of the Bounds of Knowledge is
engaged on projects to overcome space, time and gravity," Darr Veter put
in. "They are working on the fundamentals of the Cosmos, but they have not
yet got even as far as the experimental stage and cannot...."
The green eye suddenly flashed on again and
Veda once more felt giddy as the screen opened out into endless space.
The sharply outlined edges of the image showed
that it was the record of a memory machine and not a transmission received
directly.
At first the onlookers saw the surface of a
planet, obviously as seen from an outer station, a satellite. The huge, pale
violet sun, spectral in the terrific heat it generated, deluged the cloud
envelope of the planet's atmosphere with its penetrating rays.
"Yes, that's it, the luminary of the
planet is Epsilon Tucanae, a high temperature star, class B", 78 times as
bright as our Sun," whispered Mven Mass. Darr Veter and Junius Antus
nodded in agreement.
The spectacle changed, the scene grew narrower
and seemed to be descending to the very soil of the unknown world.
The rounded domes of hills that looked as
though they had been cast from bronze rose high above the surrounding country.
An unknown stone or metal glowed like fire in the amazingly white light of the
blue sun. Even in the imperfect apparatus used for transmission the unknown
world gleamed triumphantly, with a sort of victorious magnificence.
The reflected rays produced a silver pink
corona around the contours of the copper-coloured hills and lay in a wide path
on the slowly moving waves of a violet sea. The water, of a deep amethyst
colour, seemed heavy and glowed from within with red lights that looked like an
accumulation of living eyes. The waves washed the massive pedestal of a
gigantic statue that stood in splendid isolation far from the coast. It was a
female figure carved from dark-red stone, the head thrown back and the arms
extended in ecstasy towards the naming depths of the sky. She could easily have
been a daughter of Earth, the resemblance she bore to our people was no less
astounding than the amazing beauty of the carving. Her body was the fulfilment
of an earthly sculptor's dream; it combined great strength with inspiration in
every line. The polished red stone of the statue emitted the flames of an unknown
and, consequently, mysterious and attractive life.
The five people of Earth gazed in silence at
that astounding new world. The only sound was a prolonged sigh that escaped the lips of Mven Mass whose every nerve had been strained in joyful
anticipation from his first glance at the statue.
On the sea-coast opposite the statue, carved
silver towers marked the beginning of a wide, white staircase that swept boldly
over a thicket of stately trees with turquoise leaves.
"They ought to ring!" Darr Veter whispered
in Veda's ear, pointing to the towers and she nodded her head in agreement.
The camera of the new planet continued its
consistent and soundless journey into the country.
For a second the five people saw white walls
with wide cornices through which led a portal of blue stone; the screen carried
them into a high room filled with strong light. The dull, pearl-coloured,
grooved walls lent unusual clarity to everything in the hall. The attention of
the Earth-dwellers was attracted to a group of people standing before a
polished emerald panel.
The flame-red colour of their skin was similar
to that of the statue in the sea. It was not an unusual colour for
Earth≈coloured photographs that had been preserved from ancient days recorded
some tribes of Indians in Central America whose skin was almost the same
colour, perhaps just a little lighter.
There were two men and two women in the hall.
They stood in pairs wearing different clothing. The pair standing closer to the
emerald panel wore short golden clothes, something like elegant overalls,
fastened with a number of clips. The other pair wore cloaks that covered them
from head to foot and were of the same pearl tone as the walls.
Those standing before the panel made some
graceful movements, touching some strings stretching diagonally from the
left-hand edge of the panel. The wall of polished emerald or glass became
transparent and in time with the movements of the man and woman, clearly
defined pictures appeared in the crystal. They appeared and disappeared so quickly
that even such trained observers as Junius Antus and Darr Veter had difficulty
in following the meaning of them.
In the procession of copper-coloured mountains,
violet seas and amethyst trees the history of the planet emerged. A chain of
animal and plant forms, sometimes monstrously incomprehensible, sometimes
beautiful, appeared as ghosts of the past. Many of the animals and plants
seemed to be similar to those that have been preserved in the record of the
rocks on Earth. It was a long ladder of ascending forms of life, the ladder of
developing living matter. The endlessly long path of development seemed even
longer, more difficult and more tortuous than the path of evolution known to
every Earth-dweller.
New pictures flashed through the phantom gleam of
the apparatus: the flames of huge fires, piled-up rocks on the plains, fights
with savage beasts, the solemn rites of funerals and religious services. The
figure of a man covered by a motley cloak of coloured skins filled the whole
panel. Leaning on a spear with one band and raising the other towards the stars
in an all-embracing gesture, be stood with his foot on the neck of a conquered
monster with a ridge of stiff hair down its back and long, bared fangs. In the
background a line of men and women had joined hands in pairs and seemed to be
singing something.
The picture faded away and the place of the
tableaux was taken by a dark surface of polished stone.
At this moment the pair in golden clothing
moved away to the right and their place was taken by the second pair. With a
movement so rapid that the eye could not follow it the cloaks were thrown aside
and two dark-red bodies gleamed like living fire against the pearl of the
walls. The man held out his two hands to the woman and she answered him with such
a proud and dazzling smile of joy that the Earth-dwellers responded with
involuntary smiles. And there, in the pearl hall of that immeasurably distant
world, the two people began a slow dance. It was probably not danced for the
sake of dancing, but was something more in the nature of eurhythmics, in which
the dancers strove to show their perfection, the beauty of the lines and the
flexibility of their bodies. A majestic and at the same time sorrowful music
could be felt in the rhythmic change of movement, as though recalling the great
ladder of countless unnamed victims sacrificed to the development of life that
had produced man, that beautiful and intelligent being.
Mven Mass fancied he could hear a melody, a
movement in pure high tones played against a background of the resonant and
measured rhythm of low notes. Veda Kong squeezed Darr Veter's hand but the
latter did not pay her any attention. Junius Antus stood motionless watching
the scene, without even breathing, and beads of perspiration stood out on his
broad forehead.
The people of the Tucana planet were so like
the people of Earth that the impression of another world was gradually lost.
The red people, however, possessed bodies of refined beauty such as had not by
that time been universally achieved on Earth, but which lived in the dreams and
the creations of artists and was to be seen only in a small number of unusually
beautiful people.
"The more difficult and the longer the
path of blind animal evolution up to the thinking being, the more purposeful
and perfected are the higher forms of life and, therefore, the more
beautiful," thought Darr Veter. "The people of Earth realized a long
time ago that beauty is an instinctively comprehended purposefulness of
structure that is adapted to definite objectives. The more varied the
objectives, the more beautiful the form≈these red people must be more versatile
and agile than we are.... Perhaps their civilization has progressed mainly
through the development of man himself, the development of his spiritual and
physical might, rather than through technical development. Even with the coming
of communist society our civilization has remained rudimentally technical and
only in the Era of Common Labour did we turn to the perfection of man himself
and not only his machines, houses, food and amusements."
The dance was over. The young red-skinned woman
came into the centre of the hall and the camera of the transmitter focussed on
her alone. Her outstretched arms and her face were turned to the ceiling of the
hall.
The eyes of the Earth-dwellers involuntarily
followed her glance. There was no ceiling, or, perhaps, some clever optical
illusion created the impression of a night sky with very large and bright
stars. The strange combinations of constellations did not arouse any
association. The girl waved her hand and a blue ball appeared on the index
finger of her left hand. A silvery ray streamed out of the ball and served her
as a gigantic pointer. A round patch of light at the end of the pointer halted
first on one then on another star in the ceiling. In each case the emerald
panel showed a motionless picture extremely wide in scale. As the pointer ray
moved from star to star the panel demonstrated a series of inhabited and
uninhabited planets. Joyless and sorrowful were the stone or sand deserts that
burned in the rays of red, blue, violet and yellow suns. Sometimes the rays of
a strange leaden-grey star would bring to life on its planets flattened domes
or spirals, permeated with electricity, that swam like jelly-fish in a dense
orange atmosphere or ocean. In the world of the red sun there grew trees of
incredible height with slimy black bark, trees that stretched their millions of
crooked branches heavenwards as though in despair. Other planets were
completely covered with dark water. Huge living islands, either animal or
vegetable, were floating everywhere, their countless hairy feelers waving over
the smooth surface of the water.
"They have no planets near them that
possess the higher forms of life," said Junius Antus, suddenly, without
once taking his eyes off the star map of the unknown sky.
"Yes they have," said Darr Veter,
"although the flattened stellar system to one side of them is one of the
newest formations in the Galaxy, we know that flattened and globular systems,
the old and the new, not infrequently alternate. In the direction of Eridanus
there is a system with living intelligences that belongs to the Circle."
"VVR 4955 + MO 3529 ... etc.," added
Mven Mass, "but why don't they know of it?"
"The system entered the Great Circle 275
years ago and this communication was made before that," answered Darr
Veter.
The red-skinned girl from the distant world
shook the blue ball from her finger and turned to face her audience, her arms
spread out widely as though to embrace some invisible person standing before
her. She threw back her head and shoulders as a woman of Earth would in a burst
of passion. Her mouth was half open and her lips moved as she repeated
inaudible words. So she stood, immobile, appealing, sending forth into the cold
darkness of interstellar space fiery human words of an entreaty for friendship
with people of other worlds.
Again her enthralling beauty held the
Earth-dwellers spellbound. She had nothing of the bronze severity of the
red-skinned people of Earth. Her round face, small nose and big, widely-placed
blue eyes bore more resemblance to the northern peoples of Earth. Her thick,
wavy black hair was not stiff. Every line of her face and body expressed a
light and joyful confidence that came from a subconscious feeling of great
strength.
"Is it possible that they know nothing of
the Great Circle?" Veda Kong almost groaned as though in obeisance before
her beautiful sister from the Cosmos.
"By now they probably know," answered
Darr Veter, the scenes we have witnessed date three hundred years back."
"Eighty-eight parsecs," rumbled Mven
Mass's low voice. "Eighty-eight.... All those people we have just seen
have long been dead."
As though in confirmation of his words the
scene from the wonderful world disappeared and the green indicator went out.
The transmission around the Great Circle was over.
For another minute they were all in a trance.
The first to recover was Darr Veter. Biting his lip in chagrin he hurriedly
turned the granulated lever. The column of directed energy switched off with
the sound of a gong that warned power station engineers to re-direct the
gigantic stream of energy into its usual channels. The Director of the Outer
Stations turned back to his companions only when all the necessary manipulations
had been completed.
Junius Antus, with a frown on his face, was
looking through pages of written notes.
"Some of the memory records taken down
from the stellar map on the ceiling must be sent to the Southern Sky
Institute!" he said, turning to Darr Veter's young assistant. The latter
looked at Junius Antus in amazement as though he had just awakened from an
unusual dream.
The grim scientist looked at him, a smile
lurking in his eyes≈what they had seen was indeed a dream of a wonderful world
sent out into space three hundred years before ... a dream that thousands of
millions of people on Earth and in the colonies on the Moon, Mars and Venus
would now see so clearly that it would be almost tangible.
"You were right, Mven Mass," smiled
Darr Veter, "when you said before the transmission began that something
unusual was going to happen today. For the first time in the eight hundred
years since we joined the Great Circle a planet has appeared in the Universe
inhabited by beings who are our brothers not only in intellect but in body as
well. You can well imagine my joy at this discovery. Your tour of duty as
Director has begun auspiciously! In the old days people would have said that it
was a lucky sign and our present-day psychologists would say that coincidental
events have occurred that favour confidence and give you encouragement in your
further work."
Darr Veter stopped suddenly: nervous reaction
had made him more verbose than usual. In the Era of the Great Circle verbosity
was considered one of the most disgraceful failings possible in a man≈the
Director of the Outer Stations stopped without finishing his sentence.
"Yes, yes ..." responded Mven Mass,
absent-mindedly. Junius Antus noticed the sluggishness in his voice and in his
movements; he was immediately on the alert. Veda Kong quietly ran her finger
along Darr Veter's hand and nodded towards the African.
"Perhaps he is too impressionable?"
wondered Darr Veter staring fixedly at his successor. Mven Mass sensed the
concealed surprise of his companions; he straightened up and became his usual
self, an attentive and skilled performer of the task in hand. An escalator took
them to the upper storeys of the building where there were extensive windows
looking out at the starry sky that was again as far away as it had always been
during the whole thirty thousand years of man's existence≈or rather the
existence of that species of hominids known as Homo sapiens. Mven Mass and
Darr Veter had to remain behind.
Veda Kong whispered to Darr Veter that she
would never forget that night.
"It made me feel so insignificant!"
she said, in conclusion, her face beaming despite her sorrowful words. Darr
Veter knew what she meant and shook his head.
"I am sure that if the red woman had seen
you she would have been proud of her sister, Veda. Surely our Earth isn't a bit
worse than their planet!'' Darr Veter's face was glowing with the light of
love.
"That's seen through your eyes, my
friend," smiled Veda, "but ask Mven Mass what he thinks!"
Jokingly she covered his eyes with her hand and then disappeared round a corner
of the wall.
When Mven Mass was, at last, left alone it was
already morning. A greyish light was breaking through the cool, still air and
the sky and the sea were alike in their crystal transparency, the sea silver
and the sky pinkish.
For a long time the African stood on the
balcony of the observatory gazing at the still unfamiliar outlines of the
buildings.
On a low plateau in the distance rose a huge
aluminium arch crossed by nine parallel aluminium bars, the spaces between them
filled in with yellowish-cream and silvery plastic glass; this was the building
of the Astronautical Council. Before the building stood a monument to the first
people to enter outer space; the steep slope of a mountain reaching into clouds
and whirlwinds was surmounted by an old-type spaceship, a fish-shaped rocket
that pointed its sharp nose into still unattainable heights. Cast-metal
figures, supporting each other in a chain, were making a superhuman effort to
climb upwards, spiralling their way around the base of the monument≈these were
the pilots of the rocket ships, the physicists, astronomers, biologists and
writers with bold imaginations.... The hull of the old spaceship and the light
lattice-work of the Council building were painted red by the dawn, but still
Mven Mass continued pacing up and down the balcony. Never before had he met
with such a shock. He had been brought up according to the general educational
rules of the Great Circle Era, had had a hard physical training and had successfully
performed his Labours of Hercules≈ the difficult tasks performed by every young
person at the end of his schooling that had been given this name in honour of
ancient Greece. If a youngster performed these tasks successfully he was
considered worthy to storm the heights of higher education.
Mven Mass had worked on the construction of the
water-supply system of a mine in Western Tibet, on the restoration of the
Araucaria pine forests on the Nahebt Plateau in South America and had taken
part in the annihilation of the sharks that had again appeared off the coasts
of Australia. His training, his heredity and his outstanding abilities enabled
him to undertake many years of persistent study to prepare himself for
difficult and responsible activities. On that day, during the first hour of his
new work, there had been a meeting with a world that was related to our Earth
and that had brought something new to his heart. With alarm Mven Mass felt that
some great depths had opened up within him, something whose existence he had
never even suspected. How he craved for another meeting with the planet of star
Epsilon in the Tucan Constellation! ... That was a world that seemed to have
come into being by power of the best legends known to the Earth-dwellers. He would
never forget the red-skinned girl, her outstretched alluring arms, her tender,
half-open lips!
The fact that two hundred and ninety light
years dividing him from that marvellous world was a distance that could not be
covered by any means known to the technicians of Earth served to strengthen
rather than weaken his dream.
Something new had grown up in Mven's heart,
something that lived its own life and did not submit to the control of the will
and cold intellect. The African had never been in love, he had been absorbed in
his work almost as a hermit would be and had never experienced anything like
the alarm and incomparable joy that had entered his heart during that meeting
across the tremendous barrier of space and time.
The fat black arrows on the
orange-coloured anameson fuel indicators stood at zero. The spaceship had not
escaped the iron star, its speed was still great and it was being drawn towards
that horrible star that human eyes could not see.
The astronavigator helped Erg
Noor, who was trembling from weakness and from the effort he had made, to sit
down at the computing machine. The planetary motors, disconnected from the
robot helmsman, faded out.
"Ingrid, what's an iron star?" asked
Kay Bear, softly; all that time he had been standing motionless behind her
back.
"An invisible star, spectral class T, that
has become extinguished and is either in the process of cooling off or of
reheating. It emanates the long infrared waves of the heat end of the spectrum
whose rays are black to us and can only be seen through the electronic
inverter. An owl can see the infrared rays and, therefore, could see the
star."
"Why is it called iron?"
"There is a lot of iron in the spectrum of
those that have been studied and it seems there's a lot of it in the star's
composition. If the star is a big one its mass and gravity are enormous. And
I'm afraid we're going to meet one of the big ones."
"What comes next?"
"I don't know. You know yourself that
we've got no fuel. We're flying straight towards the star. We must brake Tantra
down to a speed one-thousandth of the absolute, at which speed sufficient
angular deviation will be possible. If the planetary fuel gives out too, the
spaceship will slowly approach the star until it falls on it."
Ingrid jerked her head nervously and Kay gently
stroked her bare arm, all covered with goose-flesh.
The commander of the expedition went over to
the control desk and concentrated on the instruments. Everybody kept silent,
almost afraid to breathe, even Nisa Greet, who, although she had only just woke
up, realized instinctively the danger of their situation. The fuel might be
sufficient to brake the ship; but with loss of velocity it would be more
difficult to get out of the tremendous gravitational field of the iron star
without the ship's motors. If Tantra had not approached so close and if
Lynn had realized in time ... but what consolation was there in those empty
"ifs"?
Three hours passed before Erg Noor had made his
decision. Tantra
vibrated from the powerful thrust of the trigger motors. Her speed was reduced.
An hour, a second, a third and a fourth, an elusive movement of the commander's
hand, horrible nausea for everybody in the ship and the terrifying brown star
disappeared from the forward screen and reappeared on the second. Invisible
bonds of gravity continued to hold the ship and were recorded in the measuring
instruments. Two red eyes burned over Erg Noor's head. He pulled a lever
towards himself and the motors stopped working.
"We're out!" breathed Pel Lynn in
relief. The commander slowly turned his glance towards him.
"We're not. We have only the iron ration
of fuel left, sufficient for orbital revolution and landing."
"What can we do?"
"Wait! I have diverted the ship a little,
but we are passing too close. A battle is now going on between the star's force
of gravity and the reduced speed of Tantra. It's flying like a lunar rocket at
the moment and if it can get away we shall fly towards the Sun and will be able
to call Earth. The time required for the journey, of course, will he much
greater. In about thirty years we'll send out our call for help and another
eight years later it will come."
"Thirty-eight years!" Bear whispered
in scarcely audible tones in Ingrid's ear. She pulled him sharply by the sleeve
and turned away.
Erg Noor leaned back in his chair and dropped
his hands on his knees. Nobody spoke and the instruments continued softly
humming. Another melody, out of tune and, therefore, ominous, was added to the
tuned melody of the navigation instruments. The call of the iron star, the
great strength of its iron mass pulling for the weakened spaceship, was almost
physically tangible.
Nisa Creet's cheeks were burning, her heart was
beating wildly. This inactive waiting had become unbearable.
The hours passed slowly. One after another the
awakened members of the expedition appeared in the control tower. The number of
silent people increased until all fourteen were assembled.
The speed of the ship had been progressively
reduced until it reached a point that was lower than the velocity of escape so
that Tantra
could not get away from the iron star. Her crew forgot all about food and sleep
and did not leave the control tower for many miserable hours during which the
ship's course changed more and more to a curve until she was in the fatal
elliptical orbit. Tantra's fate was obvious to the entire crew.
A sudden howl made them all start. Astronomer
Pour Hyss jumped up and waved his hands. His distorted face was unrecognizable,
he bore no resemblance to a man of the Great Circle Era. Fear, self-pity and a
craving for revenge had swept all signs of intellectuality from the face of the
scientist.
"Him, it was him," howled Pour Hyss,
pointing to Pel Lynn, "that clot, that fool, that brainless worm ...."
The astronomer choked as he tried to recall the swear-words of his ancestors
that had long before gone out of use. Nisa, who was standing near him, moved
away contemptuously. Erg Noor stood up.
"The condemnation of a colleague will not
help us. The time is past when such an action could have been intentional. In
this case," Noor spun the handles on the computing machine carelessly,
"as you see there was a thirty per cent probability of error. If we add to
that the inevitable depression that comes at the end of a tour of duty and the
disturbance due to the pitching of the ship I don't doubt that you. Pour Hyss,
would have made the same mistake!"
"And you?" shouted the astronomer,
but with less fury than before.
"I should not. I saw a monster like this
at close quarters during the 36th Space Expedition. It is mostly my fault≈I
hoped to pilot the ship through the unknown region myself, but I did not
foresee everything, I confined myself to giving simple instructions!"
"How could you have known that they would enter
this region without you?" exclaimed Nisa.
"I should have known it," answered
Erg Noor, firmly, in this way refusing the friendly aid of the astronavigator,
"but there's no sense in talking about it until we get bade to
Earth."
"To Earth!" whined Pour Hyss and even
Pel Lynn frowned in perplexity, "to say that, when all is lost and only
death lies ahead of us!"
"Not death but a gigantic struggle lies
ahead of us," answered Erg Noor, confidently, sitting down in a chair that
stood before the table. "Sit down. There's no need to hurry until Tantra
has made one and a half revolutions."
Those present obeyed him in silence and Nisa
gave the biologist a smile, triumphant, despite the hopelessness of the moment.
"This star undoubtedly has a planet, even
two, I imagine, judging by the curves of the isograve.10 The
planets, as you see," the commander made a rapid but accurate sketch,
"should be big ones and, therefore, should have an atmosphere. We don't
need to land, though, we have enough atomized solid oxygen." 11
Erg Noor stopped to gather his thoughts. "We shall become the satellite of
the planet and travel in orbit around it. If the atmosphere of the planet is
suitable and we use up our air, we have sufficient planetary fuel to land and
call for help. In six months we can calculate the direction," he
continued, ''transmit to Earth the results obtained from Zirda and send for a
rescue ship and save our ship."
"If we do save it..." Pour Hyss
pulled a wry face as he tried to hide the joy that kindled anew in his heart.
"Yes, if we do," agreed Erg Noor.
"That, however, is clearly our goal. We must muster all our forces to
achieve it. You, Pour Hyss and Ingrid Dietra, make your observations and
calculate the size of the planets, Bear and Nisa. compute the velocity from the
mass of the planets and when you know that compute the orbital velocity of the
spaceship and the optimal radiant12 for its revolutions."
The explorers began to make preparations for a landing should it prove to be necessary. The biologist, the geologist and the physician prepared a reconnaissance robot, the mechanics adjusted the landing locators and searchlights and got ready a rocket satellite that would transmit a message to Earth.
The work went particularly well after the
horror and hopelessness they had experienced and was only interrupted by the
pitching of the ship in gravitational vortices. Tantra, however, had so
reduced her speed that the pitching no longer caused the people great
discomfort.
Pour Hyss and Ingrid established the presence
of two planets. They had to reject the idea of approaching the outer planet-≈it
was huge in size, cold, encircled by a thick layer of atmosphere that was
probably poisonous and threatened them with death. If they had to make a choice
of deaths it would probably have been better to burn up on the surface of the
iron star than drown in the gloom of an ammonia atmosphere by plunging the ship
into a thousand-kilometre thick layer of ammonia ice. There were similar
terrible, gigantic planets in the solar system≈ Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and
Neptune.
Tantra
continued to approach the star. In nineteen days they determined the size of
the inner planet and it proved to be bigger than Earth. The planet was quite
close to its sun, the iron star, and was carried round its orbit at frantic
speed, its year being no more than two or three terrestrial months. The
invisible star T no doubt made it quite warm with its black rays and, if there
was an atmosphere, life could have emerged there. In the latter case landing
would be particularly dangerous.
Alien forms of life that had developed under
conditions of other planets and by other evolutionary paths and had the albumin
cells common to the whole Cosmos were extremely dangerous to Earth-dwellers.
The adaptation of the organism to protect itself against harmful refuse and
disease bacteria that had been going on for millions of centuries on our planet
was powerless against alien forms of life. To the same degree life from other
planets was in similar danger on Earth.
The basic activity of animal life≈in killing to
devour and in devouring to kill≈made its appearance with de-pressingly brutal
cruelty when the animal life of different worlds clashed. Fantastic diseases,
instantaneous epidemics, the terrible spreading of pests and horrible injuries
beset the first explorations of habitable hut uninhabited planets. Worlds that
were inhabited by intelligent beings made numerous experiments and preparations
before establishing direct spaceship communications. On our Earth, far removed
from the central parts of the Galaxy where life abounds, there had been no
visitors from the planets of other stars, no representatives of other
civilizations. The Astronautical Council had shortly before completed
preparations for the reception of visitors from the planets of not too distant
stars in the Ophiuchus, Cygnus, Ursa Major and Apus constellations.
Erg Noor, worried by the possibility of meeting
with unknown forms of life, ordered the biological means of defence, that he
had taken a big supply of in the hope of visiting Vega, to be brought out of
the distant store-rooms.
At last Tantra equalized her orbital velocity with
that of the planet and then began to revolve around it. The indefinite,
dark-brown surface of the planet, or rather, of its atmosphere, with
reflections of the bloody-brown sun, could only be seen through the electronic
inverter. All members of the expedition were busy at the instruments.
'"The temperature of the upper layers of
the daylight side is 320╟ on the Kelvin scale." 13
"Rotation about the axis approximately 20
days." "The locators show the presence of water and land." ''The
thickness of the atmosphere is 1,700 kilometres." "The exact mass is
43.2 times Earth's mass." The reports followed one another continuously
and the nature of the planet was becoming clear.
Erg Noor summarized the figures as they came in
and was making preparations to compute the orbit. The planet was a big one,
43.2 times the mass of Earth, and its force of gravity would hold the ship
pressed down to the ground. The people would be as helpless as flies on a
fly-paper.
The commander recalled the terrible stories he
had heard, half legend, half history, of the old spaceships that had, for
various reasons, come into contact with the huge planets. In those days the
slow ships with low-powered fuel often perished. The end came with a roar of
motors and the spasmodic shuddering of a ship that could not get away but
remained stuck to the surface of the planet. The ship remained intact but the
bones of the people trying to crawl about the ship were broken. The
indescribable horror of great weight had been communicated in the fragmentary
cries of last reports, in the farewell transmissions.
The crew of Tantra were not menaced by that danger as
long as they revolved about the planet. If they had to land on its surface,
however, only the strongest people would be able to drag the weight of their
own bodies in this, the future haven that was to be theirs for many long years
.... Could they keep alive under such conditions≈ crushed by the great weight,
in the eternal darkness of the infrared rays of the black sun, in a dense
atmosphere?
Whatever the conditions were, it was a hope of
salvation, it did not mean death and, anyway, there was no choice!
Tantra's orbit drew closer to the outer fringe of the atmosphere. The expedition
could not miss the opportunity of investigating a hitherto unknown planet that
was comparatively close to Earth. The lighted, or rather, heated side of the
planet differed from the night side not only by its much greater temperature
but also by the huge agglomerations of electricity that so interfered with the
powerful locators that their indications were distorted beyond recognition. Erg
Noor decided to study the planet with the help of bomb stations. They sent out
a physical research robot and the automatic recorder reported on an astonishing
quantity of free oxygen in an atmosphere of neon and nitrogen, the presence of
water vapour and a temperature of 12╟ C. These were conditions that, in
general, were similar to those on Earth. But the pressure of the thick
atmosphere was 1.4 times that of normal pressure on Earth and the force of
gravity was 2.5 times greater.
"We can live here," said the
biologist, smiling feebly as lie reported the station's findings to the
commander.
"If we can live on that gloomy, heavy
planet, then something is probably living there already, something small and
harmful."
For the spaceship's fifteenth revolution a bomb
beacon with a powerful transmitter was prepared. This second physical research
station, dropped on the night side when the planet had rotated through 120╟,
disappeared without sending out any signals.
"It has fallen into the ocean," said
geologist Beena Ledd, biting her lips in annoyance.
"We must feel our way with the main
locator before we put out a TV robot. We've only got two of them."
═Tantra
emitted a bunch of directed radio waves as she revolved round the planet,
feeling for the contours of seas and continents that owing to distortion were
unclear. They found the outlines of a huge plain that thrust out into the
ocean, or divided two oceans, almost on the planet's equator. The spaceship's
ray zigzagged across a strip of land two hundred kilometres wide. Suddenly a
bright point flared up on the locator screen. A whistle that lashed their
strained nerves told them that it was no hallucination.
"Metal!" exclaimed the geologist,
"an open deposit." Erg Noor shook his head.
"Although the flash did not last long I
managed to note its regular outline. That was a huge piece of metal, a
meteorite or ...."
"A ship!" exclaimed Nisa and the
biologist together. "Fantasy!" snapped Pour Hyss.
"It may be fact," objected Erg Noor.
"What does it matter, it's no use arguing," said Pour Hyss, unwilling
to give in. "There's no way of proving it, we're not going to laud, are
we?"
"We'll check up on it in three hours' time
when we reach that plain again. Notice that the metal object is on the plain
that I, too, would have chosen to land on. We'll throw out the TV robot at that
very spot. Tune the locator ray to a six-second warning!"
The commander's plan was successful and Tantra
made another three-hour flight round the dark planet. The next time the ship
approached the continental plain it was met by TV broadcasts from the robot.
The people peered into the light screen. With a click the visible ray was
switched on and peered like a human eye, noting the outlines of things far down
below, in that thousand-kilometre-deep black abyss. Kay Bear could well imagine
the head of the robot station sticking out of the armour plate and revolving
like a lighthouse. The zone that was swept by the instrument's eye appeared on
the screen and was there and then photographed: the view consisted of low
cliffs, hills and the winding black lines of watercourses. Suddenly the vision
of a gleaming, fish-shaped object crossed the screen and again melted into the
darkness as it was abandoned by the light ray to the darkness and the ledges of
the plateau.
"A spaceship!" gasped several voices
in unison. Nisa looked at Pour Hyss with undisguised triumph. The screen went
dark as Tantra
left the area of the TV robot's activity and Eon Thai immediately set about
developing the film of the electronic photographs. With fingers that trembled
with impatience he placed the film in the projector of the hemispherical screen
that would give them stereoscopic pictures of what had been photographed. The
inner walls of the hollow hemisphere gave them an enlarged picture.
The familiar cigar-shaped outlines of the
ship's hows, the bulge of the stern, the high ridge of the equilibrium receiver
.... No matter how unbelievable it all was, no matter how utterly impossible
they might regard a meeting here, on the dark planet, the robot could not
invent anything, a terrestrial spaceship lay there! It lay horizontally, in the
normal landing position, supported by its powerful landing struts, undamaged,
as though it had only just alighted on to the planet of the iron star.
Tantra, revolving in a shorter orbit closer to the planet, sent out signals
that were not answered. A few more hours passed. The fourteen members of the
expedition again gathered in the control tower. Erg Noor, who had been sitting
in deep contemplation, stood up.
"I propose to land Tantra. Perhaps our brothers
are in need of help, perhaps their ship is damaged and cannot return to Earth.
If so we can take them, transfer their anameson and save ourselves. There is no
sense in sending out a rescue rocket. It cannot do anything to give us fuel and
will use up so much energy that there will not be enough left to send a signal
to Earth."
"Suppose the ship is here because of a
shortage of anameson?" asked Pel Lynn, cautiously.
"Then it should have ion planetary
charges, they could not have used up everything. As you see the spaceship is in
its proper position which means they landed with the planetary motors. We'll
transfer the ion fuel, take off again and go into orbit; then we can call Earth
for help and in case of success that won't take more than eight years. And if
we can get anameson, then we shall have won out." "Maybe they have
photon and not ion charges for their planetary motors," said one of the
engineers.
"We can make use of them in the big motors
if we fit them with auxiliary bowl reflectors."
"I see you've thought of everything.,"
said the engineer, giving in.
"There is still the risk of landing on a
heavy planet and the risk of living there," muttered Pour Hyss. "It's
awful just to think of that world of darkness!"
"The risk, of course, remains. But there
is risk in our very situation and we shall hardly increase it by landing. The
planet on which our spaceship will land is not a bad one as long as we do not
damage the ship."
Erg Noor cast a glance at the dial of the speed
regulator and walked swiftly to the control desk. For a whole minute he stood
in front of the levers and vernier scales of the controls. The fingers of his
big hands moved as though they were selecting chords on some musical
instrument, his back was bent and his face turned to stone.
Nisa Greet went up to him, boldly took his
right hand and pressed the palm to her smooth cheek, hot from excitement. Erg
Noor nodded in gratitude, stroked the girl's mass of hair and straightened
himself up.
"We are entering the lower layers of the
atmosphere to land," he said loudly, switching on the warning siren. The
howl carried throughout the ship and the crew hurried to strap themselves into
hydraulic floating scats.
Erg Noor dropped into the soft embrace of the
landing chair that rose up from the floor before the control desk. Then came
the heavy strokes of the planetary engines and the spaceship rushed down,
howling, towards the cliffs and oceans of the unknown planet.
The locators and the infrared reflectors felt
their way through the primordial darkness below, red lights glowed on the
altimeter scales at 15,000 metres. It was not anticipated that there would be
mountains much over 10,000 metres high on the planet where water and the heat
of the black sun had been working to level out the surface as was the case on
Earth.
The first revolution round the planet revealed
no mountains, only insignificant heights, little bigger than those of Mars. It
looked as though the activity of the internal forces that gave rise to
mountains had ceased or had been checked.
Erg Noor placed the altitude governor at 2,000
metres and switched on the powerful searchlights. A huge ocean stretched below
the spaceship, an ocean of horror, an unbroken mass of black waves that rose
and fell over unfathomable depths.
The biologist wiped away the perspiration
caused by his strenuous efforts; he was trying to catch in his instrument the
faint variations in reflection from the black water to determine its salt and
mineral content.
The gleaming black of the water gave way to the
dull black of land. The crossed rays of the searchlights cut a narrow lane
between walls of darkness. Unexpectedly there were patches of colour in this
lane, yellow sands and the greyish-green surface of a flat rocky ridge.
Tantra
swept across the continent, obedient to the skilled hand of the commander.
At last Erg Noor found the plain he was looking
for; it proved to be low-lying country that could not possibly be termed a
plateau although it was obvious that the tides and storms of the black sea
would not reach it, lying, as it did, some hundred metres above the surrounding
country.
The locator on the spaceship's port bow
whistled. Tantra's
searchlights followed the locator beam and the clear outlines of a first class
spaceship came into view.
The bow armour, made of an isotope of iridium
having a reorganized crystalline structure, shone like new in the rays of the
searchlight. There were no temporary structures anywhere near the ship, there
were no lights on board≈it stood dark and lifeless and did not in any way react
to the approach of a sister ship. The searchlight rays moved past the ship and
were reflected from a huge disc with spiral projections as they would have been
from a blue mirror. The disc was standing on edge, leaning slightly to one side
and was partly buried in the black soil. For a moment the observers got the
impression that there were cliffs behind the disc and that beyond them the
darkness was blacker and thicker, probably it was a precipice or a slope
leading down to the lowlands ....
The deafening roar of Tantra's sirens shook the
hull of the ship. Erg Noor intended to land close to the newly-discovered ship
and was giving warning to any people who might be within the danger zone, that
is, within a radius of some thousand metres from the landing place. The terrific
roar of the planetary motors could be heard even inside the ship and a cloud of
red-hot dust appeared in the screens. The ship's floor began to rise up and
then slip backwards. The hydraulic hinges of the landing seats turned them
smoothly and soundlessly, keeping them perpendicular to the now vertical
floors.
The huge jointed landing struts slid out of the
ship's hull, straightened out and took the first shock of the landing on an
alien world. A shock, a recoil and another shock and Tantra, her bows still
swaying, came to a standstill at the same time as the engines cut out. Erg Noor
raised his hand to a lever on the control desk that was now directly over his
head and released the jointed struts. Slowly, with a number of short jerks, the
spaceship's bows sank towards the ground until the hull had assumed its normal,
horizontal position. The landing had been accomplished. As usual, the landing
had shaken the human organism bo strongly
that the astronauts required some time to recover and remained semi-recumbent
in their landing seats.
They were all held down by an awful weight and
were scarcely able to rise to their feet, like patients recovering slowly from
a serious illness. The irrepressible biologist, however, had managed to take a
sample of the, air.
"It's fit to breathe," he said.
"I'll take a look at it through the microscope."
"Don't bother," said Erg Noor,
unfastening the cushions of his landing chair, "we can't go out without a
spacesuit. There may be very dangerous spores and viruses on this planet."
In the air-lock at the exit to the ship
biologically shielded spacesuits and "jumping skeletons" had been
prepared in readiness for an exploring party; the "skeletons" were
steel, leather-covered frames that were worn over the spacesuits and were fitted
with electric motors, springs and shock absorbers to enable the explorers to
move about under conditions of excessive weiglit.
After six years' travelling through
interstellar space every one of them wanted to feel soil, even alien soil,
under his feet. Kay Bear, Pour Hyss, Ingrid, Doctor Louma Lasvy and two
engineers had to remain on board the vessel to man the radio, searchlights and
various measuring and recording instruments.
Nisa stood aside from the party with her space
helmet in her hands.
"Why do you hesitate, Nisa?" the
commander called to her as he tested the radio set in the top of his helmet.
"Come along to the spaceship!"
"I ... I ..." the girl stammered,
"I believe it's dead, it's been standing here a long time .... Another
catastrophe, another victim claimed by the merciless Cosmos. I know it's
inevitable but still it's hard to bear, especially after Zirda and Algrab
...."
"Perhaps the death of this spaceship will
mean life for us," said Pour Hyss who was busy training a short-focus
telescope on the other ship which still remained unlighted.
Eight members of the expedition climbed into
the air-lock and waited.
"Turn on the air!" ordered Erg Noor
addressing those who were remaining on the ship and from whom they were now
divided by an air-tight wall.
When the pressure in the air-lock had risen to
ten atmospheres and was higher than that outside, hydraulic jacks opened the
hermetically sealed doors. The air pressure in the lock was so great that it
almost hurled the people out of the chamber and at the same time prevented
anything harmful in the alien atmosphere from entering the chamber. The door
clanged to behind them. The rays of a searchlight lit up a clear road along
which the explorers hobbled on their spring legs, scarcely able to drag their
own heavy weight along. The gigantic spaceship stood at the other end of the
beam of light, about a mile away, a distance that seemed interminable to them
in their impatience. They were badly shaken up by their clumsy jumps over
uneven ground covered with small boulders and greatly heated by the black sun.
The stars made pale, diffused patches when seen
through the dense, highly humid atmosphere. Instead of the brilliant
magnificence of the Cosmos the planet's sky showed only a faint suggestion of
the constellations, the pale, reddish lanterns of their stars unable to
penetrate the darkness on the planet.
The spaceship stood out in clear relief in the
profound darkness of its surroundings. The thick borated zirconium lacquer on
the hull plates had been rubbed off in places. The ship must have been
wandering about the Cosmos for a long time.
An exclamation, repeated in all the radio
telephones, came from Eon Thai. With his hand he pointed to the ship's smaller
lift that had been lowered to the ground and stood with its door wide open.
What were undoubtedly plants grew around the lift and under the ship's hull.
Thick stems raised black bowls of parabolic shape nearly three feet above the
ground; they had serrated edges something like the teeth of a cog-wheel and it
was difficult to say whether they were leaves or flowers. A mass of these
motionless cog-wheels growing together had an evil look about them. Still more
disturbing was the silent, open door of the lift. Untouched plants and an open
door could only mean that nobody had used that way for a long time, that the
people were not guarding their tiny terrestrial world from that which was alien
to them.
Erg Noor, Eon Thai and Nisa Greet entered the
lift and the commander pressed the button. With a slight squeak the machinery
was set in motion and the lift carried the explorers to the wide-open air-lock.
They were followed by the others. Erg Noor transmitted an order to switch off
the searchlight on Tantra. An instant later the tiny group of
Earth-dwellers was lost in utter darkness. The world of the iron sun enveloped
them as though trying to absorb that feeble spark of terrestrial life pressed
down to the soil of the huge black planet.
They switched on the revolving electric
lanterns in their helmets. The inner door of the air-lock, leading into the
ship, was closed but not locked and opened at a push. The explorers entered the
central corridor and easily found their way through the dark alleyways. The
spaceship differed but little from Tantra in its design.
"This ship was built less than a hundred
years ago," said Erg Noor, drawing closer to Nisa. The girl looked round.
Through the silicolloid 14 helmet the commander's half-lighted face
looked mysterious.
"An impossible idea," he continued, "but
suppose this is ...."
"Parus," exclaimed Nisa. She had
forgotten the microphone and saw everybody turn towards her.
The explorers made their way to the chief room
of the spaceship, the combined library and laboratory, and from there continued
towards the ship's control tower in the bows. Staggering along in his
"skeleton," swaying from side to side and banging against the walls
as he went, the commander reached the main switchboard. The ship's lights were
switched on but there was no current to keep them going. The phosphorescent
signs and indicators still glowed in the darkness. Erg Noor found the emergency
switch, pressed it and, to their surprise, the lamps glowed dimly, but to the
explorers they seemed blindingly bright. The light in the lift must have gone
on, too, for they heard the voice of Pour Hyss in their telephones asking about
the results of the examination. Geologist Beena Ledd answered him as the
commander had suddenly stopped in the doorway of the control tower. Following
his glance Nisa looked up and saw, between the fore screens, a double
inscription, in the letters of Earth and the symbols of the Great Circle≈Parus.
A line drawn under the word separated it from Earth's galactic call sign and
the coordinates of the Solar System.
The spaceship that had disappeared eighty years
before had been found in the system of the black sun, a system that had
formerly been unknown and had been regarded as a dark cloud.
An examination of the interior of the spaceship
did not tell them what had happened to the ship's crew. The oxygen reservoirs
were not empty, there were supplies of food and water sufficient for several
years but nowhere was there any trace or any remains of Parus' crew.
Here and there in the corridors, in the control
tower and in the library there were strange dark stains on the walls. On the
library floor there was another stain that looked as though something that had
been spilled there had dried in a warped film of several layers. Before the
open door in the after bulkhead of the stern engine room, wires had been torn
apart and were hanging down, the massive uprights of the cooling system, made
of phosphor-bronze, had been badly bent. Everything else in the ship was in
perfect condition so that this damage, caused by a blow of tremendous force,
could not be explained. The explorers were becoming exhausted by their efforts
but were unable to find anything that would explain the disappearance and
undoubted loss of Parus' crew.
They did, however, make another discovery, one
of the greatest importance≈the supplies of anameson fuel and ion charges for
the planetary motors were sufficient for the take-off of Tantra and for the journey
back to Earth.
This information was immediately transmitted to
Tantra
and relieved all members of the expedition of that feeling of doom that had
possessed them since their spaceship had been captured by the iron star. Nor
would they have to carry out the lengthy work necessary to transmit a message
to Earth. There would be, however, the tremendous task of transferring the
anameson containers to Tantra. This would not have been an easy
task anywhere, but there, on a planet where everything weighed three times as
much as on Earth, it would require all the skill and ingenuity of the
engineers. People of the Great Circle Era, however, were not afraid of
difficult mental problems; on the contrary, they enjoyed them.
From the tape recorder in the central control
tower the biologist removed the unfinished spool of the ship's log-book. Erg
Noor and the biologist opened the door of the hermetically sealed main safe
where the results of the Parus expedition were kept. The members of
the expedition were burdened down with a heavy weight of numerous spools of
photo-magnetic films, log-books, astronomical observations and computations.
They were explorers themselves and could not dream of leaving such a valuable
find even for a moment.
Dead tired the explorers were met in Tantra's
library by their excited and impatient comrades. In surroundings to which they
were accustomed, seated around a comfortable table under bright lights, the
tomb-like gloom of the black world outside and the dead, abandoned spaceship
seemed like a gruesome nightmare. Nevertheless the force of gravity of that
awful planet continued to crush every one of them and from time to time one or
another of the explorers would grimace with pain on making some movement. It
had been very difficult, without considerable practice, to coordinate the
movements of the body with those of the "steel skeleton" so that an
ordinary walk became a series of jerks and severe shakings. The short journey
to Parus
and back had completely exhausted them. Geologist Beena Ledd was apparently
suffering from a slight concussion of the brain, but she refused to go away
before she had heard the last spool of the ship's log-book and remained leaning
on the table with her hands pressed to her temples. Nisa expected something
extraordinary from the records that had lain for eighty years in a dead ship on
that horrid planet. She imagined hoarse appeals for help, howls of a suffering,
tragic words of farewell. The girl shuddered when a cold, melodious voice came
from the reproducer. Even Erg Noor, a man who possessed great knowledge of
everything connected with interstellar flights, knew nothing of the crew of Parus.
The crew had been made up exclusively of young people and had set out on their
fantastically courageous journey to Vega without giving the Astronautical
Council the usual film about the members of the crew.
The unknown voice reported events that occurred
seven months after the last message had been sent to Earth. Twenty-five years
before that, in crossing a Cosmic ice zone on the fringe of the Vega system, Parus
had been damaged. The crew managed to patch the hole in the ship's stern and
continue their journey but it nevertheless upset the delicate regulation of the
protective field of the motors. After a struggle that lasted twenty years they
had had to stop the engines. Parus continued going five years by
inertia until she was pulled aside by a natural inaccuracy in the ship's
course. That was when the first message had been sent. The spaceship was about
to send another message when she was caught in the field of the iron star. Then
the same thing happened to Parus as had happened to Tantra
with the difference that Parus was without motors and had been
unable to resist. Nor could Parus become a satellite of the black
planet since the planetary motors, housed in the vessel's stern, had been
wrecked at the same time as the anameson motors. Parus landed safely on a low
plateau near the sea. The crew set about carrying out three tasks of
importance: the repair of the motors, the transmission of a message to Earth
and the study of the unknown planet. Before they had time to erect a rocket
tower people began to disappear mysteriously.
Those sent out to look for them did not return.
The exploration of the planet ceased, the remainder of the crew went out to the
rocket tower only in a group and for the long periods between spells of work
that the strong force of gravity made extremely exhausting, they remained in
the tightly sealed spaceship. In their hurry to send off the rocket they had
not even studied the strange spaceship in the vicinity of Parus that had, apparently,
been there a long time.
"That disc!" flashed through Nisa's
mind. She met the commander's glance and he, understanding her thoughts, nodded
in affirmation. Six out of the fourteen of Parus' crew had disappeared but after the
necessary measures had been taken the disappearances stopped. There then followed
a break of about three days in the log-book and the story was taken up by a
young woman's high-pitched voice.
"Today is the twelfth day of the seventh
month, year 723 of the Great Circle, and we who have remained alive have
completed the construction of the rocket transmitter. Tomorrow at this time
...."
Kay Bear glanced instinctively at the time
gradations along the tape≈5 a. m. Parus time, and who could know what time
that would be on this planet!
"We are sending a reliably computed
..." the voice broke off and then began again, this time weaker and
suppressed, as though the speaker had turned away from the microphone,
"... I am switching on! More!" The tape-recorder was silent although
the tape continued to unwind.
"Something must have happened!" began
Ingrid Dietra.
Hurried, choking words came from the
tape-recorder. '"... two got away ... Laik is gone, she didn't jump far
enough ... the lift... they couldn't shut the outside door, only the inside
one! Mechanic Sach Kthon has crawled to the engines ... we'll start the
planetary motors going ... there is nothing to them but fury and horror, they
are nothing! Yes, nothing ..." for some time the tape unwound in silence,
then the same voice began again.
"I don't think Kthon managed it. I'm
alone, but I've thought of what to do. Before I begin," the voice grew
stronger and then sounded with amazing strength, "Brothers, if you find Parus,
take heed of my warning, never leave the ship at all." The woman who was
speaking heaved a deep sigh and said, as though talking to herself, "I
must find out about Kthon, I'll come back and explain in detail." Then
came a click and the tape continued to unwind for about twenty minutes before
it reached the end. The eager listeners waited in vain, the unknown woman had
been unable to give any further details just as she had probably been unable to
return.
Erg Noor switched off the apparatus and turned
to his companions.
"Our brothers and sisters who died in Parus
will save us! Can't you feel the strong arm of the man of Earth! There's a
supply of anameson on the ship and we've been given a warning of the mortal
danger that threatens us. I have no idea what it is but it's undoubtedly some
alien form of life. If it had been elemental. Cosmic forces, they'd have
damaged the ship and not merely killed the people, It would be a disgrace if we
could not save ourselves now that we have been given so much help; we must take
our discoveries and those of Parus back to Earth. The great work of
those who perished at their posts, their half-century's struggle against the
Cosmos, must not have been in vain."
"How do you propose to get the fuel on
board without leaving the ship?" asked Kay Bear.
"Why without leaving the ship? You know
that's impossible and that we have to go "out and work outside. We've been
warned and we'll take the necessary steps."
"I suppose you mean a barrage around the
place where we're going to work," said biologist Eon Thai.
"Not only that, a barrage along the whole
way between the two ships," added Pour Hyss.
"Naturally! We don't know what to expect
so we'll make the barrage a double one, a radiation and an electric wall. We'll
put out cables and have a path of light all the way. There's an unused rocket
standing behind Parus that contains sufficient energy for all the time we'll
have to work."
Beena Ledd's head dropped on to the table with
a thud. The doctor and the second astronomer moved their heavy bodies with
difficulty towards her.
"It's nothing," explained Louma
Lasvy, "concussion and overstrain. Help me get Beena to bed."
Even that simple task would not have been
performed very quickly if mechanic Taron had not thought of adapting an
automatic robot car. With the help of the car all the eight explorers were
taken to their beds≈if they did not rest in time, organisms that had not yet
adapted themselves to new conditions would break down. At this difficult moment
every member of the expedition was essential and irreplaceable.
Soon two universal automatic cars for transport
purposes and road building were linked together and used to level the road
between the two spaceships. Heavy cables were hung on both sides. Watch towers
with a protective hood of thick silicoborum 15 were erected at each
of the spaceships. In each tower an observer from time to time would send a
fan-shaped bunch of death-dealing rays along the road from an impulse chamber.
During the hours of work the powerful searchlights were kept going all the
time. The main hatch in Parus' keel was opened, some of the
bulkheads were removed and four containers of anameson and thirty cylinders
with ion charges were made ready to load on to the cars. It would be more
difficult to load them on to Tantra. They could not open the spaceship
the way Parus
was opened and so allow whatever was engendered by the alien life of the
planet, and which was probably lethal, to enter the ship. For this reason they
only made the necessary preparations inside the ship but did not open the
hatch; interior bulkheads were removed and containers of compressed air were
brought from Parus. The plan was to blow a strong blast of air under high
pressure down the shaft from the time the manhole was opened until the
containers were loaded into Tantra. At the same time the hull of the
vessel would be screened by a radiation cascade.
The expedition gradually grew accustomed to
working in their "steel skeletons" and began to bear the triple
weight somewhat more easily. The unbearable pain in all their bones that had
begun as soon as they landed was also beginning to ease up.
Several terrestrial days passed and the
mysterious "nothing" did not appear. The temperature of the
surrounding atmosphere began to fall rapidly. A hurricane arose that increased
in fury hour by hour. This was the setting of the black sun≈the planet rotated
and the continent on which the spaceship stood plunged into night. The
convection currents, the heat given off by the ocean and the thick atmosphere
prevented a sudden drop in temperature but towards the middle of the planetary
"night" a sharp frost set in. The work continued with the heating
systems in the spacesuits switched on. They had managed to get the first
container out of Parus and transport it to Tantra when at
"sunrise" there came a hurricane much fiercer than had been the one
at "sunset." The temperature rose rapidly above freezing point, a
current of dense air brought with it excessive humidity and the sky was rent by
endless lightnings. The hurricane became so fierce that the spaceship began to
tremble under pressure of the terrific wind. The crew concentrated all their
efforts on safely anchoring the container under Tantra's keel. The fearful
roar of the wind increased and there were dangerous whirling vortices on the
plateau that closely resembled a terrestrial tornado. In the searchlight beam
there appeared a huge whirlwind, a rotating column of water, snow and dust
whose funnel rested on the low dark sky. The whirlwind broke the high-voltage
cables and there were blue flashes caused by short circuits as the ends coiled
up. The yellow light of Parus' searchlight disappeared as though
the wind had blown it out.
Erg Noor gave the order to stop work and take
cover in the ship.
"But there is an observer there!"
exclaimed geologist Beena Ledd, pointing to the faintly visible light of the
silicoborum turret.
"I know, Nisa's there and I'm going over
there myself," answered the commander.
"The current is cut off and 'nothing' has
come into his own," said Beena in serious tones.
"If the hurricane affects us it will no
doubt also affect 'nothing.' I'm sure there's no danger until the storm dies
down. I'm so heavy in this world that I won't be blown away if I crawl along
the ground. I've been wanting to watch that 'nothing' from an observation
turret for a long time."
"May I come with you?" asked the
biologist, jumping towards the commander.
"Come along, only remember, I won't take
anybody else! You need that...."
The two men crawled for a long time, hanging on
to irregularities and cracks in the stones and keeping as far as possible out
of the way of the whirlwinds. The hurricane did its best to tear them from the
ground, turn them over and roll them along. Once it succeeded but Erg Noor
managed to catch hold of Eon Thai as he rolled past, dropped flat on his
stomach and caught hold of a big boulder with his hooked gloves.
Nisa opened the hatch of her turret and the two
men crawled into the narrow space. It was quiet and warm inside, the turret
stood firm, securely anchored against the storms their wisdom had foreseen. The
auburn-headed astronavigator frowned but was glad to have companions. She
frankly admitted that she was not looking forward to spending twenty-four hours
alone in a storm on a strange planet.
Erg Noor informed Tantra of their safe arrival
and the searchlight was turned off. The tiny lamp in the turret was now the
only light in that kingdom of darkness. The ground trembled under the gusts of
wind, the lightning and the passing whirlwinds. Nisa sat in a revolving chair
with her back against the rheostat. The commander and the biologist sat at her
feet on the round ledge formed by the base of the turret. In their spacesuits
they occupied almost all the space inside the turret.
"I suggest we sleep," came Erg Noor's
soft voice in the telephones. "It's a good twelve hours to the black
sunrise when the storm will die down and it will be warmer."
His companions readily agreed. And so the three
of them slept, held down by triple weight, enclosed in their spacesuits,
hampered by the stiff "skeleton" in the narrow confines of a turret
that was shaken by the storm. Great is the adaptability of the human organism
and great its powers of resistance!
From time to time Nisa woke up, transmitted a
reassuring message to the watcher on Tantra and dozed off again. The hurricane
was blowing itself out and the earth tremors had ceased. The
"nothing," or, more correctly, the "something" might appear
now. The observers on the turrets took VP, vigilance pills, to liven up a tired
nervous system.
"That other spaceship bothers me,"
confessed Nisa, "I should so much like to know who they are, where they
came from and how they got here."
"So would I," answered Erg Noor,
"only it's obvious how they got here. Stories of the iron stars and their
planet traps have long been circulating round the Great Circle. In the more
densely inhabited parts of the Galaxy, where ships have been making frequent
trips for a long time already, there are planet graveyards of lost spaceships.
Many ships, especially the earlier types, got stuck to those planets and many
hair-raising stories are told about them, stories that are almost legend today,
the legends of the arduous conquest of the Cosmos. Perhaps there are older
spaceships on this planet that belong to more ancient days, although the
meeting of three ships in our sparsely populated part of the Galaxy is an extraordinary
event. So far not a single iron star was known to exist in the vicinity of the
Sun, we have discovered the first."
"Do you intend to investigate the disc
ship?" asked the biologist.
"Most certainly! Could a scientist ever
forgive himself if he let such an opportunity go? We don't know of any disc
spaceships in regions neighbouring on our solar system. This must be a ship
from a great distance that has, perhaps, been wandering about the Galaxy for
several thousand years after the death of the crew or after some irreparable
damage. Many transmissions round the Great Circle may become comprehensible to
us when we get whatever material there is in the disc ship. It has a very queer
form, it's a disc-shaped spiral, the ribs on its exterior are very convex. As
soon as we have transferred the cargo from Parus we'll start on that ship but at
present we cannot take a single person away from work."
"It took us only a few hours to
investigate Parus."
"I have examined the disc ship through a stereotele-scope. It is
sealed tight, not a single opening is to be seen anywhere. It is very difficult
to penetrate into any Cosmic ship that is reliably protected against forces
that are many times stronger than our terrestrial elements. Just try and get
into Tantra,
through her armour of metal with a reorganized internal crystal structure,
through the borason plating≈it would be a task equal to the siege of a
fortress. It's still more difficult to deal with an alien ship, the principles
of whose structure are unknown to us. But we'll make an attempt to find out
what it is!"
"When are we going to examine what we've
found in Parus?"
asked Nisa. "There should be some staggeringly interesting observations
made in those marvellous worlds mentioned in the message."
The telephone transmitted the commander's
good-natured laugh.
"I've been dreaming of Vega since
childhood and am more impatient than any of you. But we'll have plenty of time
for that on the way home. The first thing we have to do is get out of this
darkness, out of this inferno, as they used to say in the old days. The Parus
explorers did not make any landings otherwise we should have found the things
they brought from those worlds in the collection rooms of the ship. You
remember that despite the thorough search we made we found only films,
measurements, lists of surveys, air tests and containers of explosive
dust."
Erg Noor stopped talking and listened. Even the
sensitive microphones did not register the slightest breath of wind≈the storm
was over. A scraping, rustling sound came through the ground from outside and
was echoed by the walls of the turret.
The commander raised his hand and Nisa, who
understood him without words, extinguished the light. The darkness seemed as
dense inside the turret, warmed up with infrared rays, as if it were standing
in black liquid on the bed of an ocean. Flashes of brown light showed through
the transparent hood of silicoborum. The watchers clearly saw the lights burn
up and for a second form tiny stars with dark-red or dark-green rays; they
would go out and then appear again. These little stars stretched out in lines
that wavered and bent into circles and figures of eight, and slid soundlessly
over the smooth diamond-hard surface of the hood. The people in the turret felt
a strange, acute pain in their eyes and a sharp pain along the bigger nerves of
the body as though the short rays of the brown stars were stabbing the nerve
stems like needles.
"Nisa," whispered Erg Noor,
"turn the regulator on to 'full' and switch on the light suddenly."
The turret was lit up with a bright, bluish
terrestrial light. The people were blinded by it and could see nothing, or
practically nothing. Eon and Nisa managed to see≈ or did they imagine it?≈that
the darkness on the right-hand side of the turret did not disappear immediately
but remained for a moment as a flattened condensation of gloom with tentacles
attached. The "something" instantaneously withdrew its tentacles and
sprang back into the wall of darkness that the light had pushed farther from
the turret.
"Perhaps those are phantoms?"
suggested Nisa, "phantom condensations of darkness around a charge of some
sort of energy, like our fire balls, and not a form of life at all. If
everything here is black why shouldn't the lightning be black, too?"
"That's all very poetical, Nisa,"
objected Erg Noor, "but hardly likely. In the first place the 'something'
was obviously attacking, was after our living flesh. It or its brethren
annihilated the people from Parus. If it's organized and stable, if it
can move in the desired direction, if it can accumulate and discharge some form
of energy, then, of course, there can be no question of an atmospheric phantom.
It's something created from living matter and it's trying to devour us!"
The biologist supported the commander's
conclusion.
"It seems to me that here, on this planet
of darkness, it's dark for us alone because our eyes arc not sensitive to the
infrared rays of the heat end of the spectrum; but the other end of the
spectrum, the yellow and blue rays, should affect these creatures very
strongly. Its reaction is so swift that the crew of Parus could not see anything
when they illuminated the site of the attack and if they did see anything it
was already too late and they were unable to tell anybody."
"Let's repeat the experiment, even if the
approach of that thing is unpleasant."
Nisa switched off the light and again the three
observers sat in profound darkness awaiting the approach of the denizens of the
world of darkness.
"What is it armed with? Why is its
approach felt through the hood and the spacesuit?" asked the biologist
aloud. "Is it some new form of energy?"
"There are few forms of energy and this is
most likely electromagnetic. There is no doubt that countless modifications
of this form of energy exist. This being has a weapon that affects our nervous
system. You can imagine what it would be like if those feelers were to touch
the unprotected body!"
Erg Noor flinched and Nisa Greet shuddered
inwardly as they noticed the line of brown lights rapidly approaching from
three sides.
"There isn't just one being!"
exclaimed Eon, softly. "Perhaps we ought not let them touch the
hood."
"You're right. Let each of us turn his
back on the light and look in one direction only. Nisa, switch on!"
On this occasion each of the observers
noted some details that could be combined to give a general impression of
creatures like huge flat jelly-fish, floating low over the ground with a dense
fringe waving in the air below them. Some of the feelers were short when
compared with the dimensions of the creature and could not have been more than
a yard long. The acute-angled corners of the rhomboid body each had two feelers
of much greater length. At the base of the feelers the biologist noticed huge
bladders that glowed inside and seemed to be transmitting the star-like flashes
along them.
"Hullo, observers, why are you switching
the light on and off?" came Ingrid's clear voice in the helmet telephones.
"Are you in need of help? The storm's over and we're going to begin work.
We're coming to you now."
"Stay where you are," ordered the
commander. "There is great danger abroad. Call everybody!"
Erg Noor told them about the terrible
jelly-fish. After a consultation the explorers decided to move part of a
planetary motor forward on an automatic car. An exhaust flame three hundred
metres long swept across the stony plane removing everything visible and
invisible from its path. Before half an hour had passed the crew had repaired
the broken cable and protection was restored. They realized that the anameson
fuel must be loaded before the planet's night came again; at the cost of
superhuman effort it was done and the exhausted travellers retired behind the
armour of their tightly sealed spaceship and listened calmly as it trembled in
the storm. Microphones brought the roar and rumble of the hurricane to them but
it only served to make more cosy the little world of light impregnable to the
powers of darkness.
Ingrid and Louma opened the stereoscreen. The
film had been well chosen. The blue waters of the Indian Ocean splashed at the
feet of those sitting in the ship's library. The film showed the Neptune Games,
the world-wide competition in all types of aquatic sports. In the Great Circle
Era the entire world's population had grown accustomed to water in a way that
had only been possible for the maritime peoples in earlier
days. Swimming; diving and plunging, surf-board riding and the sailing of rafts
had become universal sports. Thousands of beautiful young bodies, tanned by the
sun, ringing songs, laughter, the festive music of the finals....
Nisa leaned towards the biologist, who sat
beside her deep in thought, carried away in his mind to the far distant planet
that was his, to that dear planet where nature had been harnessed by man.
"Did you ever take part in these
competitions. Eon?" The biologist looked at her somewhat puzzled.
"What? Oh, these? No, never. I was thinking and didn't understand you at
first."
"Weren't you thinking about that?"
asked the girl, pointing to the screen. "Don't you find your appreciation
of the beauty of our world comes so much fresher to you after all this
darkness, after the storms and the jellyfish?"
"Of course I do, but that only makes me
all the more anxious to get hold of one of those jelly-fish. I was racking my
brains over that, trying to think of a way to capture one."
Nisa Greet turned away from the smiling
biologist and met Erg Noor's smile.
"Have you, too, been thinking about how to
catch that black horror?" she asked, mockingly.
"No, but I was thinking of how to explore
the disc-shaped spaceship," he said and the sly glint in the commander's
eyes almost annoyed Nisa.
"Now I understand why it is that men
engaged in wars in the old days! I used to think it was only the boastful-ness
of your sex, the so-called strong sex of that unorganized society."
"You're not quite right although you are
pretty near to understanding our old-time psychology. My ideas are simple≈the
more beautiful I find my planet, the more I get to love it, the more I want to
serve it, to plant gardens, extract metals, produce power and food, create
music, so that when I have passed on my way I shall leave behind me a little
piece of something real made by my hands and my head. The only thing I know is
the Cosmos, astronautics, and that is the only way I can serve mankind. The
goal is not the flight itself but the acquisition of fresh knowledge, the
discovery of new worlds which we shall, in time, turn into planets as beautiful
as our Earth. And what aim have you in view, Nisa? Why are you so interested in
the disc spaceship? Is it mere curiosity?"
With a great effort the girl overcame the
weight of her tired arms and stretched them out to the commander. He took her
little hands in his and stroked them gently. Nisa's cheeks flushed till they
matched the tight auburn curls on her head, new strength flowed through her
tired body. She pressed her cheek to Erg Noor's hand as she had done in the
moment of the dangerous landing and she forgave the biologist his seeming
treachery to Earth. To show that she was in agreement with both of them she
told them of an idea that had just entered her head. They could furnish one of
the water-tanks with a self-closing lid, place a piece of fresh preserved meat
(a rare luxury that they sometimes enjoyed in addition to their canned food) as
bait and, should the "black something" crawl inside and the lid
close, they could fill the tank with inert terrestrial gas through a previously
arranged tap and seal the edges of the lid.
Eon was very enthusiastic over the
resourcefulness of the auburn-headed girl. He was almost the same age as Nisa
and permitted himself the gentle familiarity that is born of school years spent
together. By the end of the nine days of the planetary night the trap,
perfected by the engineers, was ready.
Erg Noor was busy with the adjustment of a
manlike robot and he also got ready a powerful hydraulic cutting tool with
which he hoped to make his way into the spiral disc from some distant star.
The storm died down in the now familiar
darkness, the frost gave way to warmth and the day that was nine terrestrial
days long began. They had work for four terrestrial days to load the ion
charges, some other supplies and valuable instruments. In addition to these
things Erg Noor considered it necessary to take some of the personal belongings
of the lost crew so that, after a thorough disinfection, they could be taken to
Earth for the relatives of the dead people to keep in their memory. In the
Great Circle Era people did not burden themselves with many possessions so that
their transfer to Tantra offered no difficulties.
On the fifth day they switched off the current
and the biologist and two volunteers, Kay Bear and Ingrid Dietra, shut
themselves up in the observation turret at Parus. The black creatures appeared almost
immediately. The biologist had adapted an infrared screen and could follow the
movements of the jelly-fish. One of them soon approached the tank trap; it
folded up its tentacles, rolled itself up into a ball and started creeping
inside. Suddenly another black rhombus appeared at the open lid of the tank.
The one that had first arrived unfolded its tentacles and star-like flashes
came with such rapidity that they turned into a strip of vibrant dark-red light
which the screen reproduced as flashes of green lightning. The first jelly-fish
moved back and the second immediately rolled up into a ball and fell on to the
bottom of the tank. The biologist held his hand out towards the switch but Kay
Bear held it back. The first monster had also rolled up and followed the
second, so that there were two of the terrible brutes in the tank. It was
amazing that they could reduce their apparent proportions to such an extent.
The biologist pressed the switch, the lid closed and immediately five or six of
the black monsters fastened on to the zirconium covered tank. The biologist
turned on the light and asked Tantra to switch on the protection of the
road. The black phantoms, as usual, dissolved immediately except for the two
that remained imprisoned in the hermetically sealed tank.
The biologist went out to the tank, touched the
lid and got such a severe shock that he could not restrain himself and shouted
out aloud. His left arm hung limp, paralysed.
Mechanic Taron put on a high-temperature
protective spacesuit and was then able to fill the tank with pure terrestrial
nitrogen and weld the lid down. The taps were also welded and then the tank was
wrapped in a spare piece of ship's insulation and placed in the collection
room.
Success had been achieved at a high price, for
the biologist's arm remained paralysed despite the efforts of the physician.
Eon Thai was in great pain hut he did not dream of refusing to take part in the
expedition to the disc ship. Erg Noor, compelled to submit to his insatiable
thirst for exploration, could not leave him on Tantra.
The spiral-disc, a visitor from distant worlds,
turned out to be farther from Parus than they had expected. In the
diffused light of the projectors they had not judged the size of the spaceship
correctly. It was a truly gigantic structure nearly three hundred and fifty
metres in diameter. They had to take the cables from Parus in order to Stretch
their protective system as far as the disc. The mysterious spaceship hung over
the travellers like a vertical wall, stretching high over their heads and
disappearing in the speckled sky. Jet-black clouds massed around the upper edge
of the giant disc. The hull of the vessel was covered in some green substance
the colour of malachite; it was badly cracked in places and proved to be about a
metre thick. Through the cracks gleamed some bright, light-blue metal that had
turned to a dark blue in places where the malachite covering had been rubbed
off. The side of the disc facing Parus was furnished with a protuberance
that curved in a spiral fifteen metres in diameter and some ten metres thick.
The other side of the disc, the side that was lost in the pitch darkness, was
more convex, like a section of a sphere attached to a disc twenty metres thick.
On that side also there was a spiral protuberance that looked like the end of
the spiral pipe emerging from the ship.
The edge of the gigantic disc was sunk deep
into the ground. At the foot of this metal wall the explorers saw that stones
had melted and flowed away in all directions like thick pitch.
They spent many hours looking for some sort of
entrance or hatch. Either it was hidden under the malachite paint or dross or
the ship's hatches closed so neatly that no trace of them was left outside.
They could not find any orifices for optical instruments or stop-cocks for any
sort of blast. The metal disc seemed to be solid. Erg Noor had foreseen such a
possibility and had decided to open up the ship with an electro-hydraulic tool
capable of cutting through the hardest and most viscous covering of the terrestrial
spaceships. After a short discussion they all agreed that the robot should open
the tip of the spiral. There should be a hollow space there, a pipe or a
circular gangway leading round the ship, through which they hoped to get into
the ship without the risk of running into a number of bulkheads that would bar
their way.
The study of the spiral-disc would be of great
interest. Inside this visitor from distant worlds there might be instruments
and records, all the furniture and utensils of those who had brought the ship
through such expanses that, in comparison, the journeys made by terrestrial
astronauts were nothing but timid sallies into outer space.
On the far side of the disc the spiral came
right down to the ground. A floodlight and high-voltage cable were taken there
and the bluish light that was reflected from the disc was dispersed in a dull
haze spreading across the plateau as far as some high objects of indefinite
shape, probably cliffs, in which there was a gap of impenetrable blackness. Neither
the pale reflected light of the hazy stars nor the floodlights gave any feeling
of ground in that black gap; it was probably a steep slope leading down to the
lowland plain that had been seen when Tantra was landing.
With a low, dull growl, the automatic car,
loaded with the only universal robot on the ship, crawled towards the disc. The
unusual weight did not make any difference to the robot and it moved quickly to
its place beside the metal wall: it resembled a fat man on short legs, with a
long body and a huge head that leaned forward menacingly.
The robot was controlled by Erg Noor; in its
four front limbs it raised the heavy cutter and stood with its legs placed
firmly apart ready to begin its dangerous undertaking.
"Only Kay Bear and I will direct the robot
since we are wearing high-protection suits," said the commander in the
intercommunication 'phone. "All those in light biological spacesuits will
go farther away."
The commander hesitated. Something penetrated
into his mind causing inexplicable anguish and made his knees weaken under him.
The proud will of man had wilted away and given place to the dumb obedience of
an animal. Sticky with perspiration from head to foot, Erg Noor, with no will
of his own, strode towards the black gap in the darkness. A cry from Nisa that
he heard in the telephone, brought him back to his senses. He stood still, but
the power of darkness that had taken control of his psyche again drove him
forward.
Following the commander, halting and obviously
struggling with themselves, went Kay Bear and Eon Thai, who had been standing
on the fringe of the circle of light, Away out there, in the gates of darkness,
in the clouds of mist, there was a movement of weird forms beyond the
comprehension of man and, therefore, the more awe-inspiring. This was not the
now familiar jellyfish-like creature≈in the grey half-light there moved a black
cross with widely outstretched arms and a convex ellipse in the middle. Three
points of the cross had lenses on them reflecting the light of the flood lamp
that scarcely penetrated the misty, humid atmosphere. The base of the cross was
invisible in the darkness of an unilluminated depression in the ground.
Erg Noor, who was walking faster than the
others, drew near the unknown object and fell to the ground about a hundred
paces away from it. Before the stupefied onlookers could realize that it was a
life and death matter for their commander, the black cross had risen above the
ring of cables. It bent forward like the stem of a plant and clearly intended
leaning over the protective field to get Erg Noor.
Nisa, in a frenzy that lent her the strength of
an athlete, ran to the robot and started turning the control levers at the back
of its head. Slowly and somewhat uncertainly, the robot lifted the cutter. Then
the girl, afraid that she would be unable to work the intricate machine, jumped
forward and with her body covered the commander. Serpentine streams of light or
lightning came from the three points of the cross. The girl fell on Erg Noor
with her arms spread out on either side. Fortunately the robot had by this time
turned the funnel of the cutter, with its sharp instrument inside, towards the
centre of the black cross. The thing bent convulsively backwards, seemed to
fall flat on the ground and then disappeared in the impenetrable darkness under
the cliffs. Erg Noor and his two companions immediately recovered, lifted up
the girl and retired back behind the disc. The others had by this time
recovered from the shock and were wheeling out the cannon improvised from a
planetary motor. With a savage ferocity such as he had never before
experienced. Erg Noor directed the destructive radiation beam to the cliffs
with their gate-like gap, taking special care to sweep the plain without
missing a single inch. Eon Thai knelt on the ground in front of the motionless
Nisa, calling her softly in the telephone and trying to get a glimpse of her
face through the silicolloid helmet. The girl lay dead still with her eyes
closed. No sound of breathing could be heard in the telephone nor could the
biologist detect it through the spacesuit.
"The monster has killed Nisa!" cried
Eon Thai bitterly, as soon as Erg Noor approached them. It was impossible to
see the commander's eyes through the narrow slit in the high-protection helmet.
"Take her to Louma on Tantra immediately."
The metallic note resounded more strongly than ever in Erg Noor's voice.
"You, too, help her find out the nature of the injury. The six of us will
remain here and continue the investigation. The geologist can go back with you
and collect specimens of all the rocks between here and Tantra, we cannot remain on
this planet any longer. Any exploration here must be carried out in
high-protection tanks but if we go on like this we'll only ruin the whole
expedition! Take the third car and hurry!"
Erg Noor turned round and without looking back
made his way to the disc spaceship. The "cannon" was pushed forward.
The engineer-mechanic who stood behind it swept the plain with it every ten
minutes, covering a semicircle, with the disc at its centre. The robot raised
his cutter to the second outer loop of the spiral which, on the side where the
edge of the disc was deeply sunk in the ground, was level with the robot's
breast.
The loud roar that followed could be heard even
through the high-protection space helmets. Thin cracks appeared on the section
of the malachite coating that had been chosen. Pieces of that hard material
flew off and struck resoundingly against the metal body of the robot. Lateral
motions of the cutter removed a big slab of the outer layer revealing a bright
light-blue granular surface that was pleasant to the eyes even in the glare of
the floodlamp. Kay Bear marked out a square big enough to allow a man in a
spacesuit to pass and set the robot to making a deep channel in the blue metal
without cutting right through it. The robot cut a second line at an angle to
the first and then began moving the sharp end of the cutter back and forth,
increasing the pressure as it did so. When the mechanical servant cut the third
side of the square the lines he had made began to move outwards.
"Look out! Get back, everybody- lie
down!" howled Erg Noor in the microphone as he switched off the robot and
staggered back. The thick slab of metal suddenly bent outwards like the lid of
a tin can. A stream of extraordinarily bright, rainbow-coloured fire burst out
of the hole, and flew off at a tangent from the spiral protuberance. This, and
the fact that the blue metal melted and immediately closed the hold that had
been cut, saved the unfortunate explorers. Nothing remained of the mighty robot
but a mass of molten metal with two short metal legs sticking pitifully out of
it. Erg Noor and Kay Bear escaped because of the special protection suits they
were wearing. The explosion threw them far back from the peculiar spaceship; it
hurled the others back, too, overturned the "cannon" and broke the
high-voltage cables.
When the people recovered from the shock they
realized that they were defenceless. Fortunately for them they were lying in
the rays of the undamaged floodlight. Although nobody had been hurt Erg Noor
decided that they had had enough. They abandoned unnecessary tools, cables and
the floodlamp, piled on to the undamaged car and beat a hurried retreat to
their spaceship.
This fortunate outcome of an incautious attempt
to open an alien spaceship was by no means due to the foresight of the
commander. A second attempt would have ended with some serious accident... and
Nisa, the pretty astronavigator, what of her?,... Erg Noor hoped that the
spacesuit would have weakened the lethal power of the black cross. After all
the biologist had not been killed by contact with the black medusa. But out in
the Cosmos, so far from the mighty terrestrial medical institutions, would they
be able to counteract the effects of an unknown weapon?
In the air-lock Kay Bear drew near to the
commander and pointed to the rear side of his left shoulder armour. Erg Noor
turned towards the mirrors that were always provided in the locks for those who
returned from an alien planet to examine themselves. The thin sheet of
zircono-titanium of which the shoulder armour was made had been torn. A piece
of sky-blue metal stuck out of the furrow it had cut in the insulation lining
although it had not reached the inner layer of the suit. They had difficulty in
removing the metal splinter. At the cost of great risk and, in the final
analysis, by sheer chance, they had obtained a specimen of the mysterious metal
of which the spiral-disc spaceship was made and which would now be taken back
to Earth.
At last Erg Noor, divested of his heavy
spacesuit, was able to enter his ship or rather to crawl in under the influence
of the gravity of the fearful planet.
The entire expedition was relieved when he
arrived. They had watched the catastrophe at the disc through their
stereovisophones and had no need to ask what the result had been.
Veda Kong and Darr Veter were standing on the
little round flying platform as it swept slowly over the endless steppes. The
thick, flowering grasses rolled in waves under the gentle breeze. In the
distance they could see a herd of black and white cattle, the descendants of
animals bred by crossing yaks, domestic cows and buffaloes.
This unchanging lowland with its low hills and
quiet rivers in wide valleys, a part of Earth's crust once known as the
Hanty-Mansy Territory, breathed the peace of great open spaces.
Darr Veter was gazing contemplatively at the
land that had formerly been covered with the dismal swamps and sparse, stunted
woods of Yamal. It brought to mind a picture by an old master that had
impressed itself on his memory when he was still a child.
Where the river curved round a high promontory,
there stood a church, timber-built and grey with time, its lonely gaze turned
towards the wide fields and grasslands across the river. The tiny cross on the
dome was black under masses of low, black clouds. In the little graveyard
behind the church a cluster of birches and willows bowed their tousled heads to
the wind. Their low-hanging boughs almost brushed the rotting crosses, thrown
down by time and storm and overgrown with fresh damp grass. Across the river
gigantic violet-grey masses of cloud were piling up until they became tangibly
dense. The wide river gave off a cruel, steel-coloured gleam, a cold gleam that
lay on everything round about. The whole countryside, far and near, was wet in
the miserable autumn drizzle, so cold and uninviting in those northern
latitudes. The whole palette of blue-grey-green tones used in the picture told
of stretches of barren land, where it was hard for man to live, where man was
cold and hungry, where he felt so strongly the loneliness that was typical of
the long-forgotten days of human folly.
This picture, seen in a museum, had seemed to
Darr Veter to be a window looking into the past; it was kept under a plexiglass
shield, its colours ever fresh in the illumination of invisible rays.
Without a word Darr Veter looked at Veda. The
young woman put her hand on the rail around the platform. With her head bent
she stood there, deep in thought. watching the stems of the tall grass as they
bent to the wind. Wave after wave swept slowly across the feathergrass and
equally slowly the round platform floated over the steppe. Tiny hot whirlwinds
rushed suddenly on the travellers, ruffled Veda's hair and dress and breathed
heat mischievously into Darr Veter's eyes. The automatic stabilizer, however,
worked more rapidly than thoughts and the flying platform merely heaved or
swayed slightly.
Darr Veter bent over the chart frame: the strip
of map was moving quickly, showing their movement≈hadn't they flown too far
north? They had crossed the sixtieth parallel some time before, had passed the
junction of the Irtish and the Ob and were approaching the plateau known as the
North Siberian Uval or Highlands.
The two travellers had become accustomed to the
open country during their four months at the excavation of ancient grave mounds
in the hot steppes of the Altai lowlands. It was as though the explorercs of
the past had travelled hack to times when only occasional small parties of
armed horsemen crossed the southern steppes....
Veda turned and pointed ahead without a word. A
dark island, seemingly torn off from the earth, was floating in streams of heated
air. A few minutes later the platform approached a small hill, probably the
slag-heap of what had once been a mine. There was nothing left of the buildings
and the pit≈just that slag-heap overgrown with wild cherry, The round flying
platform suddenly listed.
Darr Veter, acting like an automaton, seized
Veda by the waist and jumped to the opposite, rising side of the platform. It
straightened out for a fraction of a second only to crash down flat at the foot
of the hill. The shock absorbers took the shock and the recoil threw Veda Kong
and Darr Veter out on to the hill-side where they landed in a clump of stiff
bushes. After a minute's silence the stillness of the steppe was broken by
Veda's low, contralto laugh. Darr Veter tried to picture the look of astonishment
on his own scratched face. The moment of surprised stupefaction passed and he
joined in Veda's merriment, glad that she was unharmed and that there were no
ill results from the accident.
''There's a good reason for forbidding these
platforms to fly higher than eight metres," she said with a slight gasp,
"now I understand."
"If anything goes wrong the machine drops
down in a second and you have to rely entirely on the shock absorbers. What
else can you expect, it's the price you have to pay for little weight and
compactness. I'm afraid we'll have to pay a still higher price for all the safe
flights we've had," said Darr Veter with an indifference that was slightly
exaggerated.
"In what way:'"' asked Veda,
seriously. "The faultless functioning of the stabilizing instruments
presupposes very intricate mechanisms. I'm afraid I should need a long time to
find out how they work. We'll have to get away from here in the way the poorest
of our ancestors did."
Veda, with a sly glint in her eyes, held her hand
out to Darr Veter and lie lifted her out of the Lushes with an easy movement.
They went down to the wrecked platform, put some healing salve on their
scratches and glued up the tears in their clothes. Veda lay down in the shade
of a bush and Darr Veter began to study the causes of the mishap. As lie had
suspected, something had gone wrong with the stabilizer, and it, had cut out
the engine. No sooner had Darr Veter opened the lid of the apparatus than he
realized that there could be no question of repairing it≈it would take him too
long to delve into the nature of the intricate electronics before he could even
start on it. With a sigh of annoyance he straightened his aching back and
glanced at the bush where Veda Kong had curled herself up trustfully. The hot
silent steppe, as far as the eye could see, was devoid of people. Two big birds
of prey circled over the waving blue mirage of the grass.
The obedient machine had become nothing more
than a dead disc that lay helpless on the dry earth. Darr Veter experienced a
strange feeling of loneliness, of being cut off from the whole world, something
that came from inside him where it had existed apart from his mind in the dull
memory of his body's cells.
Al the same time lie was not afraid of
anything. Let night come, the naked eye would see over greater distances and
they would certainly see a light somewhere that they could make for. They had
been flying without luggage and had not even taken a radiotelephone, torches or
food with them.
"There was a time when we could have died
in the steppes if we had not had a sufficient supply of food with us ... and
water!" thought Veter, shielding his eyes from the bright sunlight. He
noted a patch of shade under a cherry bush near Veda and stretched himself,
carefree, on the ground, the dry grass stalks pricking his body through his
light clothing. The soft rustling of the wind and the heat brought
forgetfulness, thoughts flowed drowsily, and pictures of long-forgotten days
passed slowly, one after another, through his memory, a long procession of
ancient peoples, tribes and individuals.... It was as though a gigantic river
of time were flowing out of the past, with the events, people and clothes
changing every second.
"Veter!" Through his sleepiness he
heard the voice of his beloved calling him; awakening he sat up. The red ball
of the sun was already touching the darkening horizon and not the slightest
breath of wind was to be felt in the still air.
"My Lord Veter," said Veda playfully
bowing before him in imitation of the women of ancient Asia, "would you
deem it unworthy to awaken and remember my existence?"
Darr Veter did a few physical jerks to drive
away sleep. Veda agreed with his plan to await darkness. Nightfall found them
engaged in a lively discussion of their past work. Suddenly Darr Veter noticed
that Veda was shivering. Her hands were cold and he realized that her light
clothing was not much protection against the cold nights of those high
latitudes.
The summer night on the sixtieth parallel was
quite light and they were able to gather a fairly large pile of twigs.
An electric spark discharged by the machine's
big accumulator gave Darr Veter fire and the bright flames of burning brushwood
soon made the surrounding darkness blacker as it showered its life-giving warmth
on the travellers.
Shivering Veda soon opened out again like a
flower in the sunlight and the two of them fell into a sort of almost hypnotic
reverie. Somewhere deep down in man's spirit, left over from that hundred
thousand years during which fire had been his chief asylum and his salvation,
there remained an eradicable sense of comfort and calm that came over man
sitting by a fire surrounded by cold and darkness.
"What's worrying you, Veda?" said
Darr Veter, disturbing the silence; there were signs of sorrow in the lines of
his companion's mouth.
"I was thinking of that woman, the one in
the kerchief ..." answered Veda, quietly, her eyes fixed on the burning
embers that were collapsing in a shower of gold.
Darr Veter understood her immediately. The day
before their trip on the flying platform they had completed the opening of a
big Scythian hiirgan or grave mound. Inside the well-preserved log vault
lay the skeleton of an old man, a chieftain; the vault was surrounded by the
bones of horses and slaves lying round the fringe of the mound. The old
chieftain lay with his sword, shield and armour beside him, and at his feet was
the skeleton of a quite young woman in a crouching position. Over the skull lay
a silk kerchief that had at some time been tightly wound about her face.
Despite all their efforts they had not managed to preserve the kerchief
although, before it had fallen to dust, they had succeeded in copying the
outlines of the beautiful face impressed on it thousands of years before. The
kerchief preserved another awful detail≈the imprint of eyes starting out of
their sockets; the young woman had undoubtedly been strangled and then thrown
into her husband's tomb to accompany him on his journey into the unknown world
beyond the grave. She could not have been more than nineteen, her husband no
less than seventy, a ripe old age for those days.
Darr Veter recalled the heated discussion that
had taken place between the younger members of Veda's expedition. Had the woman
married him willingly or had she been forced to it? Why? For the sake of what?
If she married him for a great and devoted love, why had she been killed
instead of being treasured as the best memorial to him in the world he was
leaving?
Then Veda Kong spoke. For a long time she had
been looking at the grave mound, tier eyes shining, trying to penetrate
mentally into the depths of the past.
"Try to understand those people. The great
expanse of the steppe was to them really boundless, with horses, camels and
oxen as the only means of transport at their disposal. These great spaces were
inhabited by little groups of nomad herdsmen that not only had nothing to unite
them but who were on the contrary, living in constant enmity with one another.
Insults and animosity accumulated from generation to generation, every stranger
was an enemy, every other tribe was legitimate prey that promised herds and
slaves, that is, people who were forced to work under the whip, like cattle....
Such a system of society brought about, on the one liand, greater liberty for
the individual in his petty passions and desires than we know and,
dialectically, on the other, excessive limitation in relations between people,
a terrible narrow-mindedness. If a nation or tribe consisted of a small number
of people capable of feeding themselves by hunting and the gathering of fruits,
even as free nomads they lived in constant fear of enslavement or anniliilation
by their militant neighbours. In cases when the country was isolated and had a
big population capable of setting up a powerful military force the people paid
for their safety from warlike raids by the loss of their liberty, since
despotism and tyranny always developed in such powerful states. This was the
case with ancient Egypt, Assyria and Babylon.
"Women,
especially if they were beautiful, were the prey and the playthings of the
strong. They could not exist without the protection of a man and were
completely in his power. If the man who owned them died, nothing was left to
them but an unknown and ruthless life at the cruel and greedy hands of another
man. Her own will and endeavours meant so little for a woman ... so terribly
little, that when she was faced with such a life ... who knows, perhaps death
may have seemed the easier way." Veda's ideas created a great impression on
the young people. The finds in the Scythian grave mound were some-tiling that
Darr Veter, too, would never forget. As though reading his thoughts Veda moved
closer and slowly stirred the burning twigs, following with her eyes the blue
tongues of flame that ran across the coals.
"What a tremendous amount of courage and
fortitude was needed to he oneself in those days, not to become degraded but to
make one's way in life," Veda Kong said softly.
"It seems to me that we exaggerate the
difficulties of life in ancient days," said Darr Veter. "Quite apart
from the fact that people were used to it, the chaotic nature of society was
the cause of a variety of incidental happenings. Man's strength and will-power
struck flashes of romantic joy out of that life in the same way as steel
strikes sparks from grey stone. I shudder more at the last stages of
development of capitalist society, towards the end of the Era of Disunity, when
the people, shut up in towns, cut off from nature, exhausted by monotonous
labour, grew weaker and more indifferent as they succumbed to widespread
diseases."
"I am also at a loss to understand why it
took our ancestors so long to understand the simple fact that the fate of
society depended on them alone, that a community is what the moral and
ideological development of all its members makes it, that it depends wholly on
the economy...."
"The perfect form of scientifically
organized society is not merely a quantitative accumulation of productive
forces but a qualitative stage in development. It's all really very
simple," answered Darr Veter. "Furthermore, there is the
understanding of dialectical interdependence, that new social relations are as
improbable without new people as are the new people without the new economy.
When this was realized it led to the greatest attention being paid to
education, to the physical and mental development of man. When was this finally
realized?"
"In the Era of Disunity, at the end of the
Fission Age, soon after the Second Great Revolution."
"It's a good thing it didn't come later!
The destructive means of war...."
Darr Veter stopped suddenly and turned towards
the open space between the fire and the hill. The thunder of heavy hoofs and
panting breath came from somewhere nearby, making the two travellers jump to their
feet.
A gigantic black bull appeared before the fire.
The flames were reflected in blood-red lights in his wicked rolling eyes. He
was snorting and pawing up the dry ground, obviously contemplating an attack.
In the feeble light he seemed of gigantic size, his lowered head was like a
granite boulder, his mighty withers rose behind it like a mountain of solid
muscle. Never before had either Veda Kong or Darr Veter been close to an animal
that possessed malicious, death-dealing strength and whose unthinking brain was
deaf to the voice of reason.
Veda pressed her hands tightly to her bosom and
stood stock still, as though hypnotized by the vision that appeared suddenly
out of the darkness. Darr Veter, obeying some powerful instinct, stood in front
of the bull to protect Veda as his ancestors had done thousands and thousands
of times before him. The hands of the man of the New Era, however, were empty.
"Veda, jump to the right," lie just
managed to say as the bull plunged at them. In their rapidity of action the
well-trained bodies of the two travellers were equal to the primeval agility of
the bull. The giant flashed past them and crashed into the thicket of bushes
and Veda and Darr found themselves in darkness a few paces from the platform.
Away from the fire the night did not seem so dark and Veda's dress could no
doubt be seen from some distance. The bull extracted itself from the wild
cherry bushes and Darr Veter heaved his companion towards the machine: with
well-performed vault she landed on the little platform. While the animal was
turning, tearing up the ground with its lioofs, Darr Veter got on to the
platform beside Veda. They exchanged hurried glances and in the eyes of his
companion Darr saw nothing but frank admiration. He had removed the cover from
the motor during the day when he had tried to find out how it worked. Mustering
every ounce of strength, he tore the cable of the balancing field from the rail
of the platform, put one end under the spring of the accumulator terminal and
pushed Veda protectively to one side. In the meantime the bull had its horn
under the rail and the machine was swaying dangerously. With a happy grin Darr
Veter pushed the end of the cable into the animal's muzzle. There was a flash
of lightning, a dull thud, and the savage beast collapsed in a heap.
"Oh! You've killed it!" exclaimed
Veda disapprovingly. "I don't think so, the ground's dry!" exclaimed
the ingenious hero with a smirk of satisfaction. As though in confirmation of
his words the bull grunted feebly, got to its feet and, without looking round,
staggered off at a trot from the scene of its disgrace. The travellers returned
to their fire and another armful of twigs gave new life to the dying embers.
"I don't feel the cold any more,"
said Veda, "let's climb the hill."
The top of the hill hid the light of the fire
from them and the pale stars of the northern summer formed balls of mist
on the horizon.
There was nothing to be seen in the west; in
the north, rows of lights, faintly discernible, flickered on the slopes of some
hills; in the south burned the bright star of a herdsmen's watch tower, also a
long way off.
"Too bad, we'll have to walk all
night," muttered Darr Veter.
"No, look over there!" Veda pointed
to the east where four lights placed in the form of a square, had flashed on
suddenly. They were only a couple of miles away. Taking note of the direction
by the stars they returned to the fire. Veda Kong stopped for a while before
the dying embers as though trying to remember something.
"Farewell to our home," she said
contemplatively. "The nomads probably had such homes as this all the time,
uncertain and short-lived. Today I have become a woman of that epoch."
She turned to Darr Veter and put her arm
trustingly round his neck.
"I felt the need for protection so
strongly! I was not afraid, it wasn't that. but there was some sort of tempting
submission to fate ... or so it seems."
Veda placed her hands behind her head and
stretched herself gracefully before the fire. A second later her dimming eyes
had again acquired their roguish sparkle.
"All right, lead the way ... hero!"
and the tone of her deep voice became gentle and filled with unfathomable
mystery.
The bright night was full of the perfumes of
grasses, the rustling of small animals and the cries of night birds. Veda and
Darr walked cautiously, afraid of falling into some unseen hole or crack in the
dry earth. The brush-headed grass stalks stealthily grazed their ankles. Darr
Veter looked around vigilantly whenever they came in sight of dark clusters of
bushes. Veda laughed softly.
"Perhaps we should have taken the
accumulator and I cable with us?"
"You're thoughtless, Veda," said Darr
Veter good-, humouredly, "more so than I thought!"
The young woman suddenly became serious. "
I felt your protection too strongly ...."
And Veda began to speak, or rather, to think
aloud, about further plans for the work of her expedition. The first stage of
the work at the grave mounds in the steppes was finished ^ and her workers had
returned to their old employments or were seeking something new. Darr Veter,
however, had not chosen another job and was free to follow the woman ' he
loved. Judging by reports that reached them Mven Mass' work was going well.
Even if he had done badly the Council would not have appointed Darr Veter again
so soon. In the Great Circle Era it was not thought advisable to keep people
too long at any one job. The most valuable possession of man, his creative
inspiration, grew weaker and he could only return to an old job after a long
break.
"Doesn't our work seem petty and
monotonous to you after six years communion with the Cosmos?"
Veda's clear and attentive glance was fixed on
him. "This isn't petty or monotonous work," he objected, "but it
certainly doesn't provide me with that tension to which I am accustomed. I need
the strain, otherwise I'll become too calm and good-natured, as though I were
being treated with blue sleep!"
"Blue sleep ..." began Veda and the
catch in her breath told Darr Veter more than the burning cheeks that he could
not sec in the dark.
"I'm going to continue my exploration
farther to the south,'' she said, interrupting herself, "but not until I
have gathered a new group of volunteer diggers. Until then I am going to take
part in the maritime excavations, I have been asked to help there."
Darr Veter understood her and his heart beat
faster with joy. A second later, however, he had hidden his feelings in a
distant corner of his heart and hurried to Veda's help.
"Do you mean the excavation of the
submarine city to the south of Sicily?" he asked. "I saw some
wonderful things from there in the Atlantis Palace."
"No, not there, we're working on the
coasts of the Eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea and India now. We are looking
for cultural treasures under the water, beginning from the Creto-Indian period
and ending with the Dark Ages."
"You mean what was hidden or, more often,
simply thrown into the sea when the islands of civilization were destroyed
under the impact of new forces, fresh, barbaric, ignorant and reckless≈that is
something I can understand," said Darr Veter thoughtfully, his eyes
carefully Studying the whitish plain. "I can also understand the great
destruction of ancient civilizations, when the states of antiquity, strong in
their bonds with nature, were unable to make changes in their world, to cope
with the growing horror of slavery and the parasitic upper strata of
society."
''And people exchanged the primitive
materialism that had led them into a blind alley for the religious darkness of
the Middle Ages," added Veda, "but what is there that you cannot
understand?"
"It's just that I have a very poor idea of
the Creto-Indian civilization."
"You don't know the latest researches.
Traces of that civilization arc now being found over a huge area from Africa,
through Crete, the southern part of Central Asia, ^Northern India to Western
China."
"I did not suspect that in those ancient
days there could have been secret treasure-houses for works of art like tliose
of Carthage, Greece and Rome."
"Come with me and you'll sec," said Veda,
softly. Darr Veter walked beside her in silence. They were ascending a long,
gentle slope and had reached the ridge when Darr Veter suddenly stopped.
"Thanks for your offer, I'll come."
Veda turned her head towards him somewhat
mistrustfully but in the half-light of the northern night her companion's eyes
were dark and impenetrable.
Once past the ridge the lights turned out to be
quite close. Lamps in polarizing hoods did not disperse the light rays and that
made them seem farther away than they really were. Such concentrated light was
a sign of night work and this was confirmed by a low roar that increased in
volume as they neared it. Huge latticed trusses shone like silver under blue
lamps high up in the air; a warning howl of sirens brought them to a standstill
as the protective robots began working.
"Danger, keep to the left, don't approach
the line of posts!" shouted the loudspeaker of an invisible amplifier.
They turned obediently towards a group of white portable houses.
"Don't look in the direction of the
field!" the robot continued warning them.
The doors of two houses opened simultaneously
and two beams of light crossed on the dark road. A group of men and women gave
the travellers a hearty welcome but were surprised at the imperfect means of transport
that had brought them there, especially at night.
The cupboard-like cabin of the shower-bath with
its streams of aromatic water saturated with gas and electricity, with the
merry play of tiny electric charges on the skin, was a place that gave gentle
pleasure. Refreshed, the travellers met at table. ''Veter, my dear, we've come
across some of our colleagues!" exclaimed Veda, freshly bathed and
extremely young, as she poured out a golden liquid.
'"The ten tonics, right now!" he
exclaimed, reaching for his glass.
"Bullfighter, you're growing savage in the
steppes," protested Veda. "I'm telling you interesting news and you
only think of eating!"
"Are there excavations here?" said
Darr Veter, doubtingly.
"There are, only they're palaeontological,
not archaeological. They're studying the fossilized animals of the Permian
period, two hundred million years old. That puts us in the shade with our petty
thousands."
"Are they studying them in the ground,
without digging them up? How's that?"
"'Yes, in the ground, although as yet I
don't know how."
One of those sitting at the table, a thin,
yellow-faced man, joined in the conversation.
"Our group is now relieving another. We
have just finished preparations and are about to start work on depth
photography."
"Hard irradiation," hazarded Darr
Veter.
"If you are not too tired I would advise
you to watch it. Tomorrow we shall be moving the whole apparatus to another
site and that will not be interesting."
Veda and Darr gladly consented. Their
hospitable hosts rose from the table and led them into a neighbouring house,
where protective clothing hung in niches with a clock-face indicator over each
of them.
"There is very great ionization from our
powerful electron tubes," said a tall, slightly round-shouldered woman
with a faint suggestion of apology as she helped Veda into a suit of
closely-woven fabric and a transparent helmet, and fastened a container with
batteries on her back. In the polarized light every hillock in the steppes
stood out with unnatural clarity. A dull groan came from a square space marked
off by thin rails. The earth heaved, cracked and opened up in a crater in the
centre of which appeared a sharp-nosed silver cylinder. Its polished walls were
encircled by a spiral ridge and the sharp end was fitted with an intricate
electric milling head of blue metal rotating as the machine appeared. The
cylinder rolled over the edge of the crater, turned over, showed blades that
moved quickly at the rear end and began digging in again a few metres away from
the crater, diving almost vertically with its polished nose into the ground.
Darr Veter noticed a double cable that the
cylinder pulled behind it, one of the cables was insulated, the other made of
some highly-polished metal. Veda jerked his sleeve and pointed in front of
them, beyond the fence of magnesium rails. A second cylinder, similar to the
first, had come out of the earth and with just the same movements had rolled
over to the left and disappeared as though it had dived into water.
The yellow-faced man made a sign to his
visitors to hurry.
"I remember now who lie is,"
whispered Veda, as they hastened to overtake the group ahead of them,
"he is Liao Lang, the palaeontologist who discovered the secret of the
settlement of the Asian continent in the Palaeozoic.''
"Is he of Chinese origin?'" asked
Darr Veter, recalling the sombre glance of the scientist's slightly slant eyes.
"I'm ashamed to admit it, hut I don't know anything about his work."
'"I see you don t know much about our
terrestrial palaeontology," Veda remarked, ''you probably know more about
that of other stellar worlds."
Before Darr's mind's eye there passed the
countless forms of life, millions of strange skeletons in the rocks of various
planets- monuments to the past hidden in the different strata of all inhabited
worlds. This was nature's memory, recorded by her until such times as a
reasoning being appeared, a being not only capable of remembering but also of
restoring that which had been forgotten.
They went on to a small platform fixed to the
end of a half-arch of lattice-work. In the centre of the floor there was a big,
unlighted screen with low benches around it on which the visitors sat and
waited.
"The 'moles' will finish soon," said
Liao Lang. "As you have probably guessed they are carrying the hare wire
through the rocks and weaving a metallic net. The skeletons of extinct animals
lie in friable sandstone at a depth of fourteen metres below the surface.
Lower, at seventeen metres, the whole field is covered by the metallic net
which is connected to powerful inductors. A field of reflection is thus created
which throws X-rays on to the. screen giving us the image of the fossilized
bones."
Two big metal globes turned on massive
pedestals. Floodlights were switched on and the howl of sirens warned everybody
of danger. Direct current at a tension of a million volts filled the air with
the fresh smell of ozone and made the terminals and insulators glow blue in the
dark.
Liao Lang was turning switches and pressing
buttons on the control panel with feigned carelessness. The big screen grew
brighter and brighter, in its depths some faint, blurred outlines appeared here
and there in the field of vision. All movement on the screen then ceased, the
fluid outlines of a big patch became clear-cut and filled almost the whole
screen.
After a few more manipulations on the control
panel the onlookers saw before them the skeleton of an unknown animal showing
through a hazy glow. The wide paws with their long claws were bent under the
body, the long tail was curled in a loop. An outstanding feature of the
skeleton was the unusual thickness of the huge bones with curved ends and
ridges to which the animal's mighty muscles had been attached. The skull with
jaws clamped tight was grinning with its front teeth. It was seen from above
and looked like a bone slab with a rough, broken surface. Liao Lang changed the
depth of focus and the degree of enlargement until the whole screen was filled
with the head of the ancient reptile that had lived two hundred million years
before on the banks of a river that had once flowed there.
The top of the skull consisted of
extraordinarily thick≈ no less than twenty centimetres≈plates of bone. There
were bony ridges over the eye-sockets and there were similar excrescences over
the temporal hollows and on the convex bones of the skull. From the back part
of the skull there rose a big cone with the opening of a tremendous parietal
eye. Liao Lang gave a loud gasp of admiration.
Darr Veter could not take his eyes off the
clumsy, heavy skeleton of the ancient beast that had been compelled to live as
a prisoner of unresolved contradictions. Increases in muscular power had led to
thicker bones that were put to great strain and the heavier weight of the
bigger bones again required a strengthening of the muscles. This direct
dependence led the evolution of archaic organisms into a complete deadlock
until some important physiological mutation resolved the old contradictions and
brought about a new evolutionary stage. It seemed unbelievable that such creatures
were amongst the ancestors of man with his beautiful body capable of great
activity and precise movements.
Darr Veter looked at the excrescences over the
brows of the Permian reptile that betrayed its stupid ferocity and compared it
with lithe, supple Veda with such bright eyes in her intelligent, lively face.
What a tremendous difference in the organization of living matter!
Involuntarily he squinted sideways, trying to get a glimpse of Veda's features
through her helmet and when his eyes returned to the screen there was something
else there. This was the wide, flat, parabolic head of an amphibian, the
ancient salamander, doomed to lie in the warm, dark waters of a Permian swamp,
waiting until something eatable came within its reach. Then, one swift leap,
one snap of the jaws and again the same eternal, patient and senseless lying in
wait. Darr Veter felt annoyed and oppressed by pictures of the endlessly long
and cruel evolution of life. He straightened up and Liao Lang, guessing his
mood, suggested that they return home to rest. It was hard for Veda, with her
insatiable curiosity, to tear herself away from her observations until she saw
that the scientists were hurrying to switch on the machines to take electron
photographs so as not to waste power.
Veda was soon ensconced on a wide divan in the
drawing-room of the women's hostel but Darr Veter remained for some little time
walking up and down the smooth terrace in front of the houses, mentally
reviewing his impressions.
The dew of the northern morning washed the
previous day's dust off the grass. The imperturbable Liao Lang returned from
his night's work and proposed sending his guests to the nearest aerodrome on an
Elf, a small accumulator-driven car. There was a base for jumping jet aircraft
a hundred kilometres to the south-east, on the lower reaches of the River
Trom-Yugan. Veda wanted to get in touch with her expedition but there was no
radio transmitter of sufficient power at the dig. Since our ancestors
discovered the harmful influence of radioactivity and introduced strict
regulation into the use of radio, directed radio communication has required
much more complicated apparatus, especially for long-distance conversations. In
addition to that the number of stations has been greatly reduced. Liao Lang
decided to get in touch with the nearest herdsmen's watch tower. These watch
towers had radio intercommunication and could also communicate directly with
the centre of their district. A young girl student who proposed driving the Elf
in order to bring it back, suggested calling in at a watch tower on the way so
that the visitors could use the televisophone for their conversation. Darr
Veter and Veda were glad of the opportunity. A strong wind blew the occasional
wisps of dust away from them and ruffled the abundant, short-cropped hair of
their driver. There was scarcely room for the three of them in the narrow car,
Darr Veter's huge body made it a tight fit for the two women. The slim
silhouette of the watch tower was visible in the distance against the clear
blue of the sky. Very soon the Elf came to a standstill at the foot of the
tower. A plastic roof was built between the straddling legs of the structure
where another Elf was garaged. The guide bars of a tiny lift led up through
this roof and took them one by one past the living quarters to the platform at
the top of the tower where they were met by an almost naked young man. The
sudden confusion displayed by their hitherto self-reliant driver gave Veda to
understand that the reason for her having been so accommodating was a
deep-rooted one.
The circular room with crystal walls swayed
noticeably and the metal structure of the tower thrummed monotonously like a
taut violin string. The floor and ceiling o£ the room were painted in
dark colours. On the narrow curved tables under the windows there were
binoculars, calculating machines and notebooks. The tower, from its height of
ninety metres, had a full view of the surrounding steppe as far as the limits
of visibility of neighbouring towers. The staff maintained constant watch over
the herds and kept records of fodder supplies. The milking labyrinths, through
which the herds of milk cows were driven twice a day, lay in the steppe in
green concentric rings. The milk which, like that of the African antelope, did
not turn sour, was poured into containers and frozen on the spot after which it
could be kept for a long time in the underground refrigerators. The herds were
driven from one pasture to another with the aid of the Elfs kept at each of the
watch towers. The observers were mostly young people who had not completed
their education and they had plenty of time to study during their tour of duty.
The young man led Veda and Darr Veter down a spiral staircase to living
quarters suspended between the supports of the tower a few yards below the
platform. The rooms were equipped with sound insulation and the travellers
found themselves in absolute silence. Only the constant swaying of the room
served to remind them that they were at a height that could be dangerous in the
event of the slightest carelessness.
Another youth was working at the radio. The
exotic hair-do and brightly coloured dress of the girl in the televisophone
screen showed that he was talking to the central station; women working in the
steppes wore short overall suits. The girl on the screen connected them with
the zonal station and soon the sad face and tiny figure of Miyiko Eigoro,
Veda's chief assistant, appeared on the screen. There was pleasurable
astonishment in her slightly slant eyes, like those of Liao Lang, and her tiny
mouth opened at the suddenness of it all. A second later, however, Veda Kong
and Darr Veter were confronted with a passionless face that expressed nothing
except businesslike attention. Darr Veter went back upstairs and found the girl
student of palaeontology engaged in a lively conversation with the first youth;
Veter went outside on to the verandah surrounding the circular room. The damp
of early morning had long since given way to a noonday heat that robbed the
colours of their freshness and levelled out irregularities in the ground. The
steppe spread far and wide, under a burning clear sky. Veter again recalled his
vague longing for the northern land of his ancestors. Leaning on the rail of
the swaying platform he could feel how the dreams of ancient peoples were
coining true, and feel it with greater strength than ever before. Stern nature
had been driven to the far north by the conquering hand of man and the
vitalizing warmth of the south had been poured over these great plains that had
formerly lain frozen under a cold, cloudy sky.
Veda Kong entered the round room and announced
that the radio operator had agreed to take them farther on their journey. The
girl with the cropped hair thanked the historian with a long glance. Through
the transparent wall they could see the broad back of Darr Veter, as he stood
there lost in contemplation.
"Perhaps you were thinking of me?" he
heard a voice say behind his back.
"No, Veda, I was thinking of one of the
postulates of ancient Indian philosophy. It was to the effect that the world is
not made for man and that man himself becomes great only when he understands
the value and beauty of another life, the life of nature."
"That idea seems incomplete and I don't
understand it.''' ''I suppose I didn't finish it. I should have added that man
alone can understand not only the beauty but also the dark and difficult sides
of life. Only man possesses the ability to dream and the strength to make life
better!"
"Now I understand,"' said Veda, softly,
and after a long pause added, "You've changed. Veter."
''Of course, I've changed. Four months of
digging with a simple spade amongst the stones and rotting logs of your kurgans is
enough to change anybody. Like it or not, you begin to look at life more simply
and its simple joys become dearer to you."
"'Don't make a joke of it, Veter, I'm
talking seriously," said Veda with a frown. "When I first knew you,
you had command over all the power of Earth, and used to speak to distant
worlds; in your observatories in those days, you might well have been the
supernatural being whom the ancients called God. And here, at our simple work,
where you are the equal of everybody else, you have ..." Veda stopped.
"What have I done?" he insisted, his
curiosity aroused. "Have I lost my majesty? What would you have said if
you'd seen me before I joined the Institute of Astrophysics? When I was an
engine driver on the Spiral Way? That is still less majestic. Or a mechanic on
the fruit-gathering machines in the tropics?" Veda laughed loudly.
"I'll disclose to you a secret of my
youth. When I was in the Third Cycle School I fell in love with an engine
driver on the Spiral Way and at that time I could not imagine anybody with
greater power ... but here comes the radio operator. Come along, Veter."
Before the pilot would allow Veda Kong and Darr
Veter to enter the cabin of the jumping jet aircraft he asked for a second time
whether the health of the passengers could stand the great acceleration of the
machine. He stuck strictly to the rules. When he was assured that it would be
safe he seated them in deep chairs in the transparent nose of an aircraft
shaped like a huge raindrop. Veda felt very uncomfortable, the seat sloped a
long way back because the nose of the aircraft was raised high above the
ground. The signal gong sounded, a powerful ' catapult hurled the plane almost
vertically into the air ; and Veda sank slowly into her chair as she would in
some viscous liquid. Darr Veter, with an effort, turned his head to give Veda a
smile of encouragement. The pilot switched on the engine. There was a roar, a
feeling of great weight in the entire body and the pear-shaped aircraft was on
its course, describing an arc at an altitude of twenty-three thousand metres.
It seemed that only a few minutes had passed when the travellers, their knees
trembling under them, got out of the plane in front of their houses in the
Altai Steppes and the pilot was waving to them to get out of the way. Darr
Veter realized that the engines would have to be started on the ground as there
was no catapult there to propel the machine. He ran as fast as he could,
pulling Veda after him. Miyiko Eigoro, running easily, came to meet them and
the two women embraced as though they had been parted for a long time.
The warm, transparent sea lay tranquil with
scarcely a movement of its amazingly bright green-blue waves. Darr Veter went
in slowly until the water reached his neck and spread his arms widely in an
effort to keep his footing on the sloping sea bed. As he looked over the
barely perceptible ripples towards the dazzling
distant expanses he again felt that he was dissolving in the sea, that he was
becoming part of that boundless element. He had brought his long suppressed sorrow
with him, to the sea≈the sorrow of his parting from the entrancing majesty of
the Cosmos, from the boundless ocean of knowledge and thought, from the
terrific concentration of every day of his life as Director of the Outer
Stations. His existence had become quite different. His growing love for Veda
Kong relieved days of unaccustomed labour and the sorrowful liberty of thought
experienced by his superbly trained brain. He had plunged into historical
investigations with the enthusiasm of a disciple. The river of time, reflected
in his thoughts, helped him withstand the change in his life. He was grateful
to Veda Kong for having, with the sympathy and understanding so typical of her,
arranged the flying platform trips to parts of the world that had been transformed
by man's efforts. His own losses seemed petty when confronted with the
magnificence of man's labour on Earth and the greatness of the sea. Darr Veter
had become reconciled to the irreparable, something that is always most
difficult for a man.
A soft, almost childish voice called to him. He
recognized Miyiko, waved his arms, lay on his back and waited for the girl. She
rushed into the sea, big drops of water fell from her stiff, black hair and her
yellowish body took on a greenish tinge under a thin coating of water. They
swam side by side towards the sun, to an isolated desert island that formed a
black mound about a thousand yards from the shore. In the Great Circle Era all
children were brought up beside the sea and were good swimmers and Darr Veter,
furthermore, possessed natural abilities. At first he swam slowly, afraid that
Miyiko would grow tired, but the girl slipped along beside him easily and
untroubled. Darr Veter increased his speed, surprised at her skill. Even when
he exerted himself to the full she did not drop behind and her pretty immobile
face remained as calm as ever. They could soon hear the dull splash of water on
the seaward side of the islet. Darr Veter turned on to his back, the girl swam
past him, described a circle and returned to him.
''Miyiko, you're a marvellous swimmer!" he
exclaimed in admiration; he filled his lungs with air and checked his
breathing.
"My swimming isn't as good as my
diving," the girl replied, and Darr Veter was again astonished.
"I am Japanese by descent," she
explained. "Long ago there was a whole tribe of our people all of whose
women were divers; they dived for pearls and gathered edible seaweed. This
trade was passed on from generation to generation and in the course of
thousands of years it developed into a wonderful art. Quite by accident it is
manifested in me today, when there is no longer a separate Japanese people,
language or country."
"I never suspected ...."
"That a distant descendant of women divers
would become an historian? In our tribe we had a legend. There was once a
Japanese artist by the name of Yanagihara Eigoro."
"Eigoro? Isn't that your name?"
"Yes, it is rare in our days, when people
are named any combination of sounds that pleases the ear. Of course, everybody
tries to find combinations from the languages of their ancestors. If I'm not
mistaken your name consists of roots from the Russian language, doesn't
it?"
"They aren't roots but whole words, Darr
meaning 'gift' and Veter meaning 'wind'."
"I don't know what my name means. But
there really ' was an artist of that name. One of my ancestors found a picture
of his in some repository. It is a big canvas, you can take a look at it in my
house, it will be interesting for an historian. A stern and courageous life is
depicted with extreme vividness, all the poverty and unpretentiousness of a
nation in the clutches of a cruel regime!
Shall we swim farther?"
"Wait a minute, Miyiko. What about the
women divers?"
"The artist fell in love with a diver and
settled amongst that tribe for the rest of his life. His daughters, too, became
divers who spent their lives at their trade in the sea. Look at that peculiar
islet over there, it's like a round tank, or a low tower, like those they make
sugar in."
"Sugar!" snorted Darr Veter,
involuntarily. "When I was a boy these desert islands fascinated me. They
stand alone, surrounded by the sea, their dark cliffs or clumps of trees hide
mysterious secrets, you could meet with everything imaginable on them, anything
you dreamed of."
Miyiko's jolly laugh was his reward. The girl,
usually so reticent and always a little sad, had now changed beyond
recognition. She sped on merrily and bravely towards the heavily breaking waves
and was still a mystery to Veter, a closed door, so different from lucid Veda
whose fearlessness was more magnificent trustfulness than real persistence.
Between the big offshore rocks the sea formed
deep galleries into which the sun penetrated to the very bottom. These
galleries, on whose bed lay dark mounds of sponges and whose walls were
festooned with seaweed, led to the dark, unfathomed depths on the eastern side
of the island. Veter was sorry that he had not taken an accurate chart of the
coastline from Veda. The rafts of the maritime expedition gleamed in the sun at
their moorings on the western spit several miles from their island. Opposite
them was an excellent beach and Veda was there now with all her party;
accumulators were being changed in the machines and the expedition had a
day-off. Veter had succumbed to the childish pleasure of exploring uninhabited
islands.
A grim andesite cliff hung over the swimmers;
there were fresh fractures where a recent earthquake had brought down the more
eroded part of the coast. There was a very steep slope on the side of the open
sea. Miyiko and Veter swam for a long time in the dark water along the eastern
side of the island before they found a flat stone ledge on to which Veter
hoisted Miyiko who then pulled him up.
The startled sea birds darted back and forth
and the crash of the waves, transmitted by the rocks, made the andesite mass
tremble. There was nothing on the islet but bare stone and a few tough bushes,
not a sign anywhere of man or beast.
The swimmers made their way to the top of the
islet, looked at the waves breaking below and returned to the coast. A bitter
aroma came from the bushes growing in the crevices. Darr Veter stretched
himself out on a warm stone, and gazed lazily into the water on the southern
side of the ledge.
Miyiko was squatting at the very edge of the
cliff trying to get a better view of something far down below. At this point
there were no coastal shallows or piled-up rocks. The steep cliff hung over
dark, oily water. The sunshine produced a glittering band along the edge of the
cliff, and down below, where the cliff diverted the sunlight vertically into
the water, the level sea bed of light-coloured sand was just visible.
'"What can you see there, Miyiko?"
The girl was deep in thought and did not turn round immediately.
"Nothing much. You're attracted to desert
islands and I to the sea bed. It seems to me that you can always find something
interesting on the sea bed, make discoveries."
"Then why are you working in the
steppes?"
"There's a reason for it. The sea gives me
so much pleasure that I cannot stay with it all the time. You cannot always be
listening to your favourite music and it is the same with me and the sea. Being
away for a time makes every meeting with the sea more precious."
Darr Veter nodded his agreement.
"Shall we dive down there?" he asked,
pointing to a gleam of white in the depths. In her astonishment Miyiko raised
brows that already had a natural slant.
"D'you think you can? It must be about
twenty-five metres deep there, it takes an experienced diver."
"I'll try. And you?"
Instead of answering him Miyiko got up, looked
round until she found a suitable big stone which she took to the edge of the
cliff.
"Let me try first. I'll go down with a
stone although it's against my rules, but the floor is very clean, I'm afraid
there may be a current lower down,"
The girl raised her arms, bent forward,
straightened up and then bent backwards. Darr Veter watched her at her
breathing exercises, trying to memorize them. Miyiko did not say another word
but, after a few more exercises, seized hold of the stone and dived into the
dark water.
Darr Veter felt a vague anxiety when more than
a minute passed and the bold girl did not reappear. He, too, began looking for
a stone, assuming that he would need one much bigger. He had just taken hold of
an eighty-pound lump of andesite when Miyiko came to the surface. The girl was
breathing heavily and seemed fatigued. "There," she gasped,
"there's a horse." "What? What horse?"
''A huge statue of a horse, down there, in a
natural niche. I'm going back to take a proper look."
''Miyiko, it's too difficult for you. Let's
swim bade to the beach and get diving gear and a boat."
''Oh, no. I want to look at it myself, now!
Then it will be my own achievement, not something done by a machine. We'll call
the others afterwards."
"All right, I'm coining with you!"
Darr Veter seized his big stone and the girl laughed.
"Take a smaller one, that one will do. And
what about your breathing?"
Darr Veter obediently performed the necessary
exercises and then dived into the water with the stone in his hands. The water
struck him in the face and turned him with his back to Miyiko; something was
squeezing his chest and there was a dull pain in his ears. He clenched his
teeth, strained every muscle in his body to fight against pain. The pleasant
light of day was rapidly lost as he entered the cold grey gloom of the depths.
The cold, hostile power of the deep water momentarily overpowered him, his head
was in a whirl, there was a stinging pain in his eyes. Suddenly Miyiko's firm
hand seized him by the shoulder and his feet touched the firm, dully silver
sand. With difficulty he turned his head in the direction she indicated; he
staggered, dropped the stone in his surprise and shot immediately upwards. He
did not remember how he got to the surface, he could see nothing but a red mist
and his breathing was spasmodic. In a short time the effects of the high
pressure wore off and that which he had seen was reborn in his memory. He had
seen the picture for an instant only but his eye had seen and his brain recorded
many details.
The dark cliffs formed a lofty lancet arch
under which stood the gigantic statue of a horse. Neither seaweed nor barnacles
marred the polished surface of the carving.
The unknown sculptor had endeavoured mainly to
depict strength. The fore part of the body was exaggerated, the tremendous
chest given abnormal width and the neck sharply curved. The near foreleg was
raised so that the rounded knee-cap was thrust straight at the viewer while the
massive hoof almost touched the breast. The other three legs were strained in
an effort to lift the animal from the ground giving the impression that the
giant horse was hanging over the viewer to crush him with its fabulous
strength. The mane on the arched neck was depicted as a toothed ridge, the jowl
almost touched the breast and there was ominous malice in eyes that looked out
from under the lowered brow and in the stone monster's pressed-back ears.
Miyiko was soon satisfied that Darr Veter was
unharmed, left him stretched out on a flat stone slab and dived once again into
the water. At last the girl had worn herself out with her deep diving and had
seen enough of her treasure. She sat down beside Veter and did not speak until
her breathing had again become normal.
"I wonder how old that statue can be?"
Miyiko asked herself thoughtfully.
Darr Veter shrugged his shoulders and then
suddenly remembered the most astonishing thing about the horse.
'"Why is there no seaweed or barnacles on
the statue?"
Miyiko turned swiftly towards him.
"Oh, I've seen such things before. They
were covered with some special lacquer that does not permit living things to
attach themselves to it. That means that the statue must belong approximately
to the Fission Age."
A swimmer appeared in the sea between the shore
and the island. As he drew near he half rose out of the water and waved to
them. Darr Veter recognized the broad shoulders and gleaming dark skin of Mven
Mass. The tall black figure was soon ensconced on the stones and a good-natured
smile spread over the face of the new Director of the Outer Stations. He bowed
swiftly to little Miyiko and with an expansive gesture greeted Darr Veter.
"Renn Bose and I have come here for one
day to ask your advice."
"Who is Renn Bose?"
"A physicist from the Academy of the
Bounds of Knowledge."
"I think I've heard of him, he works on
space-field relationship problems, doesn't he? Where did you leave him?"
'"On shore. He doesn't swim, not as well
as you, anyway."
A faint splash interrupted Mven Mass. "I'm
going to the beach, to Veda," Miyiko called out to them from the water.
Darr Veter smiled tenderly at the girl.
"She's going back with a discovery,"
he explained to Mven Mass and told him about the finding of the submarine
horse. The African listened but showed no interest. His long fingers were
fidgeting and fumbling at his chin. In the gaze he fixed on Darr Veter the
latter read anxiety and hope.
"Is there anything serious worrying you?
If so, why put it off?"
Mven Mass was not loath to accept the
invitation. Seated on the edge of a cliff over the watery depths that bid the
mysterious horse he spoke of his vexatious waverings. His meeting with Renn
Bose had been no accident. The vision of the beautiful world known as Epsilon
Tucanae had never left him. Ever since that night he had dreamed of approaching
this wonderful world, of overcoming, in some way, the great space separating
him from it, of doing something so that the time required to send a message
there and receive an answer would not be six hundred years, a period much
greater than a man's lifetime. He dreamed of experiencing at first hand the
heartbeat of that wonderful life that was so much like our own, of stretching
out his hand across the gulf of the Cosmos to our brothers in space. Mven Mass
concentrated his efforts on putting himself abreast of unsolved problems and
unfinished experiments that had been going on for thousands of years for the
purpose of understanding space I as a function of matter. He thought of the
problem Veda Kong had dreamed of on the night of her first broadcast to the
Great Circle.
In the Academy of the Bounds of Knowledge Renn
Bose, a young specialist in mathematical physics, was in charge of these
researches. His meeting with Mven Mass and their subsequent friendship was
determined by a similarity of endeavour.
Renn Bose was by that time of the opinion that
the problem had been advanced sufficiently to permit of an experiment, but it
was one that could not be done at laboratory level, like everything else Cosmic
in scale. The colossal nature of the problem made a colossal experiment
necessary. Renn Bose had come to the conclusion that the experiment should be
carried out through the outer stations with the employment of all terrestrial
power resources, including the Q-energy station in the Antarctic.
A sense of danger came to Darr Veter when he
looked into Mven's burning eyes and at his quivering nostrils.
"Do you want to know what I should
do?" He asked this decisive question calmly.
Mven Mass nodded and passed his tongue over his
dry lips.
"I should not make the experiment,"
said Darr Veter, carefully stressing every word and paying no attention to the
grimace of pain that flashed across the African's face so swiftly that a less
observant man would not have noticed it.
"That's what I expected!" Mven Mass
burst out. "Then why did you consider my advice to have any
importance?"
"I thought we should be able to convince
you." "All right, then, try! We'll swim back to the others.
They're probably getting diving apparatus ready
to examine the horse!"
Veda was singing and two other women's voices
were accompanying her.
When she noticed the swimmers she beckoned to
them, motioning with the fingers of her open hand like a child. The singing
stopped. Darr Veter recognized one of the women as Evda Nahl, although this was
the first time he had seen her without her white doctor's smock. Her tall,
pliant figure stood out amongst the others on account of her white, still
untanned skin. The famous woman psychiatrist had apparently been busy and had
not had time for sunbathing. Evda's blue-black hair, divided into two by a dead
straight parting, was drawn up high above her temples. High cheek-bones over
slightly hollow cheeks served to stress the length of her piercing black eyes.
Her face bore an elusive resemblance to an ancient Egyptian sphinx, the one
that in very ancient days stood at the desert's edge beside the pyramid tombs
of the kings of the world's oldest state. The deserts have been irrigated for
many centuries, the sands are dotted with groves of rustling fruit-trees and
the sphinx itself still stands there under a transparent plastic shade that
does not hide the hollows of its time-eaten face.
Darr Veter recalled that Evda Nahl's genealogy
went back to the ancient Peruvians or Chileans. He greeted her in the manner of
the ancient sun worshippers of South America.
"It has done you good to work with the
historians," said Evda, "thank Veda for that." Darr Veter
hurriedly turned to his friend Veda, but she took him by the hand and led him
to a woman with whom he was not acquainted.
"This is Chara Nandi! All of us here are
guests of hera and Cart Sann's, the artist, you know they have been living on
this coast for a month already. They have a portable studio at the other end of
the bay."
Darr Veter held out his hand to the young woman
who looked at him with huge blue eyes. For a moment his breath was taken away,
there was something about the woman that distinguished her from all others,
something that was not mere beauty. She was standing between Veda Kong and Evda
Nahl whose natural beauty was refined, as it were, by exceptional intellect and
the discipline of lengthy research work but which nevertheless faded before the
extraordinary power of the beautiful that emanated from this woman who was a
stranger to him.
"Your name has some sort of resemblance to
mine," began Darr Veter.
The corners of her tiny mouth quivered as she
suppressed a smile.
"Just as you yourself are like me!"
Darr Veter looked over the top of the mass of
thick, slightly wavy black hair that came level with his shoulder and smiled
expansively at Veda.
"Veter, you don't know how to pay
compliments to the ladies," said Veda, coyly holding her head on one side.
"Does one have to know that deception is
no longer needed?"
"One does," Evda Nahl put in,
"and the need for it will never die out!"
"I'd be glad if you'd explain what you
mean," said Darr Veter, knitting his brows.
"In a month from now I shall be giving the
autumn lecture at the Academy of Sorrow and Joy, and it will contain a lot
about spontaneous emotions, but in the meantime..." Evda nodded to Mven
Mass who was approaching them.
The African, as usual, was walking noiselessly
and with measured tread. Darr Veter noticed that the tan on Chara's cheeks
became tinged with pink as though the sun that had permeated her body were
bursting out through her tanned skin. Mven Mass bowed indifferently.
"I'll bring Renn Bose here, he's sitting
over there on a rock."
"We'll all go to him," suggested
Veda, "and on the way we'll meet Miyiko. She's gone for the diving apparatus.
Chara Nandi, are you coming with us?"
The girl shook her head.
"Here comes my master. The sun has gone
down and work will soon begin."
"Posing must be hard work," said
Veda, "it's a real deed of valour! I couldn't."
"I thought I couldn't do it, either. But if the artist's
idea attracts you, you enter into the creative work. You seek an incarnation of
the image in your own body, there are thousands of shades in every movement, in
every curve! You have to catch them like musical notes before they fly
away."
"Chara, you're a real find for an
artist!"
"A find!" A deep bass voice
interrupted Veda. "And if you only knew how I found her! It's
unbelievable!"
Artist Cart Sann raised a big fist high in the
air and shook it. His straw-coloured hair was tousled by the wind, his
weather-beaten face was brick-red and his strong hairy legs sank into the sand
a though they were growing there.
"Come along with us, if you have
time," asked Veda, ''and tell us the story."
'"I'm not much of a story-teller. But
still, it's an amusing tale. I'm interested in reconstructions, especially in
the reconstruction of various racial types such as existed in ancient days,
right up to the Era of Disunity. After my picture Daughter of Gondwana met
with such success I was burning with ambition to reincarnate another racial
type. The beauty of the human body is the best expression of race after
generations of clean, healthy life. Every race tin the past had its detailed
formulas, its canons of beauty I that had been evolved in days of savagery.
That is the way we, the artists, understand it, we who are considered to be
lagging behind in the storm of the heights of culture. Artists always did think
that way, probably from the days of the palaeolithic cave painter. But I'm
getting off the track.... I had planned another picture, Daughter of Thetis, of the
Mediterranean, that is. It struck me that the myths of ancient Greece, Crete,
Mesopotamia, America, Polynesia, all told of gods coming out of the sea. What
could be more wonderful than the Hellenic myth of Aphrodite, the goddess of
love and beauty. The very name, Aphrodite Anadiomene, the Foam-Born, she who
rose from the sea.... A goddess, born of foam and conceived by the light of the
stars in the nocturnal sea≈what people ever invented a legend more
poetic...."
"From starlight and sea-foam," Veda
heard Chara whisper. She cast a side glance at the girl. Her strong profile,
like a carving from wood or stone, was like that of some woman of an ancient
race. The small, straight, slightly rounded nose, her somewhat sloping
forehead, her strong chin and, most important of all, the great distance from
the nose to the high ear≈all these features typical of the Mediterranean
peoples at the time of antiquity were reflected in Chara's face.
Unobtrusively Veda examined her from head to
foot and thought that everything in her was just a little "too much."
Her skin was too smooth, her waist too narrow, her hips too wide. And she held
herself too straight so that her firm bosom became too prominent. Perhaps that
was what the artist wanted, strongly defined lines?
A stone ridge crossed their path and Veda had
to correct the impression she had only just received: Chara Nandi jumped from
boulder to boulder with an unusual agility, as though she were dancing.
"She must have Indian blood in her,"
decided Veda. "I'll ask her later on."
"My work on the Daughter of Thetis,"
the artist continued, "brought me closer to the sea, I had to get a
feeling for the sea since my Maid of Crete, like Aphrodite, would arise from the
waves and in such a manner that everybody would understand it. When I was
preparing to paint the Daughter of Gondwana I spent three years
at a forestry station in Equatorial Africa. When that picture was finished I
took a job as mechanic on a hydroplane carrying mail around the Atlantic≈you
know, to all those fisheries and albumin and salt works afloat on big metal
rafts in the ocean.
"One evening I was driving along in the
Central Atlantic somewhere to the west of the Azores where the northern current
and the counter-current meet. There are always big waves there, rollers that
come one after another. My hydroplane rose and fell, one moment almost touching
the low clouds and next minute diving deep into the trough between the rollers.
The screw raced as it came out of the water. I was standing on the high bridge
beside the helmsman. And suddenly ... I'll never forget it!
"Imagine a wave higher than any of the
others that raced towards us. On the crest of this giant wave, right under the
low ceiling of rosy-pearl clouds stood a girl, sunburned to the colour of
bronze. The wave rolled noiselessly on and she rode it, infinitely proud in her
isolation in the midst of that boundless ocean. My boat was swept upwards and
we passed the girl who waved us a friendly greeting. Then I could see that she
was standing on a surf board fitted with an electric motor and
accumulator."
"I know the sort," agreed Darr Veter,
"it's intended for riding the waves."
"What amazed me most of all was her
complete solitude ≈there was nothing but low clouds, an ocean empty for
hundreds of miles around, the evening twilight and the girl carried along on
the crest of a giant wave. That girl...."
"Was Chara Nandi," said Evda Nahl.
"That's obvious, but where did she come from?"
"She was not born of starlight and
foam!" chuckled Chara, and her laughter had a surprisingly high, resonant
note to it, "merely from the raft of an albumin factory. We were moored on
the fringe of the Sargasso Sea where we were cultivating Chlorella 16
and where I was working as a biologist."
"Be that as it may," said Cart Sann,
"but from that moment for me you were a daughter of the Mediterranean,
born of foam. You were fated to be the model for my future picture. I had been
waiting a whole year."
"May we come and look at it?" asked
Veda Kong.
"Please do, but not during working hours.
You had better come in the evening. I work very slowly and cannot tolerate
anybody's presence when I am painting."
"Do you use colours?"
"Our work has changed very little during
the thousands of years that people have painted pictures. The laws of optics
and the human eye have remained the same. We have become more receptive to
certain tones, new chromokatoptric colours 17 with internal
reflexions contained in the paint layer have been invented, there are a few new
methods of harmonizing colours, that's all; on the whole the artist of
antiquity worked in very much the same way as I do today. In some respects he
did better. He had confidence and patience≈we've become more dashing and less
confident of ourselves. At times strict nalvete is better for art. But I'm
digressing again! It's time for us to go. Come along, Chara!"
They all stood still and watched the artist and
his model as they walked away.
"Now I know who he is," murmured
Veda, "I've seen the Daughter of Gondwana."
"So have I," said Evda Nahl and Mven
Mass together.
"Gondwana, is that from the land of the
Gonds in India?" asked Darr Veter.
"No, it is the collective name for the
southern continents. In general it is the land of the ancient black race."
"And what is this Daughter of the Black
People like?"
"It is a simple picture. There is a
plateau, the fire of blinding sunlight, the fringe of a formidable tropical
forest and in the foreground, a black-skinned girl, walking alone. One half of
her face and her firm, tangibly hard, cast-metal body is drenched with blazing
sunlight, the other half of her is in deep, transparent half-shadow. A necklace
of white animal's teeth hangs from her neck, her short hair is gathered at the
crown of her head and covered with a wreath of fiery red blossoms. Her right
arm is raised over her head to push aside the last branches of a tree that bar
her way, with her left hand she is pushing a thorny stalk away from her knee.
In the halted movement, in the free breathing, and in the strong sweep of the
arm there is carefree youth, young life merging with nature into a single whole
that is as change able as a river in flood.... This oneness is to be understood
as knowledge, the intuitive understanding of the world. In her dark eyes,
gazing over a sea of bluish grass towards the faintly visible outlines of
mountains, there is a clearly felt uneasiness, the expectation of great trials
in the new, freshly discovered world!" Evda Nahl stopped.
"It isn't exactly expectation, it is
tormenting certainty. She feels the hard lot of the black people and tries to
comprehend it," added Veda Kong. "But how did Cart Sann manage to
convey the idea? Perhaps it is in the raising of the thin eyebrows, the neck
inclined slightly forward, the open, defenceless back of her head.... And those
amazing eyes, filled with the dark wisdom of ancient nature.... The strangest
thing of all is that you feel, at the same time, carefree, dancing strength and
alarming knowledge."
"It's a pity I haven't seen it," said
Darr Veter. "I must go to the Palace of History and take a look at it. I
can imagine the colours but I can't imagine the girl's pose."
"The pose?" Evda Nahl stopped, threw
the towel from her shoulders, raised her right arm high over her head, leaned
slightly backward and turned half facing Darr Veter. Her long leg was slightly
raised as though making a short step and not completing it, her toes just
touching the ground. Her supple body seemed to blossom forth. They all stood
still in frank admiration.
"Evda, I could never have imagined you
like that!" exclaimed Darr Veter, "you're dangerous. You're like the
half exposed blade of a dagger!"
"Veter, those clumsy compliments
again," laughed Veda, "why half and not fully exposed?"
"He's quite right," smiled Evda Nahl,
relaxing to her normal self, "not fully. Our new acquaintance, Chara
Nandi, is a fully drawn and gleaming blade, to use the epic language of Darr
Veter."
"I can't believe that anybody can compare
with you!" came a hoarse voice from amongst the boulders. Only then did
Evda Nahl notice the red hair cut ere brosee and the blue eyes that were gazing
at her adoringly with a look such as she had never before seen on anybody's
face.
"I am Renn Bose!" said the red-headed
man, bashfully, as his short, narrow-shouldered figure appeared from behind a
boulder.
"We were looking for you," said Veda,
taking the physicist by the hand, "this is Darr Veter."
Renn Bose blushed and the freckles on his face
and neck stood out even more prominently than before.
"I stayed up there for some time,"
said Renn Bose, pointing to a rocky slope. "There is an ancient tomb
there."
"It is the grave of a famous poet who
lived a very long time ago," announced Veda.
"There's an inscription on the tomb, here
it is." The physicist unrolled a thin metal sheet with four rows of blue
symbols on it.
"Those are European letters, symbols that
were in use before the world linear alphabet was introduced. They had clumsy
shapes that were inherited from the still older pictograms. But I know that
language."
"Then read
it, Veda!"
"Be quiet for a few minutes!" she
demanded and they all obediently sat down on the rocks. Very soon Veda stood
before the seated people and read her improvised translation:
Thoughts and events and our dreams are all fleeting,
Vanquished by time like a ship lost at sea...
Leaving this world on my journey of journeys,
Earth's dearest obsession I'm talting with me...
"That's exquisite!" Evda Nahl rose to
her knees. "A modern poet couldn't have said anything better about the
power of time. I should like to know which of Earth's obsessions he thought the
best and took with him in his last thoughts."
"He no doubt thought of a beautiful
woman," said Renn Bose, impetuously gazing at Evda Nahl. Or did she imagine
it?
A boat of transparent plastic containing two
people appeared in the distance.
"Here comes Miyiko with Sherliss, one of
our mechanics, he goes everywhere with her. Oh, no," Veda corrected
herself, "it's Frith Don himself, the Director of the Maritime Expedition.
Good-bye, Veter, you three will want to stay together so I'll take Evda with
me!"
The two women ran down to the gentle waves and
swam together to the island. The boat turned towards them but Veda waved to
them to go on. Renn Bose, standing motionless, watched the swimmers.
"Wake up, Renn, let's get down to
business!" Mven Mass called to him. The physicist smiled in shy confusion.
A stretch of firm sand between two ridges of
rock was turned into a scientific auditorium. Renn Bose, using fragments of
seashells, drew and wrote in the sand, in his excitement he fell flat, his body
rubbing out what he had written and drawn so that he had to draw it all again.
Mven Mass expressed his agreement or encouraged the physicist with abrupt
exclamations. Darr Veter, resting his elbows on his knees, wiped away the
perspiration that broke out on his forehead from the effort he was making to
understand. At last the red-headed physicist stopped talking, and sat back on
the sand breathing heavily.
"Yes, Renn Bose," said Darr Veter
after a lengthy pause, "you have made a discovery of outstanding
importance."
"I did not do it alone. The ancient
mathematician Heisenberg propounded the principle of indefiniteness, the
impossibility of accurately defining the position of tiny particles. The
impossible has become possible now that we understand mutual transitions, that
is, we know the repagular calculus.18 At about the same time
scientists discovered the circular meson cloud in the atomic nucleus, that is,
they came very near to an understanding of anti-gravitation."
"We'll accept that as true. I'm not a
specialist in bipolar mathematics," particularly the repagular calculus
which studies the obstacles to transition. But I realize that your work with
the shadow functions is new in principle, although we ordinary people cannot
properly understand it unless we have mathematical clairvoyance. I can,
however, conceive of the tremendous significance of the discovery. There is one
thing ..." Darr Veter hesitated.
"What, what is there?" asked Mven
Mass, anxiously.
"How can we do it experimentally? I don't
think we can create a sufficiently powerful electromagnetic field...."
"To balance the gravitational field and
obtain a state of transition?" inquired Renn Bose.
"Exactly. Beyond the limits of the system,
space will remain outside our influence."
"That's true, but, as always in
dialectics, we must look for a solution in the opposite. Suppose we obtain an
anti-gravitational shadow vectorally and not discretely."
"Ah! But how?"
Swiftly, Renn Bose drew three straight lines
and a narrow sector with an arc of greater radius intersecting them.
"This was known before bipolar
mathematics. Two thousand and five hundred years ago it was called the Problem
of the Fourth Dimension. In those times there was a widespread conception of
multidimensional space; the shadow properties of gravitation, however, were
unknown and people attempted to find an analogy with electromagnetic fields
which led them to believe that points of singularity meant that matter had
disappeared or had been changed into something that could be named but could
not be explained. How could they have had any conception of space with their
limited knowledge of the nature of phenomena? But our ancestors could guess≈
you sec, they realized that if the distance from, say, star A to the centre of
Earth along line OA is twenty quintillion kilometres, then the distance to the
same star by vector OB will equal zero ... in practice, not zero but
approaching it. They said that zero time would be achieved if the velocity of
motion were equal to the velocity of light. Remember that the cochlear calculus2"
has been only recently discovered!"
"Spiral motion was known thousands of
years ago," Mven Mass remarked cautiously, interrupting the scientist.
Renn Bose dismissed the remark disdainfully.
"They knew the motion but not the laws!
It's like this, if the gravitational field and the electromagnetic field are
two sides of one and the same property of matter and if space is a function of
gravitation, then the function of the electromagnetic field is antispace. The
transition from one to the other yields the vector shadow function, zero space,
which is known in everyday language as the speed of light. I believe it to be
possible to achieve zero space in any direction. Mven Mass wants to visit the
planet of Epsilon Tucanae≈it's all the same to me as long as I can set up the
experiment! As long as I can set up the experiment!" repeated the
physicist, lowering his short white eyelashes wearily.
"You will need not only the outer stations
and Earth's energy, as Mven Mass pointed out, but some sort of an installation
as well. Such an installation cannot be simple or easily erected."
"In that respect we're lucky. We can use
Corr Yule's installation near the Tibetan Observatory. Experiments for the
investigation of space were carried out there a hundred and seventy years ago.
There will have to be some adjustments and, as far as volunteers to help me are
concerned, I can get five, ten, twenty thousand any time I like. I have only to
call for them and they will take leave of absence and come."
"You seem to have thought of everything.
There is only one other consideration, but it is the most important≈ the danger
of the experiment. There may be the most unexpected results; in conformity with
the law of big numbers we cannot make a preliminary attempt on a small scale.
We must take the extraterrestrial scale from the start."
"What scientist would be afraid of
risk?" asked Renn Bose, shrugging his shoulders.
"I wasn't thinking of personal risk! I
know that there will be thousands of volunteers as soon as they are required
for some dangerous and novel enterprise. The experiment will also involve the
outer stations, the observatories, the whole system of installations that has
cost mankind a tremendous amount of labour. These are installations that have
opened a window into the Cosmos, that have put mankind in contact with the
life, knowledge and creative activity of other populated worlds. This window is
mankind's greatest achievement: do you think that you, or I, or any other
individual or group of individuals has the right to take the risk of closing
it, even for a short time? I would like to know whether you feel that you have
that right and on what grounds?"
"I have and on good grounds," said
Mven Mass, rising to his feet. "You have been at archaeological
excavations ≈do not the billions of unknown skeletons in unknown graves appeal
to us? Do they not reproach us and make demands of us? I visualize billions of
human lives that have passed, lives in which youth, beauty and the joy of life
slipped away like sand through one's fingers≈they demand that we lay bare the
great mystery of time, that we struggle against it! Victory over space is
victory over time, that is why I'm sure that I'm right, that's why I believe in
the greatness of the proposed experiment!"
"My feelings are different," said
Renn Bose. "But they form the other side of the same thing. Space still
cannot be overcome in the Cosmos, it keeps the worlds apart and prevents us
from discovering planets with populations similar to ours, prevents us from
joining them in one family that would be infinitely rich in its joy and
strength. This would be the greatest transformation since the Era of World
Unity, since the days when mankind finally put an end to the separate existence
of the nations and merged into one, in this way making the greatest progress
towards a new stage in the conquest of nature. Every new step in this direction
is more important than anything else, more important than any other
investigations or knowledge."
Renn Bose had scarcely finished when Mven Mass
spoke again.
"There is one other thing, a personal one.
In my youth I had a collection of old historical novels. There was one story
about your ancestors, Darr Veter. Some great conqueror, some fierce destroyer
of human life of whom there were so many in the epochs of the lower forms of
society, launched an attack against them. The story was about a strong youth
who was madly in love. His girl was captured and taken away≈'driven
off"" was the word used in those days. Can you imagine it? Men and
women were bound and driven off to the country of the conqueror like cattle.
The youth was separated from his beloved by thousands of miles. The geography
of Earth was unknown, riding and pack animals were the only means of transport.
The world of those days was more mysterious and vast, more dangerous and
difficult to cross than Cosmic space is for us today. The young hero hunted for
his dream, for years he wandered terribly dangerous paths until he found her in
the depths of the Asian mountains. It is difficult to define the impression I
had when I was younger, but it still seems to me that I, too, could go through
all the obstacles of the Cosmos to the one I loved!"
Darr Veter smiled wanly.
"I can understand your feelings but I
cannot get clear for myself what logical grounds there are for comparing a
Russian story to your urge to get into the Cosmos. I understand Renn Bose
better. Of course, you warned us that this was personal...."
Darr Veter stopped. He sat silent so long that
Mven Mass began to fidget.
"Now I understand why it was that people
used to smoke, drink, bolster themselves up with drugs at moments of
uncertainty, anxiety or loneliness. At this moment I feel just as alone and
uncertain≈I don't know what to say to you. Who am I to forbid a great
experiment? But then, how can I permit it? You must turn to the Council,
then...."
"No, that won't do." Mven Mass stood
up and his huge body was tensed as though he were in mortal danger.
"Answer us: would you make the experiment? As Director of the Outer
Stations, not as Renn Bose, he is different...."
'No!" answered Darr Veter, firmly. "I
should wait."
"What for?"
"The erection of an experimental installation
on the Moon;
"And power for it?"
"The lesser gravity of the Moon and the
smaller scale of the experiment will make only a few Q-stations
necessary."
"But that would take hundreds of years and
I should never see it!"
"You wouldn't, but as far as the human
race is concerned it doesn't matter whether it's now or a generation
later."
"But it's the end for me, the end of my
dream! And for Renn...."
"To me it means that it's impossible to
check up my work experimentally and make corrections≈it means I cannot
continue!"
"One mind is not enough. Ask the
Council."
''Your ideas and your words are the Council's
decision given in advance. We have nothing to expect from them," said Mven
Mass softly.
"You're right. The Council will
refuse."
"I shan't ask you anything else. I feel
guilty, Renn and I have put the heavy burden of decision upon you."
"That is my duty as one older in
experience. It is not your fault that the task seems magnificent and extremely
dangerous. That is what upsets me so much, makes it hard to bear."
Renn Bose was the first to suggest returning to
the temporary dwellings of the expedition. The three downcast men plodded
through the sand, each in his own way feeling the bitter sorrow of having to
reject an experiment such as had never before been tried. Darr Veter cast
occasional side glances at his companions and felt that it was harder for him
than for them. There was a bold recklessness in his nature that he had had to
fight against all his life. It made him something like an old-time brigand≈why
had he felt such joy and satisfaction in his mischievous battle with the bull?
In his heart he was indignant, he was full of protest against a decision that
was wise but not bold.
Dr. Louma Lasvy and Eon Thai, the biologist,
dragged their heavy weight slowly towards him from the ship's sick bay. Erg
Noor went to meet them.
"Nisa?" "Alive, but...."
"Dying?"
"Not yet. She is totally paralysed. Her
respiration is extraordinarily low. Her heart is functioning≈one beat in a
hundred seconds. It is not death but it is absolute collapse which may last a
long, an indefinitely long time."
"Is there any possibility that she may
regain consciousness and suffer?" "None whatever."
"Are you sure?" The look in the
commander's eyes was sharp and insistent, but the doctor was not at all put
out. "Absolutely sure!"
Erg Noor looked inquiringly at the biologist.
He nodded his affirmation.
"What do you intend to do?"
"Keep her in an even temperature, absolute
repose and weak light. If the collapse does not progress... what does it matter
... let her sleep till we reach Earth. Then she can go to the Institute of
Nerve Currents. The injury is due to some form of current, her spacesuit was
holed in three places. It is a good thing that she was scarcely
breathing!"
"I noticed the holes and sealed them with
my plaster," said the biologist.
In silent gratitude Erg Noor squeezed his arm
above the elbow.
"Only ..." began Louma, "we'd
better get her away from high gravitation as quickly as we can ... and ... at
the same time there's danger, not so much in the acceleration of the take-off
as in the return to normal gravitation."
"I see, you're afraid the pulse will get
even slower. But the heart is not a pendulum that accelerates its oscillations
in a field of high gravitation, is it?"
"The rhythm of impulses in the organism,
in general, follows the same laws. If the heartbeats slow down to, say, one in
two hundred seconds, then the brain will not get a sufficient supply of blood,
and...."
Erg Noor fell into such deep thought that he
forgot that he was not alone: he suddenly came to himself and sighed deeply.
His companions waited patiently.
"Would it not be a way out if the organism
were to be submitted to higher pressures in an atmosphere enriched with
oxygen?" asked the commander cautiously, and by the satisfied smile of the
faces of Louma Lasvy and Eon Thai he knew that the idea was the right one.
"Saturate the blood with the gas under
increased pressure, good.... Of course, we must take precautions against
thrombosis and≈let her heart beat once in two hundred seconds, it will come
right later."
Eon's smile showed his white teeth under a
black moustache and gave his stern face a look of youthfulness and reckless
merriment.
"The organism will remain paralysed but
will live," said Louma with relief. "Let's go and get the chamber
ready. I want to use the big silicolloid hood that we took for Zirda. We can
get a floating armchair inside it to make a bed for her during the take-off.
After acceleration ceases we can make her a proper bed."
"As soon as you're ready report to the
control tower. We're not staying here a minute longer than necessary ... we've
had enough of the darkness and weight of the black world!"
The crew hurried to their various sections of
the ship, each of them struggling against excess weight as best he could.
The signals for the take-off resounded like a
song of victory.
With feelings of such absolute relief as they
had never before experienced the people of the expedition entrusted themselves
to the soft embraces of the landing chairs. A take-off from a heavy planet is a
difficult and dangerous undertaking. The acceleration necessary to escape its
gravity would strain the very limit of human endurance and the slightest
mistake on the part of the pilot might lead to the death of them all.
There was a deafening roar of the planet motors
as Erg Noor directed the spaceship at a tangent to the horizon. The levers of
the hydraulic chairs were pressed lower and lower under the influence of growing
weight. In a moment the levers would reach the limit and then, under the
pressure of acceleration the frail human bones might be broken as they would be
on an anvil. The commander's hands, lying on the buttons that controlled the
ship's machinery, were unbearably heavy. But his strong fingers were at work
and Tantra,
describing a huge, flattened arc, rose higher and higher out of thick darkness
into the transparent blackness of infinity. Erg Noor kept his eyes fixed on the
red line of the horizontal leveller≈it wavered in its unstable equilibrium,
indicating that the ship showed a tendency to stop its climb and travel on the
downward arc. The heavy planet had still not given up its prisoner. Erg Noor
decided to switch on the anameson motors whose power was sufficient to lift the
spaceship from any planet. Their ringing vibration made the whole ship shudder.
The red line rose about half an inch above the zero line. A little more....
Through the upper inspection periscope the
commander saw that Tantra was covered with a fine layer of
blue flame that flowed slowly towards the stern of the vessel. The atmosphere
had been passed! In empty space vestigial electric currents, following the law
of superconductivity, flowed along the vessel's hull.
The stars had again become needles of light and
Tantra,
escaping, flew farther and farther from the dread planet. The burden of gravity
decreased with every minute. The body became lighter and lighter, the
artificial gravitation machine began to hum and after so many days under the
pressure of the black planet terrestrial gravity seemed indescribably small.
The people jumped up from their chairs. Ingrid, Louma and Eon performed
intricate passages from a fantastic dance. The inevitable reaction, however,
soon set in and the greater part of the crew fell into a brief sleep that gave
temporary repose. Only Erg Noor, Pel Lynn, Pour Hyss and Louma Lasvy remained
awake. The spaceship's temporary course had to be worked out to avoid the belt
of ice and meteoroids by describing an arc perpendicular to the plane of
rotation of star T's system. After this the ship could be brought up to its
normal subphotonic speed and work could be begun on the computation of the real
course.
The doctor kept watch over Nisa's condition
after the take-off and the return to normal terrestrial gravity. She was soon
able to reassure all those who were awake by her report that the pulse had
reached a constant of one beat in a hundred and ten seconds. This was not
mortal as long as there was an excess supply of oxygen. Louma Lasvy proposed
using a tiratron,21 an electronic cardiac exciter, and
neurosecretory stimulators.22
The walls of the ship whined for fifty-five
hours from the vibration of anameson motors until, at last, the speedometer
showed that they had attained a speed of nine hundred and seventy million
kilometres an hour, very close to the safety limit. In the course of a
terrestrial 24-hour day their distance from the iron star increased by more
than 20,000 million kilometres. It is difficult to describe the relief felt by
all thirteen members of the expedition after their severe trials≈the murdered
planet, the loss of Algrab and the awful black sun. The joy of
liberation was not complete, one member of the expedition, young Nisa Creet,
lay motionless in a special partition of the sick bay in a cataleptic half
sleep and half death.
The five women on the ship, Ingrid, Louma, the
second electronic engineer, the geologist, and lone Marr, the teacher of
rhythmic gymnastics (who was also keeper of the food stores, radio operator and
collector of scientific material), gathered as though for an ancient funeral
rite. Nisa's body, divested of all clothing and washed with the special
solutions TM and AS, had been laid out on a thick hand-stitched carpet of the
softest Mediterranean sponges. This carpet was placed on a pneumatic mattress
under a dome of transparent, rosy-hued silicolloid. An accurate air-condition
controller would keep the necessary temperature, pressure and composition of
the air inside the hood constant for many years. Soft rubber blocks kept Nisa
fixed in one position which Louma intended to change once a month. She was more
afraid of bed-sores than of anything else≈they could come from absolute
motionlessness. Louma, therefore, decided that a watch had to be kept over
Nisa's body and herself refused to take her periods of long sleep during the
first year or two of the journey. Nisa's cataleptic state continued. The only
improvement Louma could effect was an increase in pulse-beats to one a minute.
Little as this was, it was sufficient to enable them to stop the oxygen
saturation which was harmful to the lungs....
Four months passed. The spaceship was following
its real, computed course home, avoiding the belt of free meteoroids. The crew,
worn out with their adventures and hard toil, were sunk in a seven-months'
sleep. This time there were four instead of the three people awake on board:
Erg Noor and Pour Hyss, whose tour of duty it was, were joined by Louma Lasvy
and Eon Thai.
The commander, after having got out of a graver
situation than any spaceship commander had ever been in before, felt very
lonely. The four years' journey back to Earth seemed endless to him. He did not
deceive himself ≈they were endless because he could hope to save his fearless
auburn-haired astronavigator, whom he had come to love, only on Earth.
For a long time he put off doing what he would
otherwise have done on the day after the take-off≈running through the
electronic stereofilms from Parus≈he had wanted to see them together
with Nisa and with her hear the first news from those wonderful worlds, the
planets of the blue star of the terrestrial night sky. He had wanted Nisa to
share with him the pleasure of seeing the boldest romantic dreams of the past
and present coming true≈ the discovery of new stellar worlds, the future
distant islands of human civilization. But at last they were brought out....
The films had been taken at a distance of eight
parsecs from the Sun eighty years before and, although they had been lying in
the open ship on the black planet of star T they were in excellent condition.
The hemispherical stereo-screen took the four members of Tantra's crew back to where
blue Vega shone high above them.
There were many sudden changes of subject≈the
screen was filled by the dazzlingly blue star which was followed by casual,
minute-long pictures of life on board the ship. The 28-year-old commander of
the expedition, unbelievably young for his post, worked at the computers while
still younger astronomers made observations. The films showed obligatory daily
sport and dances that the young people had brought to acrobatic perfection. A
mocking voice announced that the biologist had maintained the championship all
the way to Vega. That girl with short, flaxen hair, was demonstrating the most
difficult exercises twisting her magnificently developed body into all sorts of
improbable poses.
As they looked at the perfectly natural images
with all the normal colour tones on the hemispherical screen, they forgot that
these happy, vigorous young astronauts had long before been devoured by the
foul monsters of the black planet.
The terse chronicle of expedition life soon
passed. The light amplifiers in the projector began to hum; so brightly did the
blue star glow that even this pale reproduction forced people to put on
protective glasses. The star was almost three times our Sun in diameter and
mass≈colossal, greatly flattened and madly rotating with an equatorial speed of
three hundred kilometres a second, a ball of indescribably luminous gas with a
surface temperature of 11,000╟ C. and a corona of rosy-pearl flame spreading
millions of kilometres around it. It seemed as though Vega's rays would crush
everything they met in their path as they thrust out their mighty million-kilometre
long spears into space. The planet nearest to the blue star was hidden in their
glow, but no ship from Earth or from any of her neighbours on the Great Circle
could plunge into that ocean of fire. The visual image was followed by a vocal
report on observations that had been made and the almost phantom lines of
stereometric drawings showed the positions of Vega's first and second planets. Parus could
not approach even the second planet whose orbit was a hundred million
kilometres from the star.
Monstrous protuberances flew out of the depths
of an ocean of transparent violet flame, the stellar atmosphere, and stretched
like all-consuming arms into space. So great was Vega's energy that the star
emitted light of the strongest quanta, the violet and invisible parts of the
spectrum. Even when human eyes were protected by a triple filter it aroused the
horrible effect of an invisible but mortally dangerous phantom. They could see
photon storms flashing past, those that had managed to overcome the star's gravitation.
Their distant reverberations shook and tossed Parus dangerously. The
cosmic ray meters and instruments measuring other non-elastic radiations
refused to function. Dangerous ionization began to grow, even inside the
well-protected ship. They could only guess at the extent of the furious radial
energy that poured out into the emptiness of space in a monstrous stream.
The commander of Parus navigated his ship
cautiously towards the third planet≈a big planet with but a thin layer of
transparent atmosphere. It looked as though the fiery breath of the blue star
had driven away the cover of light gases for they trailed in a weakly glowing
tail behind the planet on her dark side. They recorded the destructive
evaporation of fluorine, poisonous carbon monoxide, and the dead density of the
inert gases≈nothing terrestrial could have lived for a second in that
atmosphere.
The great heat of the blue sun made inert
mineral substances active. Sharp spears, ribs, vertical battlemented walls of
stone, red like fresh wounds or black like empty pits, rose out of the bowels
of the planet. On the plateaux of lava, swept by violent gales, there were
fissures and abysses belching forth molten magma like streaks of blood-red
fire.
Dense clouds of ash whirled high into the air,
blindingly blue on the illuminated side and impenetrably black on the dark
side. Streaks of lightning thousands of miles long struck in all directions,
evidence of the electric saturation of the dead atmosphere.
The awful violet phantom of the huge sun, the
black sky, half covered by the pearly corona, and below, on the planet, the
crimson contrasting shadows on a wild chaos of rock, the fiery crevices, cracks
and circles, the constant flashes of green lightning≈all this had been picked
up by the stereotelescopes and the electron films had recorded it with
unimpassioned, inhuman precision.
Behind the machines, however, were the emotions
of the travellers, the protest of reason against the senseless power of
destruction and the piling up of dead matter, the consciousness of the
hostility of this world of furious cosmic fire. The four viewers, hypnotized by
the sight, exchanged glances of approval when a voice announced that Parus
would move on to the fourth planet.
The human selection of events reduced the time
factor and in a few seconds the outer planet of Vega appeared under the
spaceship's keel telescopes; in size it was comparable with Earth. Parus
descended sharply, the crew had evidently decided to explore the last planet in
the hope that they would find a world, if not beautiful, then at least fit to
bear life.
Erg Noor caught himself mentally repeating
those words≈"at least." Most likely those who navigated Parus
had similar ideas as they studied the planet's surface through their
telescopes.
"At least"≈with those two syllables
they bade farewell to the dream of the beautiful worlds of Vega, of the
discovery of pearls of planets on the far side of outer space for the sake of
which people of Earth had voluntarily agreed to forty-five years of imprisonment
in a spaceship.
Carried away by the pictures passing before his
eyes, Erg Noor did not think of that immediately. In the depths pf the
hemispherical screen he raced over the surface of he fantastically distant
planet. To the great grief of the travellers, of those who were dead and those
still living, The planet turned out to be like our nearest neighbour in he
solar system, the planet Mars, which they had known since childhood. The same
thin envelope of transparent as with a blackish-green, permanently cloudless
sky, the same level surface of desert continents with chains of eroded
mountains. The difference was that on Mars there "was a searing cold night
and very sharp changes in the daytime temperature. There were shallow swamps on
Mars, like huge puddles, that had evaporated until they were almost dry, there
were rare and scanty rains and hoarfrosts, faint life in the form of gangrenous
plants and peculiar apathetic burrowing animals.
Here, however, the raging flames of the blue
sun kept the temperature of the planet so high that it breathed heat like
Earth's hottest deserts. What little vapour there was rose to the upper layer
of the atmosphere and the huge plains were overshadowed by vortices of hot
currents in the constantly disturbed atmosphere. The planet rotated at high
speed, like the others. The cold of night had broken the rocks up into a sea of
sand; orange, violet, green, bluish or dazzlingly white patches of sand drowned
parts of the planet that from a distance had the appearance of seas of imaginary
vegetation. The chains of eroded mountains, higher than those on Mars but just
as lifeless, were covered with a shining black or brown crust. The blue sun,
with its powerful ultra-violet radiation, had destroyed the minerals and
evaporated the lighter elements.
It seemed that the light, sandy plains were
radiating flames. Erg Noor recalled that at the time when only a small part and
not the majority of Earth's population had been scientists, many artists and
writers had dreamed of people on other planets who had adapted themselves to
life at high temperatures. It was a poetic and beautiful notion, it increased
faith in the power of the human race ≈people on the fire-breathing planets of
the blue sun meeting their terrestrial brethren! Erg Noor, like many others,
had been impressed by a picture he had seen in the museum of the eastern sector
of the southern inhabited zone: a hazy horizon on a plain of crimson sand, a
grey, burning-hot sky and under it faceless human figures in temperature suits
throwing blue-black shadows of improbably clear definition. They stood at the
corner of some metal structure that was at white heat in dynamic poses that
showed their amazement. Beside the structure stood an undraped female figure
with her red hair hanging loose. Her light-coloured skin gleamed more brightly
than the sand in the glaring light, blue and vermilion shadows stressed every
line of her tall and graceful figure, the symbol of the victory of beautiful
life over the forces of the Cosmos. Beautiful, that was the most important
thing of all. For even the adaptation of animal life that reduced it to a
formless devourer with but a faint spark of life in it, might be termed a
victory.
It was a bold and quite unreal dream that
contradicted the laws of biological development, laws that were far better
known in the Great Circle Era than they had been when the picture was painted.
Erg Noor gave a shudder as the surface of the
planet rushed towards him. The unknown pilot of Parus was bringing his ship
down. Sand cones, black cliffs, deposits of some shining green crystals flashed
past. The spaceship was flying in a regular spiral round the planet from pole
to pole. There was not a sign of water or at least of the most primitive
vegetable life. Again that "at least" how accommodating the human
mind could be! Then came the nostalgia of loneliness, the feeling that the ship
was lost in the dead distance, was in the power of the flaming blue star. Erg
Noor could feel the hopes of those who took the film, who were watching the
planet, could feel them as though they were his own. If there had only been at
least the remains of some past life! How well known is this thought to all
those who have flown to dead ^planets without water or atmosphere, who have
searched in vain for ruins, for the remains of towns and buildings in the
accidental shapes of the crevices, in the details of the lifeless rocks and in
the precipices of mountains that had never known life.
The earth of that distant world, scorched,
churned up by violent storms, without any trace of a shadow, flashed swiftly
across the screen. Erg Noor, recognizing the collapse of an ancient dream,
strove to imagine how such an incorrect conception of the planets of the blue
sun could have arisen.
"Our terrestrial brothers will be
disappointed when they know this," said the biologist, softly, moving
closer to the commander. ''For many thousands of years millions of people on
Earth have gazed at Vega. On summer evenings in the north all young people, all
those who loved and dreamed, turned their eyes to the sky. In the summer Vega,
bright and blue, stands almost in the zenith, how could one not admire it? Many
centuries ago people knew quite a lot about the stars. But by some strange
freak of thought they did not suspect that almost every slowly rotating star
with a strong magnetic field had its planets in the same way as almost all
planets have their satellites. They did not know of this law but when they were
overtaken by bitter loneliness they dreamed of fellow-beings in other worlds,
and, more than elsewhere, on Vega, the blue sun. I remember translations from
some of the ancient languages of beautiful poems about semi-divine people from
the blue star...."
"I dreamed about Vega after the Parus
communication," confessed Erg Noor, turning to Eon Thai, "and in my
hope that my dream would come true I read my own meaning into that
communication. Today it is obvious that thousands of years of longing for
distant, beautiful worlds have impaired my vision and that of many clever and
serious people."
"How do you understand the Parus
communication now?"
"Quite simply. 'Vega's four planets quite
lifeless. Nothing more beautiful than our Earth, what happiness to return.'
"
"You're right," exclaimed the
biologist, "why didn't we think of it before?"
"Perhaps somebody did, but not we
astronauts and not the Council. That is to our honour≈bold dreams and not
sceptical disappointment bring victory in life."
The flight round the planet, as shown on the
screen, was over. It was followed by the records made by the robot station that
had been put out to study surface conditions on the planet. Next came a loud
explosion as the geological bomb 23 was dropped. The huge cloud of
mineral dust thrown up by the bomb explosion reached the keel of the spaceship
where powerful suction pumps drew samples into the filtering side-channels of
the vessel. Several samples of mineral dust from the sands and mountains of the
scorched planet were put into silicolloid test-tubes and samples of the upper
layers of the atmosphere were put into quartz containers. Parus set off on its long
journey back home, a journey it was not fated to finish. Now the terrestrial
sister ship of Parus was carrying back to the people of Earth everything
that the lost travellers had won at the cost of such patient endeavour.
The remaining records≈six reels of
observations≈were to be specially studied by Earth's astronomers and the moat
important details broadcast round the Great Circle.
Nobody wanted to see films about the later
history of Parus,
the hard struggle to repair the damaged ship and the battle with star T; nobody
wanted to hear the last sound spool as their own experiences were still too
fresh. They decided to leave the examination of the remainder until the time
came for the whole crew to be awakened. Leaving the commander alone in the
control tower the others went away for a brief rest.
Erg Noor's dreams had collapsed and he no
longer thought of them. He tried to estimate the value of those few pitiful
crumbs of knowledge the two expeditions, his and Parus', would bring back to
mankind at such terrific cost. Or did they seem pitiful only on account of his
disappointment?
For the first time Erg Noor began to think of
beautiful Earth as an inexhaustible treasure-house of refined, cultured human
beings who had an insatiable thirst for knowledge now that they had been
relieved of the terrible worries and dangers that nature and primitive society
had inflicted them with. The sufferings of the past, the searchings and
failures, the mistakes and disappointments still remained in the Great Circle
Era but they had been carried to a loftier plane of creative activity in
science, art and building. Knowledge and creative labour had freed Earth from
hunger, over-population, infectious diseases and harmful animals. The world no
longer had to fear the exhaustion of fuel and useful chemical elements,
premature death and debility had been eliminated. Those crumbs of knowledge
that Tantra
would bring home would also be a contribution to the mighty stream of knowledge
that made for constant progress in the organization of society and the study of
nature.
Erg Noor opened the safe that housed Tantra's
records and took out the box containing the piece of metal from the spiral
spaceship on the black planet. The heavy piece of sky-blue metal lay flat on
his palm. Although he had put off the analysis of this precious sample for the
huge laboratories on Earth, he knew that neither on Earth not-on any of the
planets of the solar system or neighbouring stars was any such metal to be
found. The Universe was made up of similar simple elements that had long before
been systematized in the Mendeleyev Table. Consequently no new element≈no
metal≈could be discovered; but in the processes of the creation of elements,
natural or artificial, countless isotope variations, possessing vastly
different physical properties, could emerge. Then again, directed
recrystallization changed the properties of elements to a great extent. Erg
Noor was convinced that this piece of the hull of a spaceship from worlds
inconceivably far away was a terrestrial metal whose atoms had been completely
rearranged. This would be something, perhaps the most important thing after
news of Zirda's ruin, that he would take bade to Earth and the Great Circle.
The iron star was very close to Earth and a
visit to its planet by a specially prepared expedition would not now, after the
experience of Purus and Tantra, be particularly dangerous, no
matter what multitude of black crosses and medusae there might be in that eternal
darkness. They had been unfortunate in their opening of the spiral spaceship.
If they had had time to ponder over the tiling they would have realized then
that the gigantic spiral tube was part of the spaceship's propulsion system.
In his mind the commander went over the events
of hat fateful last day. He remembered Nisa spread over him like. a shield
after he had fallen unconscious near the roonster. Youthful emotions that
combined the heroic loyalty of the ancient women of Earth and the frank and wise
courage of the modern world had not had time to develop in her to the full....
Four Hyss appeared silently from behind him to
relieve she commander at his post. Erg Noor went through the library-laboratory
but did not go on to the central dormitory cabin; instead he opened the heavy
side-bay door ; The diffused light of an earthly day was reflected from the
silicolloid cupboards containing drugs and instruments, from the X-ray,
artificial respiration and blood-circulation apparatus. He drew back a heavy
curtain that reached up to the ceiling and entered the semi-darkness of the
sick-room. The faint illumination, like moonlight, acquired warmth in the rosy
crystal of the silicolloid. Two tiratron stimulators were kept permanently
switched on in case of sudden collapse; they clicked away almost soundlessly,
keeping the paralyzed patient's heart beating. In the rosy-silver light inside
the hood Nisa was stretched out motionless and seemed as though she were sunk
in calm, sweet slumber. A hundred generations of the healthy, clean and full
life of her ancestors had produced the strong and supple lines of the female
body that approached the acme of artistic perfection≈the most beautiful
creation of Earth's powerful life.
Everything moves and develops in a spiral and
Erg Noor could see in his imagination that magnificent spiral of the common
ascent as applied to life and to human society. Only now did he realize with
surprising clarity that the more difficult the conditions for the life and work
of organisms as biological machines, the harder the path of social development,
the tighter the spiral is twisted and the closer to each other are its turns,
the slower the process and more standardized and similar are the forms that
emerge. By the laws of dialectics, however, the more imperceptible the ascent,
the more stable is that which has been achieved.
He had been wrong in his pursuit of the
wonderful planets of the blue sun and he had been teaching Nisa wrongly! They
should not fly to new worlds in search of some uninhabited planet that chance
made suitable for life, but man should advance deliberately, step by step,
through his own arm of the Galaxy in a triumphal march of knowledge and the
beauty of life. Such as Nisa....
In a sudden burst of deep sorrow Erg Noor dropped
to his knees in front of the astronavigator's silicolloid sarcophagus. The
girl's breathing was not perceptible, her eyelashes cast blue shadows on her
cheeks and her white teeth were just visible through her slightly parted lips.
On her left shoulder, at the base of her neck and near the elbow there were
pale, bluish marks≈the places where the injurious currents had struck her.
"Can you see me, do you remember anything
in your sleep?" asked Erg Noor in agony, in an outburst of grief; he felt
his own will-power becoming softer than wax, it was difficult for him to
breathe and there was a catch in his throat. The commander strained his
interlocked fingers until they turned blue in his effort to transmit his
thoughts to Nisa, to make her hear his impassioned call to life and Happiness.
But the girl with the auburn curls lay as immobile as a statue of pink marble
carved to perfection from a living model.
═Dr.
Louma Lasvy entered the sick bay softly and sensed the presence of somebody
else in the silent room. Cautiously withdrawing the curtain she saw the
kneeling figure of the commander as motionless as a memorial to the millions of
men who have mourned their loved ones. This was not the first time she had
found Erg Noor there and her heart was moved with pity for him. He rose
gloomily to his feet. Louma went over to him and whispered in anxious tones:
"I want to speak to you."
Erg Noor nodded and went out, blinking as he
entered the lighted part of the sick bay. He did not sit down on the chair
Louma offered him but remained leaning against the upright of a mushroom-shaped
irradiation apparatus. Louma Lasvy stood up in front of him to her full, lint
not very great, height, trying to make herself look taller and more important
for the impending talk. The commander's looks gave her no time for
preparations.
"You know," she began uncertainly,
"that present-day neurology has discovered the process by which emotions
emerge in the conscious and subconscious divisions of the psyche. The
subconscious yields to the influence of inhibiting drugs administered through
the ancient spheres of the brain that control the chemical regulation of the
organism, including the nervous system and, to some extent, higher nervous
activity...."
Erg Noor raised his brows. Louma Lasvy felt
that she was speaking in too great detail and too long.
"I want to say that medicine is able to
affect those brain centres that control the strong emotions. I could...."
Understanding flashed up in Erg Noor's eyes and developed into a slight smile.
''You propose affecting my love for Nisa and
relieving me of suffering?" he asked brusquely.
The doctor nodded in affirmation, afraid to
spoil the tenderness of her sympathy with words that would inevitably be
schematic.
Erg Noor stretched out his hand gratefully but
shook his head in refusal.
"I would not give up the wealth of my
emotions, no matter how much suffering they cause me. Suffering, so long as it
is not beyond one's strength, leads to understanding, understanding leads to
love and the circle is complete. You're very kind, Louma, but it isn't
necessary!"
And the commander disappeared through the door
with his usual swift gait.
Hurrying, as they would have done in an
emergency, the electronic and mechanical engineers erected the televisophone
screen for the reception of terrestrial transmissions. After thirteen years the
screen was being erected in the library of the central control tower as the
ship was now in a zone where radio waves, dispersed by Earth's atmosphere could
be received.
The voices, sounds, forms and colours of their
native Earth cheered the travellers up and also served to increase their
impatience≈the great length of the Cosmic journey was becoming intolerable.
The spaceship sent out a call to Artificial
Earth Satellite No. 57 on the usual wavelength used for long-distance Cosmic
journeys and impatiently awaited an answer from this powerful station that
served as a link between Earth and the Cosmos.
At last the call signals from the spaceship
reached Earth.
The whole crew of the ship were awake and did
not leave the receivers. They were returning to life after thirteen terrestrial
and nine dependent years in which there had been no contact with their native
planet! They listened eagerly to reports from Earth, and they took part in the discussion
of important questions raised on the world radio network by anybody who wished
to do so.
Quite by chance they picked up a proposal from
the soil scientist Heb Uhr that gave them material for a six-weeks' discussion
and very intricate calculations.
"Discuss Heb Uhr's proposal!"
thundered the voice of Earth. "Let everybody who is working in that field;
who has any similar ideas or objections, say his word!"
This, the usual formula, had a pleasant sound
for the travellers. Heb Uhr had proposed to the Astronautical Council a plan
for the systematic exploration of the reachable planets of the blue and green
stars. He believed these to be special worlds with extraordinarily strong power
emanations that might chemically stimulate mineral compounds that are inert
under terrestrial conditions to struggle against entropy, that is, give them
life. Special forms of life from minerals that are heavier than gas would be
active in high temperatures and in the intense radiation of stars in the higher
spectral classes. Heb Uhr was of the opinion that the failure of the Sirius
expedition, the failure to find life there, was to be expected since that
rapidly rotating star was a binary that did not possess a powerful magnetic
field. Nobody disputed with Heb Uhr the fact that binary stars could not be
regarded as the originators of planetary systems in the Cosmos, but the essence
of the proposal called forth very lively opposition from Tantra's crew.
The astronomers, headed by Erg Noor, compiled a
report which was transmitted as being the opinion of the first people who had
seen Vega in the film taken by Parus.
People on Earth listened with delight and
admiration to the voice from the approaching spaceship.
Tantra
opposed the dispatch of the expeditions suggested by Heb Uhr. The blue stars
really did emanate tremendous energy per unit of their planets' surfaces,
sufficient to ensure the life of heavy compounds. Any living organism, however,
was at once both an energy filter and a dam which, in its struggle against the
Second Law of Thermodynamics, functioned only by means of the creation of a
complex, by means of the great complication of simple mineral and gas
molecules. Such complications could only occur in a process of tremendously
active development, which, in turn, entailed the lengthy stability of physical
Conditions. Stable conditions did not exist on the planets of high-temperature
stars which rapidly destroyed complicated compounds in bursts and vortices of
powerful radiation. Nothing there could exist for long despite the fact that
minerals acquired the most stable crystal structure with a cubic atomic
pattern.
Tantra was
of the opinion that Heb Uhr was merely repeating the one-sided assertions of
the ancient astronomers who had not understood the dynamics of planet development.
Every planet lost the lighter substances that were carried away into space and
dispersed. The loss of light elements was especially great in cases where there
was great heat and great light pressure from the blue suns.
Tantra
gave a long string of examples and concluded that the process of
"increasing weight" on the planets of the blue stars did not permit
the emergence of living forms.
Satellite 57 transmitted Tantra's objections
direct to the Council observatory.
At last the moment came that Ingrid Dietra and
Kay Bear, like all other members of the expedition, had been awaiting so
impatiently. Tnntra began to reduce her speed from her subphotonic
velocity, had passed the ice belt of the solar system and was approaching the
spaceship station on Triton. High velocity was no longer necessary: travelling
at a speed of 900 million kilometres an hour, they would have reached Earth
from Neptune's satellite. Triton, in less than five hours. The acceleration of
the spaceship, however, took so long that she would have overshot the Sun and
travelled far away from it into space if she had set out from Triton.
In order to economize the precious anameson and
save the ship from carrying unwieldy equipment, communications inside the solar
system were effected by ion planet-ships. Their speed did not exceed 800,000
kilometres an hour for the inner planets and 2,500,000 kilometres an hour for
the most distant outer planets. The usual trip from Neptune to Earth took two
and a half to three months.
Triton was a very big satellite, only a little
smaller than the huge third and fourth satellites of Jupiter, Ganymede and
Callisto, or the planet Mercury. It therefore possessed a thin atmosphere
consisting mainly of nitrogen and carbon monoxide.
Erg Noor lauded the spaceship at the appointed
place at the satellite's pole, far from the broad domes of the station
buildings. On a ledge of the plateau, near a cliff that was honeycombed with
underground premises, stood the gleaming glass building of the quarantine
sanatorium.
Here the travellers were subjected to a
five-week quarantine in complete isolation from all other people. In the course
of this time skilled doctors would study their bodies to make sure that no new
infection had taken root. The danger was too great to be ignored: every person
who had landed on another planet, even on an uninhabited one, had to submit to
this inspection no matter how long he had afterwards been confined to the
spaceship. The interior of the ship itself was also inspected by the
sanatorium's scientists before the station gave permission for the journey to
Earth. Those planets that had been studied long before and had been colonized
by man, such as Venus and Mars, as well as some of the asteroids, had their own
quarantine stations where travellers were examined before the ships left.
Confinement in the sanatorium was easier than in the spaceship. There were
laboratories in which to work, concert halls, combined baths using electric
currents, music, water and wave oscillations, daily walks in light protective
suits in the hills near the sanatorium, and, lastly, there was contact with
Earth, not always regular, but, still, Earth was only five hours away!
Nisa's silicolloid sarcophagus was carried into
the sanatorium with every possible precaution. Erg Noor and the biologist Eon
Thai were the last to leave Tantra. They moved easily even though
wearing weights to prevent their making sudden leaps in the low gravitation on
the satellite.
The floodlights around the landing fieldwere
extinguished. Triton was moving across Neptune's daylight side. Dull as the
greyish light reflected by Neptune was, the giant mirror of the planet, only
35,000 kilometres away from Triton, dispelled the gloom and gave the satellite
a bright twilight like that of a spring evening in the northern latitudes of
Earth. Triton revolved about Neptune in the opposite direction to the planet's
revolution, that is, from east to west, once in about six terrestrial days so
that the "daytime" twilight lasted about seventy hours. In that time
Neptune revolved about its Own axis four times and at the moment of their
arrival the shadow of the satellite was noticeable as it crossed the nebulous
disc.
Almost simultaneously the commander and the
biologist noticed a small ship standing near the edge of the plateau. This was
not a spaceship with its stern half broader than the bows and with high
stabilizer ribs. Judging by the sharp bows and slim hull it must have been a
planetship hut its contours differed in the thick ring at the stern and the long,
distaff-shaped structure on top.
"There's another ship here in
quarantine?" half asked, half asserted Eon. "Can the Council have
changed its rules?"
"Not to send out stellar expeditions
before a previous one has returned?" asked Erg Noor in his turn. "We
have kept to our schedule but the report we should have sent to Earth from
Zirda was two years late."
"Perhaps it is an expedition to
Neptune," suggested the biologist. They soon covered the two kilometres to
the sanatorium and climbed up to a wide terrace faced with red basalt. The tiny
disc of the Sun, easily visible from the pole of the non-rotating satellite,
shone brighter than any other star in the black sky. The bitter frost, --170╟
C., felt like the ordinary cold of a northern winter on Earth through their
heated protective suits. Huge flakes of snow, frozen ammonia or carbon
monoxide, fell slowly through the still atmosphere, giving their surroundings
the serene appearance of Earth during a snow-fall.
Erg Noor and Eon Thai stared hypnotized at the
falling snow-flakes as did their distant ancestors in the northern lands for
whom the first snow-fall meant the end of the farm year. And this unusual snow
also meant the end of their journey and their labours.
The biologist, in response to a subconscious
impulse, held out his hand to the commander.
"Our adventures are over and we are still
alive and well≈thanks to you!"
Erg Noor made an abrupt gesture repelling his
hand. "Are we all well? And thanks to whom am I alive?" Eon Thai was
not put out.
"I'm sure Nisa will be saved! The doctors
here want to begin treatment immediately. Instructions have been received from
Grimm Schar himself, you know, the head of the General Paralysis
Laboratory."
"Do they know what it is?"
"Not yet. But Nisa has obviously been struck
by some sort of current that condenses in the nerve nodes of the autonomous
systems. When we find out how to put a stop to its extraordinarily long action
the girl will be cured. We have discovered the functioning of persistent
psychic paralysis that was considered incurable for centuries, haven't we? This
is something similar caused by an outside exciter. We'll carry out some
experiments on my prisoners, whether they are dead or alive, then ... my arm
will also begin to function again!"
The commander felt ashamed and frowned; in his
great sorrow he had forgotten how much the biologist had done for him. Not at
all decent in a grown man! He took the biologist's hand and they expressed
their warm friendship in man's age-old handshake.
"Do you think the lethal organs of the
black jelly-fish and that≈that cross-shaped abomination are of the same
order?" asked Erg Noor.
"I don't doubt it, my arm tells me that.
Adaptation to life in these black creatures, inhabitants of a planet rich in
electricity, has taken the form of the accumulation and transformation of
electric energy. They are obviously beasts of prey but we still don't know whom
they prey on."
"But do you remember what happened to us
all when Nisa...."
"That's another thing. I have thought a
lot about that. When that awful cross appeared it radiated infrasonic waves of
tremendous strength that broke down our willpower. Sounds in that black world
are also black and we cannot hear them. This monster dulls the consciousness
with infrasonic effects, and then uses a sort of hypnosis much stronger than
that once used by the now extinct big terrestrial snakes, like the anaconda,
for example. That was what nearly finished us≈if it had not been for
Nisa...."
Erg Noor looked at the distant Sun that was at
that moment also shining on Earth. The Sun is man's eternal hope, has been
since the prehistoric days when man dragged out a pitiful existence in the
teeth of ruthless nature. The Sun is the incarnation of the bright forces of
the intellect driving away the darkness and the monsters of the night. And a
joyful spark of hope went with him for the rest of his journey.
The Director of the Triton Station came to see
Erg Noor at the sanatorium to tell him that Earth wanted to speak to him. The
Director's appearance in a building that was in strict quarantine meant that
their isolation was over and that Tantra would be able to complete her
thirteen-year journey. Erg Noor came back looking more business-like than ever.
"We are leaving today. I have been asked
to take six people from the planetship Amat with us; the ship is remaining here
to organize the mining of new mineral deposits on Pluto. We are taking back the
expedition and the material they collected on Pluto.
"These six people re-equipped an ordinary
planetship for the performance of a deed of great valour. They dived into the
depths of hell, down through Pluto's thick atmosphere of neon and methane, they
flew through blizzards of ammonia snow, every second bringing fresh risks of
collision with gigantic needles of frozen water as hard as steel. They managed
to find a region where there are mountains.
"The mystery of Pluto has been solved at
last≈it is a planet that does not belong to our solar system but one that was
captured by the Sun during its passage through the Galaxy. This accounts for
Pluto's density being much greater than that of any other planet. The explorers
discovered strange minerals on this alien world but more important still, on
one ridge they found an almost completely ruined structure that told of an
inconceivably ancient civilization. The research data must, of course, be
checked. The intelligent working of building materials has still to be proved.
But still, an amazingly valorous deed has been done. I am proud that our
spaceship will carry the heroes back to Earth and I am all impatience to hear
their stories. Their quarantine was over three days ago."
Erg Noor stopped, exhausted by such a lengthy
speech.
"But there is a serious contradiction in
this!" shouted Pour Hyss.
"Contradiction is the mother of
truth!" Erg Noor answered calmly, making use of an old proverb. "It's
time to get Tantra
ready."
The tried and tested spaceship got away from
Triton very easily and described a huge arc perpendicular to the plane of the
ecliptic. It was impossible to get directly to Earth≈-any ship would have been
destroyed in the wide asteroid and meteoroid belt, a zone filled with the
fragments of the burst planet Phaeton that once existed between Mars and
Jupiter and was exploded by the gravitation of the giant of the solar system.
Erg Noor increased acceleration. He did not
intend to take his expedition back to Earth by the normal seventy-two day route
but to use the colossal power of the spaceship to make the journey in fifty
hours with a minimum expenditure of anameson.
Transmission from Earth raced through space to Tantra and
the planet greeted the victory over the gloom of the iron star and over the
gloom of icy Pluto. Specially written songs and symphonies in honour of Tantra
and Amat
were performed.
The Cosmos resounded with triumphant melodies. Stations on Mars, Venus and the asteroids called the ship, their chords merging with the general chorus of homage to the heroes.
'"Tantra... Tantra..." came, at last, the voice from the Council's control
post. "You may land on El Homra!"
The Central Cosmic Port was situated where
there had formerly been a desert in North Africa and the spaceship made its way
there through the sun-drenched atmosphere of Earth.
The wall of the broad verandah facing south
towards the sea was made of sheets of transparent plastic. The pale diffused
light from the ceiling complemented rather than rivalled the moonlight,
softening its dense black shadows. Almost the whole maritime expedition had
gathered on the verandah, only the very youngest members of the expedition were
still frolicking in the moonlit sea. Cart Sann, the artist, was there with his
beautiful model. Frith Don, the Director of the expedition, shook back his long,
golden hair as he told the people about the horse Miyiko had found. When they
made tests of the material from which it was made in order to calculate the
weight to he lifted they got the most unexpected results. Under the superficial
layer of some alloy the statue was pure gold. If the horse were cast solid then
its weight, after allowance had been made for water displacement, would be four
hundred tons. Special vessels with powerful salvage gear had been sent for≈an
unexpected development from a pleasant afternoon's swim enjoyed by Miyiko
Eigoro and Darr Veter. Somebody asked how so much valuable metal could have
been used so foolishly. One of the older historians recalled a legend
discovered in the historical archives telling of the disappearance of the gold
reserves of a whole country, and that at a time when gold was the monetary
expression of labour values. Certain criminal rulers, guilty of tyranny and the
impoverishment of the people, had been forced to flee to another country≈in
those days there were obstacles called frontiers preventing contact between
nations≈and before absconding they gathered together the entire gold reserve
and cast a statue from it and placed it in the busiest square of the country's
chief city. Nobody was able to find the gold. The historian presumed that in
those days nobody had been able to find the precious metal under the layer of
the cheap alloy.
The story caused some excitement. The find of a
large quantity of gold was a fine gift to mankind. Although the heavy metal had
long ceased to serve as a symbol of value it was still very necessary in
electrical instruments, medicines and, especially, for the manufacture of
anameson.
In a small group in a corner outside the
verandah sat Veda Kong, Darr Veter, the artist, Chara Nandi and Evda Nahl. Renn
Bose sat down bashfully beside them after his fruitless attempts to find Mven
Mass.
''You were right when you said that artists, or
rather, art in general, must always inevitably lag behind the rapid advance of
knowledge and technique," said Darr Veter.
'"You didn't understand me," objected
Cart Saun. "Art has already corrected its errors and understood its duty
to mankind. Art has ceased to create oppressive monumental forms, to depict
brilliance and majesty that do not exist in reality, for all that was purely
superficial. Art's most important duty has become the development of man's
emotional side, since only art can rightly attune the human psyche and prepare
it for the acceptance of the most complicated impressions. Who does not know
how wonderfully easy it is to understand something when you have been pretuned
by music, colour or form, and how inaccessible the human spirit is when you try
to force a way into it. You historians know better than anybody else how much
mankind has suffered through a lack of understanding of the necessity to train
and develop the emotional side of the psyche."
"There was a period in the past when art
craved abstract forms," Veda Kong put in.
"Art craved abstract forms in imitation of
the intellect that had gained priority over everything else. Art, however,
cannot find expression in the abstract, with the exception, of course, of
music, and that occupies a special place and is concrete in its own way.
Art in those days was on the wrong track."
''What do you believe to be the right
track?"
"I believe that art should be a reflection
of the struggle and anxieties of life in people's feelings, at times it should
illustrate life but under the control of a common purposefulness. This
purposefulness, in other words, is beauty, without which I cannot see happiness
or a meaning for life. Without it art can easily degenerate into mere fanciful
invention, especially if the artist has an insufficient knowledge of life and
of history."
"I have always wanted art to help conquer
and change he world and not merely to sense the world," added Darr Veter.
I "I agree with that, but with one proviso," said Cart Sann.
"Art shouldn't treat the outside world alone; it's more important to treat
of man's inner world, his emotions, his education. With an understanding of all
contradictions ...."
Evda Nahl placed her strong, warm hand on Darr
Veter's.
"What dream have you renounced
today?" At first Veter wanted to put her off, but realized that with Evda
equivocation was impossible. And so he pretended to be absorbed in the artist's
discourse.
"Those who have seen the mass art of the
past," continued the artist, "cinema films, recordings of theatre
shows, exhibitions of pictures, know how. marvellously refined, elegant, purged
of all superfluities our present-day spectacles, dances and pictures seem by
contrast. I am not comparing them with the periods of decay, of course."
"He's clever but too verbose,"
whispered Veda Kong. "It's difficult for an artist to express in words or
formulas those complicated phenomena that he sees and selects from his
environment," Chara Nandi said in his defence and Evda Nahl nodded
approvingly.
"What I want to do is something like
this," continued Cart Sann, "I want to collect into one image the
pure grains of the wonderful genuineness of feeling, form and colour scattered
among many people. I want to restore the ancient images by the highest
expression of the beauty of each of the races of the distant past that have
gone into the makeup of mankind today. The Daughter of Gondwana is unity with nature,
a subconscious knowledge of the connections between things and phenomena, a
complex of senses and feelings interlaced with instincts.
"The Daughter of Thetis, the Mediterranean, has
strongly developed emotions that are fearlessly expansive and infinitely
varying; here there is a different degree of the union with nature, through
emotions, the power of Eros≈that is how I imagine her. The ancient
civilizations of the Mediterranean, the Cretan, Etruscan, Hellenic and Proto-Indian≈gave
rise to the type of man who, alone of all others, could have created that
civilization that stemmed from the rule of woman. I had the best of luck when I
discovered Chara: she is by pure accident a combination of the traits of
ancestors from amongst the Graeco-Cretans of antiquity and the later peoples of
Central India."
Veda smiled at the correctness of her guess and
Darr Veter whispered to her that it would be hard to find a better model.
"If my Daughter of the Mediterranean turns out a success
then I must go on to the third part of the plan≈ I must paint the golden- or
flaxen-haired northern woman, with her calm and transparent eyes, tall,
somewhat slow in her movements, her glance straightforward as she looks out at
the world like one of the ancient Russian, Scandinavian or English women. Only
when that is finished shall I be able to start on the synthesis, the image of
the present-day woman in which I shall have to portray the best features of
each of those ancestors."
"Why do you only paint 'daughters' and no
'sons'?" asked Veda, smiling mysteriously.
"Is there any need for me to explain that
by the laws of physiology the beautiful is always more finished and more
refined in woman?" frowned the artist.
"When you are ready to paint your third
picture, your Daughter of the North, take a good look at Veda Kong,"
began Evda Nahl, "you'll hardly ...."
The artist rose swiftly to his feet.
"D'you think I'm blind? I am struggling
against myself to prevent that image becoming part of me at a time when I am
full of another. But Veda ...."
"Is dreaming of music," continued
Veda. "What a pity there is only a solar piano here and it's silent at
night."
"Is that the piano with a system of
semi-conductors that works from sunlight?" asked Renn Bose, leaning over
the arm of his chair. "If it is, I can switch it over to use the, current
of the receiver."
"Will it take long?" asked Veda,
pleased at the opportunity.
"It would take about an hour."
"Then don't bother. The news broadcast on
the world circuit begins in an hour and we want to see and hear it. We've been
busy the past two evenings and haven't switched on the receiver."
"Then sing us something, Veda," asked
Darr Veter. "Cart Sann has the eternal stringed instrument, the one that
dates back to feudal society in the Dark Ages."
"Guitar," guessed Chara Nandi.
"Who'll play? I'll try myself, perhaps I
can manage."
"I'll play." Chara Nandi volunteered
to go for the guitar.
"We'll run together," suggested Frith
Don. Chara roguishly tossed back her mass of black hair. Sherliss pulled a
lever moving back the side wall of the verandah giving them a view of the
eastern corner of the bay. Frith Don ran with long strides. Chara ran with her
head thrown back and soon fell behind but in the end they arrived at the studio
together, plunged into the un-lighted entrance and a second later reappeared to
skim along the edge of the sea, stubborn and swift-footed. Frith Don was the
first to reach the verandah but Chara vaulted over the open side partition and
was first in the room. Veda clapped her hands in admiration. "But Frith
Don won last year's decathlon!" "And Chara Nandi was graduated from
the Higher School of Dance, both departments. Ancient and Modern,"
retorted Cart Sann, in the same tone.
"Veda and I studied dancing too, but only
in the lower grades," sighed Evda Nahl.
"Everybody passes the lower grade
nowadays," said the artist teasingly.
Chara ran her fingers lightly over the strings,
sticking out her small, firm chin. The guitar hummed low, pensive notes. The
young woman's high-pitched voice combined longing and challenge. She sang a new
song, one that had just come from the southern zone, a song of an unfulfilled
dream. Veda's low contralto joined in and became the beam around which Chara's
voice coiled and quivered. It was a magnificent duet, the two singers were
absolute opposites and yet they complemented each other perfectly. Darr Veter
turned his gaze from one to the other unable to decide to whom the singing was
most becoming≈Veda, who stood leaning her elbows on the receiver and her head
bowed under the weight of a mass of blonde hair that glittered silver in the
moonlight, or Chara, leaning forward with the guitar on her round, bare knees,
with a face tanned by the sun in which the white of her teeth and the bluish
whites of her eyes stood out in sharp contrast.
The song finished, Chara picked idly at the
strings. Darr Veter clenched his teeth≈she was strumming the song that had once
separated him from Veda, a song that was now painful to her, too.
She plucked at the strings spasmodically, the
chords following each other and dying before they could merge. It was a jerky
melody, like the splashes of waves falling on the beach, spreading over the
sand for an instant and then rolling back, one after another, to the black
depths of the sea. Chara was quite unaware of anything, her clear voice gave
life to the words of love that flew out into the icy void of the Cosmos from
star to star, trying to find, to understand, to feel where he was ... he who
had gone into the Cosmos for the great deed of discovery≈he would never
return≈let it be so, if only for one moment .she could know what was happening
to him, help him with a whispered word, a kind thought, a greeting!
Veda remained silent and Chara felt there was
something wrong, she broke off the song, jumped up, tossed the guitar to the
artist and went over to where the fair-haired woman was standing, her head
bowed guiltily.
Veda smiled.
"Dance for me, Chara."
The latter nodded obediently but Frith Don
stopped her.
"The dances can wait, there's a
transmission beginning now.
On the roof of the building a telescopic pipe
was put up on which there were two metal sheets at right angles to each other
surmounted by a circular structure with eight hemispheres arranged around its
circumference. The═ room was filled with
the mighty sounds of the world information service.
"The discussion of the project introduced
by the Academy of Directed Radiation continues," said a man on the screen.
"The project provides for the substitution of electronic recording for the
linear alphabet. The project is not being universally supported. The chief
objection is the intricacy of the reading apparatus. The book will cease to be
a friend to accompany men everywhere. Despite all its apparent advantages the
project will probably be rejected!"
"It's been discussed for a long
time," said Renn Bose.
"A big contradiction," answered Darr
Veter, "on the one hand, there is the tempting simplicity of the writing
and, on the other, the difficulty of reading."
The man on the screen continued:
"Yesterday's report is confirmed≈Cosmic
Expedition No. 37 has been heard from. They are returning ...."
Darr Veter was staggered by the strength of his
own contrasting emotions. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Veda Kong slowly
rise to her feet, her eyes opening wider and wider. With the keen ears of a
lover Darr Veter caught the sound of her spasmodic breathing.
"... from the direction of square four
hundred and one the ship has just come out of the negative field at one-hundredth
of a parsec from Neptune's orbit. The expedition has been delayed through an
encounter with a black sun. There have been no losses of life! The speed of the
ship.'" said the news reader in conclusion, "is about five-sixths of
the absolute unit. The expedition is expected at Triton in eleven days! ...
Listen for reports of their marvellous discoveries!"
The broadcast continued. There were other items
of "news but nobody listened to them any more. They crowded round Veda,
congratulating her. She smiled, her cheeks were burning but there was anxiety
hidden deep down in her eyes. Darr Veter also approached. Veda felt the firm
pressure of his hand and met his eyes, direct and sincere. Not for a long time
had he looked at her like that and she understood the sadness of his former
attitude towards her and she realized that at that moment he read something
else in her face besides joy.
Darr Veter slowly released her hand, smiled in
a way all his own, inimitably open and frank, and walked away. Her companions
from the expedition were excitedly discussing the news. Veda remained inside
the circle of people but watched Darr Veter out of the corner of her eye. She
saw Evda Nahl go up to him and a moment later they were joined by Renn Bose.
"We must find Mven Mass, he still doesn't
know the news!" exclaimed Darr Veter, as though he had suddenly
remembered. "Come along with me, Evda. And what about you, Renn?"
"I'll come too," said Chara Nandi as
she came up.
"May I?"
They went down towards the gently lapping waves.
Darr Veter stopped, turned his face to the cool breeze and sighed deeply.
Turning round he met Evda Nahl's eyes.
"I'm going away without returning to the
house," he said in answer to her unasked question. Evda took him by the
arm. For some time they walked on in silence.
"I've been thinking... must you?"
whispered Evda, "but I suppose you must, I suppose you're right. If Veda
..." Evda stopped, but Darr Veter squeezed her hand understandingly and
pressed it to his cheek. Renn Bose followed on their heels, carefully edging
away from Chara who, with a slightly mocking smile, ogled him with her big eyes
and swayed her body exaggeratedly as she walked with long steps beside him.
Evda laughed a scarcely audible laugh and suddenly offered the physicist her free
arm. Rcnn Bose seized it with a predatory movement that seemed funny in that
bashful fellow.
"Where are we to look for your
friend?" asked Chara, stopping at the edge of the water. Darr Veter looked
round in the bright moonlight and saw fresh footprints on the strip of wet
sand. They were made at exactly the same intervals and the soles were turned
outward symmetrically with such precision that the footprints seemed to be the
work of a machine.
"He went that way," said Darr Veter
pointing towards some big boulders.
"Yes, those are his footprints,"
confirmed Evda Nahl.
"Why are you so sure?" asked Chara,
doubtfully. "Look at the-regularity of the paces, that's how primitive
hunters walked... or those who have inherited their traits. It seems to me that
Mven, despite all his learning, is closer to nature than any of us ... although
... I don't know about you; Chara." Evda turned to the girl who was
pondering over something.
"Me? Oh, no!" She pointed forward and
exclaimed, "There he is!"
The huge figure of the African, shining like
polished black marble in the moonlight, appeared on the nearest boulder. Mven
Mass was shaking his fists energetically as though he were threatening
somebody. The powerful muscles of his mighty body rose and fell and rolled
beneath his gleaming skin.
"He's like the spirit of the night from
the children's tales," whispered Chara excitedly. Mven Mass noticed the
people approaching him, jumped down from his rock and soon appeared before them
with his clothes on. In a few words Darr Veter explained what had happened and
Mven Mass expressed a desire to see Veda Kong.
"Go over there with Chara," said
Evda, "and we'll stay down here for a little while." Darr Veter made
a gesture of farewell and saw by Mven's face that he had understood. A burst of
something like childishness egged Mven on to whisper words of farewell that had
long since gone out of usage. Darr Veter was touched by this gesture and walked
away, deep in thought, accompanied by the silent Evda. Renn Bose hesitated for
a while in some confusion and then followed behind Mven Mass and Chara.
Darr Veter and Evda walked down as far as the
cape that protected the bay from the open sea. From there they would see the
lights round the huge disc-shaped rafts of the maritime expedition.
Darr Veter pushed a transparent plastic boat
off the sand and stood by the water in front of Evda, even more massive and
powerful than Mven Mass. Evda stretched up on tiptoes to give her friend a
parting kiss.
"Veter, I'll be with Veda," she said,
as though answering his thoughts. "We'll go back to our zone together and
there we'll await your arrival. Let me know where you fix yourself up, I'll
always be glad to help you."
For a long time Evda followed the boat with her
eyes as it crossed the silvery sea.
Darr Veter went as far as the second raft where
the mechanics were still working in a hurry to set up the accumulators. In
response to Veter's request they lit three green lights in the form of a
triangle. An hour and a half later, the first helicopter that came that way
hung over the raft, the roar of its engines rumbling over the sleepy sea. Darr
Veter entered the lift it lowered; for a second he could be seen against the
illuminated bottom of the aircraft and then disappeared through the hatch. By
morning he reached his permanent abode near the Council observatory which he
had not had time to change for another. Darr Veter opened the air-taps in both
his rooms and in a few minutes all dust had vanished. He pulled his bed out of
the wall and, tuning his bedroom in to the smell and sounds of the sea that he
had lately become accustomed to, was soon sound asleep.
He awoke with a sensation that the beauty of
the world had been lost. Veda was far away and would remain far away ... now
... until .... But he must help her and not complicate matters!
In his bathroom a whirling column of cold
electrified water burst upon him. Darr Veter stood under the column of water so
long that he began to shiver. Feeling refreshed he went to the televisophone,
opened its mirror doors and called up the nearest Registrar of Vacancies. The
face of the registrar, a young man, appeared on the screen. He knew Darr Veter
and greeted him with a scarcely perceptible shade of respect that was
considered the hallmark of politeness.
"I want to get some hard and lengthy job,
with tough physical labour," said Darr Veter, "something like the
Antarctic mines!"
"All the jobs there are taken!"
answered the registrar, in tones of sincere regret. "All the miner's jobs
on Venus, Mars and even Mercury have been filled too. You know that the young
people are always anxious to go where the work is hardest."
"That's true but I can no longer place
myself in that fine category. What is there now? I want a job
immediately."
"There are the diamond workings in Central
Siberia," began the registrar slowly, glancing at a list that Darr Veter
could not see, "that is, if you want mine work. Then there are some jobs
on the rafts of the oceanic food-packing plants, at the solar pumping station
in Tibet, but that's easy work. There are some other places, but nothing
particularly hard!"
Darr Veter thanked him and asked for some time
to think things over and asked him to keep the place open in the diamond
workings.
He switched off the Registrar of Vacancies and
tuned in to Siberia House, the centre for geographical information concerning
that country. His televisophone was switched on to a memory machine that showed
him the latest records and he saw pictures of extensive forests go floating
past him. The boggy, scanty, larch forests growing on permafrost that had once
occupied the region were gone for ever, giving place to such giants as Siberian
cedars and American sequoias, trees that had formerly been in danger of
extinction. Their gigantic red trunks made a magnificent fence round hills
covered with ferroconcrete caps. Steel tubes, thirty feet in diameter, crawled
from under the caps and curved over ridges to the nearest rivers that they
sucked entirely into their huge scoops. Monstrously huge pumps roared dully.
Billions of gallons of water were driven into the volcanic chimneys where the
diamonds were found; the water whirled and raged as it washed the clay away and
then found its way out again leaving behind tons of diamonds on the grids of
the washing chambers. In long, well-lit buildings people were watching the
dials of the sorting machines. The brilliant stones were sifted like grain
through the calibrated holes of a screen into boxes. The pumping station
operators were keeping constant watch over the calculating machines that
computed the ever-changing resistance of the rock, the pressure and expenditure
-of water, the depth of the shaft and the expulsion of solid matter. Darr Veter
thought that though the joyful picture of sun-bathed forests did not suit his
mood at that moment, the concentrated activity of the work at the pumps might
suit him and he switched off Siberia House. Immediately the call signal rang
out and the Registrar of Vacancies appeared on the screen.
''I'd like to give you something more concrete
to think about. We have received a request for somebody to fill a vacancy that
has just occurred in the submarine titanium mines off the west coast of South
America. This is the hardest work available today, but if you take it you'll
have to go there immediately."
That last piece of information rather upset
Darr Veter. "But I shan't have time to pass the tests at the nearest
station of the Academy of the Psychophysiology of Labour," he said.
"The sum of the annual tests that were
obligatory for your former work is sufficient to exempt you from them."
"Inform them that I'm coming and give me
the coordinates!" answered Darr Veter immediately.
"Western section of the Spiral Way,
seventeenth southern branch. Station 6L, Point KM40. I'll inform them."
The serious-looking face disappeared from the
screen. Darr Veter gathered together all the little trifles that belonged to
him personally and filled a box with films containing the photographs and
voices of his nearest relatives and friends and the most important records of
his own thoughts. He took a chromoreflex reproduction of an old Russian picture
from the wall and from the table he took a bronze statuette of the actress
Bello Galle, which he kept because it bore a resemblance to Veda Kong. All
these things and his few clothes he packed into an aluminium box with some
letters and figures embossed on the lid. Darr Veter dialled the coordinates he
had been given,═ opened a hatch in the
wall and pushed the box into it. The box disappeared, taken up by an endless
belt. Then he checked up on his rooms. Long before the Great Circle Era special
cleaners and charwomen had been abolished. The work was now done by every
person in his own place, something he could do because of his sense of absolute
orderliness and discipline and because domestic and public buildings were
designed more conveniently and fitted with means to clean and air them
automatically.
When he had finished his examination he pulled
down the lever at the door which immediately informed the Housing Bureau that
his rooms had been vacated. Outside, on an external gallery glazed with sheets
of milk-coloured plastic, the sun's warmth made itself felt, but on the flat
roof the sea breeze was as cool as ever. The light footbridges thrown from one
high latticed building to another seemed to be soaring in the air and tempting
the onlooker to a leisurely saunter along them. Darr Veter, however, no longer
belonged to himself. Through the tubular tunnel of the automatic descent he
made his way to the underground electromagnetic mail tunnel and a tiny truck
took him with switchback-like movements to the Spiral Way station. Darr Veter
did not travel north, to the Behring Straits, where he could get on the
intercontinental arch of the Spiral Way. To reach South America by this route,
especially as far south as the seventeenth branch, would take four days and
nights. In the northern and southern inhabited zones there were helicopter
lines that handled heavy cargo round the planet, crossing the oceans and
short-circuiting the brandies of the Spiral Way. Darr Veter travelled by the
Central Branch as far as the southern inhabited zone hoping there to be able to
convince the Director of Transport that he was urgent cargo. Apart from saving
thirty hours by going this way he would be able to see Diss Ken, the son of
Grom Orme, President of the Astronautical Council, who had selected him as his
mentor.
Diss Ken had come to the end of his school
years and in the following year would begin his twelve Labours of Hercules; in
the meantime he was working in the Watchers' Service of the West African
swamps.
Every youth wanted to enter the Watchers'
Service≈ to keep a look-out for sharks in the ocean, for harmful insects,
vampires and reptiles in the tropical swamps, for disease microbes in the living
zones, for epizoons and forest fires in the savanna and forest zones≈hunting
down and destroying all harmful life left over from the old world that in some
mysterious way kept reappearing in remote corners of the planet. The struggle
against harmful forms of life never ceased for a moment. Microorganisms,
insects and fungi reacted to new and most radical chemical destroyers by the
development of new, impervious forms. People learned to make proper use of
strong antibiotics without generating dangerous and stable bacteria only after
the Era of Disunity.
"If Diss Ken has been appointed to the
Swamp Watchers' Service,"' thought Darr Veter, ''he must be a serious
young man."
Diss Ken, Groin Orme's son, like all children
in the Great Circle Era, had been brought up away from his parents in a school
on the sea-shore in the northern zone. There, too, he had passed the first
tests made by a local station of the Academy of the Psychophysiology of Labour.
When young people were allotted work the psychological specifics of youth≈the
urge to go farther, an exaggerated sense of responsibility and egocentrism≈were
taken into consideration.
The huge coach ran on smoothly and silently.
Darr Veter went up to the top deck where there was a transparent roof. Far
below, on either side of the Spiral Way, buildings, canals, forests and
mountain tops swept past. The brightly gleaming, transparent domes of buildings
marked the narrow belt of automatic factories at the junction of the
agricultural and forestry belts. The rugged shapes of the huge servicing
machines could be clearly seen through the glass walls of the buildings.
The monument erected to Zhinn Cahd, the
inventor of a cheap method of manufacturing artificial sugar, flashed past and
then the arches of the Spiral Way cut across the forests of the tropical
agricultural zone. Plantations of trees stretching away into infinite distance
showed every conceivable shade of leaf and bark and great variety in the shape
and height. Harvesting, pollination and calculating machines crawled along the
smooth narrow roads that separated the plantations: countless cables formed a
giant cobweb. There was a time when a field of ripe, golden corn had been the
symbol of abundance. In the Era of World Unity, however, the economic
inefficiency of annual crops was realized and, after all farming had been
transferred to the tropical belt, the hard labour involved in the annual
cultivation of herbage and bush plants became unnecessary. In the Great Circle
Era perennial trees that did not take too much out of the soil and were
impervious to climatic changes, became the chief crop.
Bread, berry and nut trees, yielding thousands
of different kinds of fruit rich in proteins, produced up to a hundred
kilograms of food each. Forests of these trees ran round the planet in two
belts covering thousands of millions of acres≈true belts of Ceres, the ancient
Goddess of Agriculture. Between these two belts lay the equatorial forestry
zone, an ocean of humid tropical forests that supplied the whole world with its
timber≈white, black, violet, pink, golden and grey wood with a silky grain,
wood as hard as Lone or as soft as an apple, wood that sank like a stone and
wood that floated like cork. The forests also yielded dozens of kinds of resin
cheaper than the synthetic varieties, possessing valuable technical or
medicinal properties.
The tops of the forest giants were level with
the permanent way and waved and surged on both sides like a green ocean. In the
dark depths of these forests, in cosy-looking glades, stood houses on metal
piles and beside them mechanical spider-like monsters capable of turning these
stands of 80-metre trees into stacks of logs and planks.
To the left appeared the rounded summits of the
famous equatorial mountains. On one of them, Kenya, was the installation for
the maintenance of communications with the Great Circle. The ocean of trees
moved away to the left, making way for a stony plateau. Blue cube-shaped
buildings appeared on both sides.
The train stopped and Darr Veter stepped out on
to the extensive, glass-paved square of the Equator Station. Near the
foot-bridge that stretched over the grey tops of the Atlas cedars, stood a
white truncated pyramid of porcelain-like aplite from the River Lualaba,
surmounted by the statue of a worker of an age long past. The luxuriant silver
foliage of trees brought from South Africa surrounded the pedestal whose sides
gleamed dazzlingly bright in the sunshine. In his right hand he held a gleaming
sphere with four transmitting antennae jutting out from it, his left was
stretched out towards the pale equatorial sky. The man's body, straining
backwards as though to launch the sphere into the sky, was the expression of
inspired effort. The figures of people in strange clothing arranged around the
pedestal at the feet of the central figure increased the impression of effort.
This was a monument to the builders of the first man-made
Earth satellites, people who had performed miracles of inventiveness, labour
and courage.
Darr Veter could never look at these sculptured
faces without a feeling of excitement. He knew that the first people to build
artificial Earth satellites and reach the threshold of the Cosmos had been
Russians, that amazing nation from whom Darr Veter was descended, the people
who had taken the first steps towards building the new social order and towards
the conquest of the Cosmos....
That day, as usual, Darr Veter made his way to
the monument to look once more at the carvings of the heroes of ancient times
and to seek in them similarities and differences in comparison with the people
of his own day and with himself ....
Two tall, youthful figures appeared through the
trees, stopped and then one of them rushed to Darr Veter. He placed his arms
round Veter's shoulders and took a stealthy look at the familiar features of
that well-known face: the big nose, wide chin, the unexpectedly mirthful turn
of the lips that did not seem to fit in with the rather grim expression of the
steel-grey eyes under their joined brows.
Darr Veter cast a glance of approval over the
son of a famous man who had built bases on the planets of the Centaurus system
and had been elected President of the Astronautical Council for five three-year
periods in succession. Groin Orme must have been at least 130 years old ≈three
times the age of Darr Veter≈but his son was very young.
Diss Ken called over his friend, a dark-haired
boy.
"This is Thor Ahn, my best friend, the son
of Zieg Zohr, the composer," he said. "We're working together in the
swamps and we want to do our Labours of Hercules together and after that we
want to continue working together."
"Are you still interested in the
cybernetics of heredity?" asked Darr Veter.
"Oh, yes! Thor has got me even more
interested≈he's a musician, like his father. He and his girl-friend dream of working
in a field where music helps us understand the development of living organisms,
that is, they want to study the symphony of their structure ...."
"It's all very indefinite, the way you put
it," said Veter, frowning.
"I don't know enough yet," answered
Diss in confusion, "perhaps Thor can tell you better than I."
The other lad blushed but stood up to the test
of the penetrating glance.
"Digs wanted to tell you about the rhythms
of the mechanism of heredity. As the living organism develops from the original
cell it attunes itself by chords of molecules. The primordial paired spiral
develops along lines analogous to the development of a musical symphony, or, to
put it another way, to the logical development in an electronic computing
machine."
"Really!" exclaimed Darr Veter in
exaggerated astonishment. "Then you will reduce the entire evolution of
all living and non-living matter to some sort of a gigantic symphony?"
"The plan and internal rhythm of which are
determined by basic physical laws. We have only to understand how the programme
is built up and where the information of the musico-cybernetic mechanism comes
from," insisted Thor Ahn with the unconquerable confidence of youth.
"Whose idea is it?"
"My
father's, Zieg Zohr's. He recently published his 13th Cosmic Symphony in
F-minor, Colour Tone 4.75 ╣.
"I'll most certainly hear it! I love blue
tones.... Now about your immediate plans, your Labours of Hercules. Do you know
what has been allotted you?"
"Only the first six."
"Of course, the other six will be allotted
when the first half has been done," Darr Veter recalled.
"Clean out the lower tier
of the Kon-I-Gut caves in Central Asia so that visitors can go there."
began Thor Ahn.
"Build a road to Lake Mental across the
steep mountain ridge," continued Diss Ken, "renew a grove of old
bread trees in the Argentine, explain the causes for the appearance of big
octopuses in the region of the recent lift near Trinidad ...."
"And destroy them!"
"That's five, what's the sixth?"
The two lads turned somewhat bashful.
"We are both proficient at music,"
began Diss Ken, blushing, "and ... we have been asked to collect material
on the ancient dances of the Island of Bali and resuscitate them musically and
choreographically."
"By that do you mean select girls to dance
them and form a troupe?" laughed Darr Veter.
"Yes," admitted Thor Ahn,
unwillingly.
"An interesting job. But that's a group
job, like the road to the lake, isn't it?"
"Yes, we've got a good group. Only ...
they want you to be their mentor, too. It would be fine if you only
agreed!"
Darr Veter doubted his abilities with regard to
the last of the six tasks. The lads, however, their faces beaming, danced for
joy and assured him that "Zieg Zohr himself" had promised to guide
the sixth task.
"In a year and four months I'll find
myself something to do in Central Asia," said Darr Veter, pleased at the
happy faces of the two youngsters.
"It's a good thing you're not Director of
the Outer Stations any more," exclaimed Diss Ken, "I never thought
I'd be working with such a mentor! ..." The lad suddenly blushed so
furiously that his forehead was covered with tiny beads of perspiration and
Thor even moved away from him with an expression of reproach. Darr Veter
hurried to help Grom Orme's son over his faux pas. "Have you got plenty of
time?"
"No, we were given three hours off and we
brought a man here who is ill with a fever he caught in our swamps."
"Is there still fever here? I thought...." "It's very rare and
only occurs in the swamps," put in Diss, very hurriedly, "that's what
we're here for!"
"So we still have two hours left. Let's go
into the town, you'll probably want to go to News House."
"Oh, no. We'd like you to ... answer our
questions≈ we have got them ready and you know how important it is when we are
selecting our life's work."
Darr Veter gave his consent and the three of
them went to the Guest Hall and sat in one of its cool rooms fanned with an
artificial sea breeze.
Two hours later another coach took Darr Veter
farther on his way; tired out he dozed on a sofa on the lower deck. He woke up
when the train stopped in the City of Chemists. A huge structure in the form of
a star with ten glazed glass-covered radial buildings stretching from it rose
up over an extensive coal-field. The coal that was extracted here was processed
into medicines, vitamins, hormones, artificial silk and fur. The waste products
went for the manufacture of sugar. In one of the rays of the Star the rare
metals germanium and vanadium were extracted from the coal≈there was no end to
the things that could be got out of that valuable black mineral!
One of Darr Veter's old friends who worked as a
chemist in the fur ray came to the station to meet him. Once, long before,
there had been three happy young mechanics working on the fruit-gathering machines
in Indonesia. Now one of them was a chemist in charge of a laboratory in a big
factory, the second had remained a fruit-grower and bad invented a valuable new
pollination process and the third, Darr Veter, was once more returning to
Mother Earth, only deeper down this time, into the mines. The friends spent no
more than ten minutes together, but even such a meeting was much pleasanter
than meetings on the TVP.
He had not much farther to go. The Director of
the latitudinal air lines listened to his persuasion with the 'friendly
helpfulness that was typical of the Great Circle Era. Darr Veter flew across
the ocean and arrived on the western section of the Spiral Way south of the
seventeenth branch, at the dead end of which he transferred to a hydroplane to
continue his journey.
High mountains came right down to the sea. The
gentler slops at the foot were terraced with white stone to hold the soil and
were planted with rows of southern pines and Widdringtonia in alternate avenues
of bronze and bluish-green needles. High up the bare rocks, there were clefts
to be seen in which waterfalls sent up clouds of water dust. Buildings painted
bright orange or yellow with bluish-grey roofs stretched at intervals along the
terraces.
Jutting out into sea there was an artificial
sand-bank at the end of which stood a wave-washed tower. It stood at the edge
of the continental shelf which in those parts ended in a submarine cliff a good
thousand metres deep. From the tower an extremely thick concrete pipe, strong
enough to withstand the pressure in the depths of the ocean, led down
vertically. At the bottom the pipe rested on the summit of a submarine mountain
that consisted almost entirely of pure rutile or titanium dioxide. The
processing of the ore was done under the water, inside the mountain. All that
reached the surface was slabs of pure titanium and waste products that spread
far into sea, turning the water a muddy yellow. The hydroplane tossed on the
yellow waves in front of the landing stage on the southern side of the tower,
and Darr Veter waited his opportunity to jump on to the spray-soaked platform.
He went upstairs to the railed gallery where several people, not on duty,
gathered to welcome the newcomer. Darr' Veter had imagined the mine to be in
complete isolation but the people who met him were not at all the anchorites
his own mood had led him to expect. The faces that greeted him were happy even
if they were somewhat tired from their exacting work. There five men and three
women≈so women worked there, too!
Before ten days had passed Darr Veter had
settled down to his new job.
The mine had its own power plant≈in the depths
of the abandoned workings on the mainland there was an old nuclear power
station type E, or type 2, as it used to be called, which did not have a
harmful fall-out and was, therefore, useful for local stations.
A most involved complex of machines was housed
in the stone belly of the submarine mountain and moved forward as it bit into
the friable reddish-brown mineral. The most difficult work was at the bottom of
the installation where the ore was automatically extracted and crushed. The
machine received signals from the central control post in the upper storey
where all the data on the work of the cutting and crushing apparatus, on the
changing hardness and viscosity of the extracted rock as well as information
from the flotation tables were accumulated. Depending on the changing metal
content in the ore, the crushing and washing arrangements were accelerated or
decelerated. The work had to be done by mechanics as the entire control could
not be passed over to cybernetic machines owing to the small area protected
from the sea.
Darr Veter was given the job of mechanic,
testing and setting the lower assembly. He spent his daily tours of duty in
semi-dark rooms, packed with indicator dials, where the pump of the air
conditioning system could scarcely cope with the overwhelming heat made worse
by the increased pressure due to the inevitable leakage of compressed air.
After work Darr Veter and his young assistant
would make their way to the top, stand for a long time on the balcony breathing
in the fresh air, then take a bath, eat and go each to his own room in one of
the houses at the pithead. Darr Veter had tried to renew his study of the new
cochlear branch of mathematics but, as time went on, he began to fall asleep
more and more quickly, waking up only in time for work. As the months passed he
began to feel better. He seemed to have forgotten his former contact with the
Cosmos. Like all other workers at the titanium mines he got pleasure out of
seeing off the rafts that transported the ingots of titanium. Since the polar
ice-caps had been reduced, storms all over the planet had decreased in violence
so that many cargoes could be transported on sea-going rafts, either pulled by
tugs or self-propelled. The staff of the mines changed but Darr Veter, with two
other mining enthusiasts, stayed for another term.
Nothing goes on for ever in this changing world
and in the mine the ore crushing and washing assembly had to atop work for an
overhaul. It was then that Darr Veter made his first visit to the mine chamber
beyond the tunnelling shield where he had to wear a special suit to protect him
from the heat and pressure and from sudden streams of poisonous gas that burst
out of cracks in the rocks. The brilliantly illuminated brown rutile walls
gleamed with a special diamond-like lustre of their own and gave off flashing
red lights like the infuriated glower of eyes hidden in the mineral. It was
exceptionally quiet in the chamber. The hydro-electric spark rock-drill and the
huge discs radiating ultra-short waves stood motionless for the first time in
many months. Geophysicists who had only just arrived, were busy under the
shields setting up their instruments, so as to take advantage of the stoppage
to check the contours of the mineral deposit.
On the surface it was autumn, a period of calm,
hot days in the south. Darr Veter went up into the mountains and felt very
strongly the loneliness of those masses of stone that had stood poised between
sea and sky for thousands of years. The dry grass rustled and from down below
came the faint sounds of the surf beating against the shore. His tired body
asked for rest but his brain grasped hungrily at impressions of the world that
came fresh to him after long, arduous labour underground.
The former Director of the Outer Stations,
breathing deeply the odour of heated rocks and desert grasses, recalled the
little island in a distant sea where the golden horse had been hidden. And he
had faith in his intuitive feeling that there was much that was good still
ahead of him, and that the better and stronger he himself was the more of the
good there would be.
Sow a fault and
reap a habit.
Sow a habit and reap a
character.
Sow a character and reap your
fate ...
was the way the old saw went. Yes, he thought
to himself, man's greatest fight is against egoism. This is a fight that cannot
be fought by sentimental rules and pretty but helpless morals but by the
dialectic realization that egoism is not the outcome of some forces of evil but
is a natural instinct of primitive man that played an important role in his
life as a savage and had been his means of self-preservation. This is why
strong, outstanding individuals often have egoism highly developed and find it
difficult to combat. The victory over egoism is, however, essential, probably
the most important thing in modern society. This accounts for the time and
effort that are expended on the upbringing of young people and the care with which
the structure of every person's heredity is studied. In the great mixture of
races and peoples that forms the single family of our planet today, the most
unexpected traits of character belonging to distant ancestors suddenly emerge
out of the depths of heredity. There are the most amazing deviations of a
psychology acquired at the time of the great calamities in the Era of Disunity,
when engineers were not careful enough in their use of nuclear energy and did
great hereditary harm to many people. There was a time when genealogies were
drawn up for predatory conquerors who called themselves noble and high born;
this was done to enable them to place themselves and their families above all
others. Today we understand the great importance of genealogy in life≈in the
selection of a profession, for medical treatment, etc. Darr Veter had formerly
possessed a long genealogy, but today such things are no longer necessary. The
study of ancestors has been replaced by the direct analysis of the structure of
heredity mechanisms which is much more important in view of greater longevity.
Ever since the Era of Common Labour people have been living to the age of 170
and now it is clear that even 300 is not the limit....
The rattle of stones awakened Darr Veter out of
his complicated and vague reverie. Coming down the valley from above were two
people, an operator from the electro-smelting section, a reticent and bashful
young woman and an excellent pianist, and an engineer from the surface
workings, lively and small in stature. They were both flushed from their rapid
walk, greeted Darr Veter and would have passed on, but he stopped them in
response to something he suddenly remembered.
"I've been wanting to ask you a long
time,'' lie said, turning to the young woman. "Can you play something for
me≈the 13th Blue Cosmic Symphony in F-Minor. You've often played for us but
you've never played that even once."
"Do you mean Zieg Zohr's Cosmic?" she
asked and when Darr Veter answered with a nod of confirmation she burst out
laughing.
"There aren't many people on the planet
who could play that piece for you. A solar piano with a triple keyboard is not
enough and it hasn't been transposed yet... and probably never will be. Why
don't you ask the House of Higher Music to play a recording for you? Our
receiver is universal and has power enough!"
"I don't know how," muttered Darr
Veter, "before, I never...."
"I'll do it for you this evening,"
she said and, holding out her hand to her companion, continued her way down the
valley.
For the rest of the day Darr Veter could not
rid him-elf of the feeling that something important was going to happen. It was
probably the same feeling that had come over Mven Mass on his first night's
work at the observatory. With a peculiar impatience he waited for eleven
o'clock, the time the House of Higher Music had appointed for the transmission
of the symphony.
The electro-smelting operator undertook the
role of Master of Ceremonies and seated Darr Veter and other music lovers in
the focus of the hemispherical screen and opposite the sound reproducer in the
music room. She turned out the lights, explaining that with them on it would be
difficult to follow the colour scheme of the symphony that could only be
properly performed in a special hall and must, in this transmission, of
necessity be confined to the limits of the screen.
The screen flickered faintly in the darkness
and the noise of the sea could just be heard. Somewhere, incredibly far away, a
low note sounded, a note so rich in tone that it seemed almost tangible. It
grew in volume, shattering the room and the hearts of the listeners and then
suddenly became softer, rose to a higher note and was broken and scattered in a
million crystal fragments. Tiny orange sparks appeared in the dark atmosphere.
It was like that flash of primordial lightning whose discharge on Earth,
millions of centuries ago, had fused simple carbon compounds to form the more
intricate molecules, the basis of organic matter and life.
A wave of alarming and dissonant sounds flooded
the room, a thousand-voiced chorus of will-power, yearning and despair to
complement which vague shadows of purple and vermillion came in hurried flashes
and died away again.
In the movement of the short and strongly
vibrant notes a circular arrangement could be felt and was accompanied by' an
irregular spiral of whirling grey fire in the heights. Suddenly the whirling
chorus of sounds was severed by long notes, proud and resonant, filled with
impetuous force.
The vague fiery outlines of space were pierced
by clear lines of blue fiery arrows that flew into the bottomless void beyond
the edges of the spiral and were drowned in the darkness of horror and silence.
Darkness and silence≈on this note ended the
first movement of the symphony.
The audience, slightly staggered, did not have
time to pronounce a single word before the music began again. Extensive
cascades of powerful sounds were accompanied by dazzling opalescences that
covered the whole spectrum;
they fell, weakening as they grew lower, and
glowing fire died away to their melancholy rhythm. Again something narrow and
vehement broke through the falling cascades and again blue lights began their
rhythmic, dancing ascent.
Astounded, Darr Veter caught in the blue sounds
an urge towards ever more complicated rhythms and forms and thought that the
primitive struggle of life against entropy could not be better expressed.
Steps, dams, filters holding back the cascades that were falling to lower
levels of energy .... To retain them for one moment and in that moment to live!
So, so and so≈there they were, those first splashes of the complicated
organization of matter.
Blue arrows resolved into a round dance of
geometric figures, crystal and lattice forms that grew more complicated to the
accompaniment of various combinations of minor tercets, fell apart, were again
combined and then suddenly dissolved in the grey twilight.
The third movement began with the measured
tread of bass notes in time with which blue lanterns were lit and extinguished
as they moved off into the void of infinite space and time. The surge of
tramping basses increased, their rhythm grew faster until they merged into a
broken, ominous melody. The blue lights were like flowers swaying on thin stems
of fire≈they bowed their heads sadly under the flood of low, thundering and
blasting notes and were extinguished in the distance. But the lines of lights
or lanterns became denser and their stems were thicker. Then two fiery strips
marked a road leading into immeasurable blackness and the resonant golden
voices of life floated into the immenseness of the Universe, warming fcwith a
glorious warmth gloomy, indifferent, ever-moving [patter. The dark road changed
to a river, a gigantic stream f blue flames in which splashes of multicoloured
fire made K pattern that was constantly changing and becoming more Intricate.
The higher combinations of rounded, regular
curves and spherical surfaces were of a beauty equal to that of "the
contradictory quartal chords, in the succession of which a complicated resonant
melody increased rapidly, whirling more powerfully and expansively in the
rhythmical advance of the low rumble of time.
Darr Veter's head was in a whirl and he could
no longer follow all the shades of music and colour and was able to grasp only
the general outline of the gigantic idea. The blue ocean of high notes, pure as
crystal, glowed with a beaming, unusually powerful, joyful and clear colour.
The tone rose higher and higher and the melody itself began rotating furiously
in an ascending spiral until it broke off in flight, in a blinding flash of
fire.
The symphony was over and Darr Veter realized
what lie had been missing all these long months. He needed work that was closer
to the Cosmos, closer to the tirelessly unwinding spiral of human urge forward
into the future. He went straight from the music room to the telephone room and
from there called the Central Employment Bureau of the northern living zone.
The young clerk who had sent him to work in the mines was pleased when he
recognized him.
"They called for you from the
Astronautical Council this morning," he said, "but I could not get in
touch with you. I'll put you through now."
The screen grew blank and then the light came
on again and Mir Ohm, the senior of the four secretaries of the Council,
appeared. His face wore a very serious look and, Darr Veter thought, a look
mingled with sadness.
"There has been a great catastrophe!
Satellite 57 has perished! The Council is calling you for a most difficult job.
I'll send an ion-powered planetship for you. Be ready to leave!"
Darr Veter stood motionless in amazement in
front of the already empty screen.
The wide verandah of the observatory was open
to the winds that brought the perfume of flowering plants from the hot African
cost across the sea, a perfume that aroused an urgent yearning in a man▓s soul.
Mven Mass could not compose himself into the state of clarity and firmness,
when no doubts remained, that was essential on the eve of a decisive
experiment. Renn Bose had reported from Tibet that the Corr Yule installation
had been reconstructed and was ready. The four observers on Satellite 57 had
willingly agreed to risk their lives if that would help in carrying out an
experiment such as Earth had never before known.
The experiment, however, was being mounted
without the permission of the Council and without an extensive preliminary
discussion of all possibilities. This made it seem like the secret manufacture
of weapons in the darkest eras of man's history and gave it a flavour of
cowardly secrecy not common to people of today.
It is true that the great objective they hoped
to reach Seemed to justify the means, but... they had to remain pure in spirit!
The old human conflict between the end and the means of its attainment had
arisen: and the experience of thousands of generations teaches mankind that
there is a certain boundary limiting the means to an end that must not be
overstepped.
The case of Beth Lohn gave the African no rest.
Thirty-two years before, one of Earth's leading mathematicians, Beth Lohn, had
discovered that certain signs of displacement in the interaction of strong
power fields could be explained by the existence of parallel dimensions. He
carried out a series of interesting experiments involving the disappearance of
objects. The Academy of the Bounds of Knowledge found an error in his
computations and produced an explanation of the observed phenomena that
differed from his in principle. Beth Lohn, with his powerful mind hypertrophied
at the expense of an underdeveloped sense of moral values and uninhibited
desires, was a man of great strength and equally great egoism who decided to
continue his experiments in his own way. To get convincing proofs he drew into
the work courageous young volunteers who were willing to sacrifice themselves
in the service of science. The people in Beth Lohn's experiments disappeared as
completely as the things had done and, contrary to the hopes of the ruthless
mathematician, not one of them made his presence known from "the other
side" of the other dimension. When Beth Lohn had sent a group of twelve
people into "non-existence," in other words had destroyed them, he
was arraigned before the court. He succeeded in proving that he really believed
his victims to be alive and somewhere in another dimension and that he had only
acted with their consent; he was condemned to exile, spent ten years on Mercury
and then, on returning to Earth, went to the Island of Oblivion, out of
resentment for our world. Mven Mass felt that Beth Lohn's story was very much like
his own; there, too, a secret experiment undertaken for objectives rejected by
science had been forbidden and this was an analogy that Mven Mass did not like.
In two days' time there would be a transmission
round the Great Circle and after that he would be free for eight days for the
experiment!
Mven Mass threw back his head to look at the
sky. The stars seemed brighter and nearer than usual. Many of them he knew by
their ancient names, knew them as old friends≈and were they not, indeed, the
age-old friends of man that had shown him his ways, given him lofty ideas and
encouraged him to dream?
A not very bright star inclining to the
northern horizon was the Pole Star or Gamma Cephei. In the Era of Disunity the
Pole Star had been in Ursa Minor, the Little Bear, but the revolution of the
fringe of the Galaxy, and of the solar system with it, was in the direction of
Cepheus. Cygnus, the Swan, one of the most interesting constellations in the
northern sky, stretching through the Milky Way, had its long neck turned to the
south. In this constellation there was a most beautiful binary star that the
ancient Arabs had named Albireo. It was afterwards discovered that there were
really three stars, the binary Albireo I and Albireo II, a huge blue star with
an extensive planetary system. They were almost as far from us as Deneb, the
huge star in the Swan's tail with a luminosity equal to 4,800 of our suns. Only
eight years before this a direct answer had been received from the inhabited
worlds of the Dencb system to a message transmitted in the second year of the
Great Circle Era. During the last transmission our trusty friend 61 Cygni had
received a message of warning from Albireo II some 400 years after it had been
sent but which was nevertheless of great interest. A famous Cosmic explorer
from Albireo II whose name was transmitted in terrestrial sounds as Vlihh oz
Ddiz, had been lost in the vicinity of the Lyra Constellation where he met one
of the greatest dangers of the Cosmos, an Ookr star. Terrestrial scientists have
placed these stars in class E so called in honour of Einstein, the greatest
physicist of ancient days, who predicted their existence although it was long
disputed; the limit for the mass of a star was even determined and given the
name of the Chandrasekhar Limit. But that ancient astronomer based his
calculations exclusively on the mechanics of gravitation and thermodynamics and
did not take into consideration the intricate electromagnetic structure of the
giant stars. It was precisely these forces that conditioned the existence of E
stars that in size rival the huge red M class giants like Antares or Betelgeuse
but their density is greater, something like that of our Sun. The terrific
gravitation of such bodies prevented radiation so that light could not leave
the star and travel through space.
These inconceivably gigantic and mysterious
masses had existed in space for an infinitely long time, secretly drawing into
their inert ocean everything that came within reach of the inescapable
tentacles of their gravity.
There were periods of the lengthy accumulation
of matter that later ended with the heating of the surface of the star until it
reached class O", that is, reached a temperature of 100,000╟ C.; at last
there came the final explosion that hurled into space new stars with new
planets, in the way the Crab Nebula once exploded and spread until it had a
diameter of fifty billion kilometres.
There was a similar idea in ancient Indian
religious mythology; the periods of the deity's inert repose were called the
Nights of Brahma which alternated with his Days, the periods of creative
activity.
The explosion was equal in force to the
explosion of a quadrillion of the murderous hydrogen bombs made in the Era of
Disunity.
The presence in space of absolutely dark stars
of the E class could only be guessed by their gravitation and a spaceship whose
course lay in the vicinity of the monster was doomed. The invisible infrared
stars of the T class also constituted a danger to spaceships; the same applied
to dark clouds of big particles or absolutely cold bodies of the TT class.
Mven Mass stood thinking that the establishment
of the Great Circle that linked up all the worlds inhabited by reasoning beings
had been the greatest of all revolutions for Earth and, consequently, for all
inhabited planets. Firstly, this had been a victory over time, over the
shortness of the span of human life, that had prevented us and our thinking
brothers in other worlds from penetrating into the farther depths of space. The
transmission of information around the Great Circle was the transmission into
an indefinite future since human thought, transmitted in this form, would
continue its journey through space until it reached the farthest regions. The
study of the most distant stars had become possible because the receipt of
information from any place where there were planets that understood the Circle
was only a matter of time. Only recently Earth received a message from the huge
but very distant star known as Gamma Cygni; the star is 2,800 parsecs from us
and a message takes over 9,000 years to reach Earth but that which had been
received was understandable and could be deciphered by those members of the
Great Circle whose thought processes are similar. It is another matter if a
message should come from globular stellar systems or clusters that are older
than our flat systems.
The same is true of the centre of the Galaxy≈in
its axial star-cloud there is a colossal zone of life on millions of planet
systems that do not know the darkness of night for they are illuminated by the
radiation of the centre of the Galaxy! Incomprehensible communications have
been received from there, pictures of intricate structure that cannot be
expressed by any of our concepts. The Academy of the Bounds of Knowledge has
been trying, unsuccessfully, to decipher them for eight hundred years. And yet,
perhaps.... The African's heart missed a beat at the suddenness of the
idea≈reports from the nearer planet systems, members of the Great Circle, dealt
with the internal
life of each of the inhabited planets, its science, technology, its works of
art while the distant, ancient worlds of the Galaxy showed the external.
Cosmic movement of their science and life. How they rearranged the planetary
systems to suit themselves.... How they sweep space clear of meteoroids that
interfere with spaceships and dump them, together with cold planets unsuited to
life, into their central sun in order to lengthen the duration of its radiation
or with the intention of increasing its heating effect. If that is not enough,
perhaps they rearrange neighbouring planetary systems where the best conditions
of life for gigantic civilizations are created....
Half ironically, half seriously, Mven Mass got
in touch with the Repository of Great Circle Records and selected the catalogue
number of a distant message. The screen of his viewer was filled with strange
pictures that had reached Earth from the globular cluster Omega Centauri. This
cluster is the second nearest to the solar system and is only 6,800 parsecs
removed. Light from its bright stars travelled through outer space for 22,000
years before reaching the eye of earthbound man.
A dense blue haze spread in even layers that
were pierced by vertical black cylinders rotating fairly rapidly. The contours
of the cylinders were scarcely perceptible≈from time to time they contracted
until they were like squat cones with their bases joined. Then the blue haze
would break up into fiery crescents that revolved madly about the axes of the
cones. Blackness retreated into the heights, liuge, dazzlingly white columns
grew up and from behind them faceted points, green in colour, formed diagonal
curtains....
Mven Mass rubbed his forehead in an effort to
grasp anything that made sense.
On the screen the pointed green blades wound in
spirals around the white columns and suddenly showered down in a stream of
gleaming metal globes that lay in the form of a broad, circular belt. The belt
began to grow in width and in height. Mven Mass smiled and switched off the
record, returning to his former contemplation....
Owing to the absence of populated worlds, or
rather, to the absence of contact with them in the higher latitudes of the
Galaxy, the people of Earth were still unable to get out of the equatorial belt
of the Galaxy where space is darkened by fragments of matter and dust. We could
not rise above the gloom in which our star and its neighbours are plunged. It
was, therefore, difficult for us to learn about the Universe, even with the aid
of the Great Circle.
Mven Mass turned his eyes to the horizon, to
the Coma Berenices Constellation lying below Ursa Major and under the Canes
Venatici. This was the North Pole of the Galaxy≈in this direction lay the whole
expanse of extragalactic space in the same way as at the opposite point of the
sky, in the Piscis Anstrinus Constellation, near the well-known star Fomalhaut,
lay the South Pole of the galactic system. In the outer region of the Galaxy,
where our Sun is situated, the width of the branch of the spiral galactic disc
is no more than 600 parsecs. Perpendicular to the plane of the galactic equator
it was enough to cover a distance of 300-400 parsecs to rise above the level of
the Galaxy's gigantic stellar wheel. This route could not be covered by a
spaceship but it was well within reach of Circle transmissions ... but ... so
far not a single planet of any of the stars in those areas had joined the
Circle.
These eternal riddles and unanswered questions
would have been turned into nothing if another revolution, the greatest in
science, could be achieved≈if time could be conquered, if we could learn to
overcome any distance in any span of time and enter the endless expanses of the
Cosmos as its master. Then our Galaxy and other stellar islands would be no
farther away from us than the tiny islands of the Mediterranean, against which
the sea was splashing down below in the darkness of night. This was
justification for the desperate experiment planned by Renn Bose and being put
into effect by him. by Mven Mass, Director of the Outer Stations. If only they
could have a better scientific basis to their experiment and obtain the
sanction of the Council....
The lights of the Spiral Way changed colour
from orange to white≈2 a.m. the traffic peak. Mven Mass remembered that next
day there would be the Fete of the Flaming Bowls to which Chara Nandi had
invited him. The Director of the Outer Stations could not forget the
reddish-bronze girl with her precisely supple movements that he had met on the
beach. She was like a flower of sincerity and strong passions, rare enough in
an epoch when feelings had been disciplined.
Mven Mass went back to his study, called the
Institute of Metagalactics, that worked at night, and asked them to send him
stereotelefilms of a few galaxies next evening. Having obtained their consent
he went up to the roof of the inner building where he kept his long-range
leaping apparatus. Mven Mass was very fond of this unpopular sport and had
achieved a fair degree of skill. He strapped the helium container to his body,
leaped agilely into the air and for a second switched on a tractor propeller
that was driven by a light accumulator. He described an arc about 600 metres
long and, landing on a ledge of the Catering House, repeated the jump. In five
such leaps he reached a small garden under a limestone cliff where he landed on
an aluminium tower, removed the apparatus and slid down a pole to the ground
and so to his hard bed standing under a huge plane-tree.
The African fell asleep to the rustling of the
leaves of the giant tree.
The Fete of the Flaming Bowls got its name from the well-known poem by the poet-historian Zann Senn in which he describes the ancient Indian custom of selecting the most beautiful women to carry swords and bowls containing flaming aromatic incense to heroes about to set out for the performance of great deeds. Swords and bowls were no longer in use but remained as the symbol of heroism. Heroic deeds had grown to countless numbers amongst the bold and energetic population of the planet. A tremendous capacity for work, possessed in the past by only those few people who were known as geniuses, depended entirely on the physical strength of the body and an abundance of hormone stimulators. Correct physical training for thousands of years had made the average person on the planet the equal of the heroes of antiquity, insatiable in his desire for heroic deeds, love and knowledge.
The Fete of the Flaming Bowls was the women's
spring festival. Every year in the fourth month after the winter solstice or,
according to the old calendar, in April, the most beautiful women on Earth took
part in dances, singing and gymnastics. The finest shades of beauty of the
various races that showed in the mixed population of the planet were to be seen
here in inexhaustible variety like the facets of a precious stone; they gave
endless pleasure to their audiences which included everybody from scientists
and engineers, tired out with their meticulous labours, to inspired artists and
the still youthful pupils of the Third Cycle schools.
No less beautiful was the Festival of Hercules,
the men's autumn festival celebrated in the ninth month. At this festival young
men coming of age reported on the Herculean labours they had performed. Later
it became the custom on these occasions to review all the noteworthy deeds and
achievements of the past year. And so the festival had become a general one,
celebrated by both men and women, and lasting three days≈the Day of Useful
Excellence, the Day of Higher Art, and the Day of Scientific Audacity and
Fantasy. One year Mven Mass had been elected hero of the first and third days.
Veda Kong sang a number of songs. Mven Mass
appeared the gigantic Solar Hall of the Tyrrhenian Stadium during her
performance. He found the ninth sector of the fourth radius where Evda Nahl and
Chara Nandi were sitting and stood there in the shadow of an arcade listening
to Veda's low deep voice. She was dressed in white. Her blonde head thrown back
and her face turned to the upper galleries of the hall, she was singing a song
of joy and to the African she seemed the very incarnation of spring. Every
member of the audience pressed one of the four buttons in front of him. The
golden, blue, emerald or red lights flickering on the ceiling showed the artist
to what extent the performance had been appreciated and took the place of the
noisy applause of former days.
Veda finished singing and was awarded by a
bright cluster of gold and blue lights amongst which the very few green ones
were completely lost. Her face flushed with excitement as usual, she ran to her
friends. At that moment they were joined by Mven Mass whom they heartily
welcomed.
The African looked round the stadium in search
of his teacher and predecessor but Darr Veter was nowhere to be seen.
"Where have you hidden Darr Veter?"
he asked jokingly, turning to the three women.
"And where have you hidden Renn
Bose?" Evda Nahl replied, and the African hastily avoided her penetrating
glance.
"Veter is digging holes in South
America," said the more kind-hearted Veda and a shadow passed over her
face. With a protective gesture Chara Nandi pulled Veda towards her, pressing
her cheek against Veda's. The faces of the two women were vastly different but
possessed a gentle tenderness which lent them similarity.
Chara's eyebrows; straight and low under a high
forehead, resembled the outline of a soaring bird and were in perfect harmony
with her long narrow eyes. Veda's eyebrows slanted upwards.
"A bird flapping its wings," thought
the African. Chara's thick, shining; black hair lay on her neck and shoulders
contrasting sharply with Veda's fair hair, piled high on her head.
Chara glanced at the clock in the domed roof
and got up. Her dress astounded the African. On the girl's smooth shoulders lay
a platinum chain leaving her high neck open. The chain was fastened below her
throat by a gleaming red tourmaline.
Her firm breasts, like wide upturned bowls
carved with a very delicate chisel, were almost completely exposed. Between
them, stretching from the tourmaline clasp to her belt ran a narrow strip of
dark purple velvet. Similar strips, running across the middle of each breast,
were held taut by the chain and joined on her bare back. The girl's very narrow
waist was encircled by a white belt besprinkled with black stars and fastened
by a platinum buckle in the form of a crescent, from which a strip of dark
purple velvet hung down to her knees. Attached to her belt behind was what
seemed like half a long skirt of heavy white silk, also decorated with black
stars. The dancer wore no jewels with the exception of glittering buckles on
her tiny black slippers.
, "It will soon be my turn!" said
Chara calmly making her way towards the arcade exit; she glanced at Mven lass
and disappeared, accompanied by whispered questions and thousands of curious
glances.
The stage was occupied by a gymnast, a
beautifully proportioned girl no more than eighteen years old. In the golden
floodlights, to the recitative of the music, she went through an amazingly
rapid succession of leaps, springs and turns, balancing with unbelievable
equilibrium to slow, lyrical passages of music. The audience awarded her
performance with a multitude of golden lights and Mven Mass thought that it
would not be easy for Chara Nandi to dance after such a successful number. He
looked anxiously at the faceless multitude of people opposite and suddenly
noticed the artist Cart Sann sitting in the third sector. The latter greeted
him with a gaiety that the African felt out of place≈who, if not the artist who
had painted Chara's picture as the Daughter of the Mediterranean, should have
been perturbed at the outcome of her performance.
The African was just thinking that after his
experiment he would go to see the Daughter of the Mediterranean when the
lights overhead were extinguished. The transparent floor of organic glass
gleamed with the cherry-red light of hot iron. Streams of red light poured out
from under low footlights around the stage. The lights moved back and forth
keeping time with the marked rhythm of the melody and merging with the resonant
song of the violins and the low hum of bronze strings. Mven Mass was somewhat
staggered by the power and tempestuousness of the music and did not immediately
notice Chara as she appeared in the centre of that flaming floor and began her
dance at a Speed that took the onlookers' breath away.
Mven Mass was afraid of what might happen if
the music demanded still greater acceleration of the dance. She danced not only
with her legs and arms≈the girl's entire body responded to the blazing fire of
the music with equally searing flames of life. The African thought that if the
women of ancient India had been like Chara, then the poet had been right in
likening them to flaming bowls and in giving that name to the women's fete.
Chara's reddish sunburn turned to a bright copper
in the glow of the stage and the floor. Mven Mass's heart beat wildly. The
woman he had seen on the fabulous planet of Epsilon Toucanis had skin of just
that colour. At that time, also, he had learned there existed such a thing as
the inspiration of a body capable of employing its movements, its delicate
changes of beautiful forms, to express the most profound shades of feeling,
fantasy and passion, to express a prayer for happiness.
Up to that moment he had known nothing but the
urge to overcome the unattainable distance of ninety parsecs but now Mven Mass
realized that flowers just as beautiful as the carefully nurtured picture of
the distant planet were to be found in the inexhaustible treasure-house of
terrestrial beauty. But his long-cherished urge to achieve an unattainable
dream did not pass so quickly. Chara's likeness to the red-skinned daughter in
the world of Epsilon Toucanis only served to strengthen the determination of
the Director of the Outer Stations. If so much joy was to be felt from one
Chara Nandi what would the world be like where the majority of the women were
like her?!
Evda Nahl and Veda Kong, excellent dancers
themselves, were staggered at this, the first of Chara's dances that they had
seen. Veda, anthropologist and specialist in the history of the ancient races,
had come to the decision that in the past the women of Gondwana, the southern
countries, had exceeded the men in number because men were often killed hunting
dangerous wild beasts. Later when the despotic states of the Ancient East were
established in the densely populated countries of the south, the men continued
to be killed in wars, by religious excesses and by the whims of the despots.
The daughters of the south went through a period of the strictest selection
that developed the finer points of adaptation. In the north, where the
population was scantier and nature less bounteous, there had not been such
despotism in the Dark Ages. More men survived, women were more valued and lived
a more dignified life.
Veda followed Chara's every gesture and
conceived the idea that in all her movements there was an amazing duality≈they
were at once gentle and predatory. The gentleness came from the graceful
movements and unbelievable suppleness of the body and the predatory impression
was created by the abrupt changes, turns and poses that followed each other
with the elusive rapidity that is natural in the wild beast. This feline
litheness had been achieved by the dark-skinned daughters of Gondwana in the
thousands of years of the struggle for existence through which the debased and
enslaved women of the southern continents had lived ... but in Chara it was
harmonically combined with the small firm features of a Creto-Hellenic face.
The dissonant sounds of some percussion
instruments merged in a short, slower adagio. The urgent, ever swifter rhythm
of the rise and fall of human emotions was expressed in the dance by the
alternation of movements full of meaning and their almost complete cessation
when the dancer turned into a motionless statue. Slumbering emotions were
aroused, flared up stormily, wilted in their exhaustion, died and were born
again, stormy and untasted ≈life, fettered and struggling against the
inevitable march of time, against the clear-cut, merciless definiteness of duty
and fate. Evda Nahl felt that the psychological basis of the dance was
something so near to her that her cheeks became flushed and her breathing
quickened.
Mven Mass did not know that the composer had
written the ballet suite specially for Chara Nandi, but he was no longer afraid
of the wild tempo when he saw how well the girl was coping with it. Scarlet
waves of light embraced her copper body, gave off crimson splashes from her
strong legs, were drowned in the dark whirls of velvet and turned the white
silk to the pink of dawn. Her arms, raised and thrown back, slowly ceased their
motion over her head. Suddenly, without any finale, the music broke off in a
stormy clangour of high notes and the red lights came to a standstill and were
extinguished. The high dome of the building was flooded with its usual light.
The tired girl bowed her head and her thick hair covered her face. The
thousands of golden lights were followed by a dull noise. The audience were
doing Chara the greatest of all honours≈they were thanking her by standing up
and stretching their clasped hands towards her. Chara, who, before the
performance, had not known a tremor, lost her self-possession, threw back the
hair from her face and ran away, after a glance towards the upper galleries. Mven
Mass knew then why the artist had been so calm≈he knew his model.
The Master of Ceremonies announced an entr'acte.
Mven Mass hurried to look for Chara while Veda Kong and Evda Nahl went out on
to the gigantic opaque glass staircase, a thousand metres wide, that led from
the stadium straight down to the sea. The evening twilight, lucid and warm,
tempted the two women to bathe, following the example of thousands of other
spectators from the fete.
"No wonder I was attracted to Chara Nandi
the moment I saw her," said Evda Nahl. "She's a remarkable artist.
Today we have seen the Dance of the Power of Life, in which is incorporated the
best of everything that constitutes the foundation of the human soul and is
frequently its ruler. That must contain something of the erotic dances of the
ancients!"
"Now I understand Cart Sann, for beauty
really is more important than we think. Beauty is the happiness and the meaning
of life≈how well he said that! And your definition is a true one!" agreed
Veda, kicking off a shoe and putting her foot into the warm water that splashed
against the steps.
"It is a true one if the psychic forces
are born of a healthy body full of energy," Evda Nahl corrected her as she
removed her clothes and jumped into the transparent water. Veda swam after her
and they went together to a huge rubber island that shone silver about a mile
away from the stadium. The flat surface of the island, level with the water,
was surrounded by rows of shelters in the shape of shells of mother-of-pearl
plastic, big enough to screen three or four people from the sun and wind and to
isolate them from their neighbours.
The two women lay down on the soft, swaying
floor of a "shell," breathing deeply of the eternally fresh smell of
the sea.
"You've got beautifully tanned since I met
you on the beach!" said Veda looking at her companion. "Have you been
at the seaside or does it come from sunburn pills?"
"SB pills," admitted Evda, "I've
been in the sun for only two days, yesterday and today. I haven't got such
wonderful skin as Chara Nandi."
"Don't you really know where Renn Bose
is?" continued Veda.
"I know approximately and that is
sufficient to worry me!" answered Evda Nahl, softly.
"Do you really want..." began Veda
and then stopped but Evda lifted her lazily closed eyelids and looked her
straight in the eyes.
"It seems to me that Renn Bose is somehow
... helpless, like an undeveloped boy," Veda objected, hesitantly,
"and you're so strong, you have an intellect that is the equal of any
man's. One always feels that inside you there is a steel rod, your
will-power...."
"Renn Bose told me the same. But you're
wrong in your estimation of him, you're as one-sided as Renn Bose himself. He
is a man with a bold and powerful intellect and a terrific capacity for work.
Even today there are few to equal him on our planet. It is the comparison of
his other qualities with his great talents that makes them seem undeveloped
because they are just about the average or even puerile, perhaps. You were
right in calling Renn a boy, he is, but at the same time he's a hero in the
true sense of the word. Take Darr Veter≈there's something boylike in him, too,
but with him it's just a superabundance of physical strength and not the lack
of it, like it is with Renn."
"What do you think of Mven?" Veda
inquired, "now that you know him better."
"Mven Mass is a splendid combination of
the cold intellect and the archaic fury of desires. He is a man of great
ability and is highly educated but at the same time he is the high priest of
nature's elemental forces!"
Veda Kong burst out laughing. "How can I
learn to give such precise character studies?!"
''Psychology is my line," said Evda,
shrugging her shoulders. "But let me ask you a question. Do you know that
Darr Veter is a man that I like very much?"
"You're afraid of half-formed
decisions?" Veda blushed. "No, this time there will be no fatal
half-way decisions and insincerity. Everything is as clear as crystal....''
Under the penetrating glance of the psychiatrist, Veda continued:
"Erg Noor ... our ways parted long ago. I
could not give way to a new feeling as long as he was in the Cosmos. I could
not draw myself away and so weaken the strength of my hopes, my faith in his
return. Now it is only a case of precise calculation and confidence. Erg Noor
knows everything but is going his own way."
Evda Nahl placed her slender arm round Veda's
shoulder.
"So it's Darr Veter?"
"Yes," answered Veda, firmly.
"Does he know?"
"No. Later, when Tantra arrives.... Isn't
it time for us to go back?"
"I have to leave the fete," said Evda
Nahl, "my holiday is finished. I have a big job to do in the Academy of
Sorrow and Joy, and I must see my daughter before I go there."
"Is she a big girl?"
"Seventeen. My son is older. I have done
the duty of every woman who is normally developed and has normal heredity≈two
children, no less! Now I want a third one≈but I want him grown up!" Evda
Nahl smiled and her serious face was lit up with the tenderness of love, her
bow-shaped upper lip lifted slightly.
"I imagine a fine, big-eyed boy with such
a loving and ever-astonished mouth ... with freckles and a snub nose,"
said Veda, slyly, looking straight in front of her. Her companion, after a
short pause, asked her;
"Have you got any new job yet?"
"No, I'm waiting for Tuntra, then there will be a
big expedition."
''Then come with me to visit my daughter,"
suggested Evda, and Veda gladly consented.
The whole of one wall of the observatory was
taken up with a seven-metre hemispherical screen for the demonstration of films
and photos taken by powerful telescopes. Mven Mass switched on a general view
of a section of the sky near the North Pole of the Galaxy, the meridional strip
of constellations from Ursa Major to Corvus and Centaurus. In this part, in
Canes Venatici, Coma Berenices and Virgo there were many galaxies, islands of
stars in the form of flat wheels or discs. An especially large number of them
had been discovered in Coma Berenices≈separate galaxies, of regular and
irregular form, showing different degrees of revolution and projection, some of
them inconceivably far away, at a distance of thousands of millions of parsecs,
often forming whole "clouds" of tens of thousands of galaxies. The
biggest of the galaxies are anything from 20,000 to 50,000 parsecs in diameter,
like the stellar island or Galaxy NN 89105 + SB 23, in the old days known as M
31, or the Andromeda Nebula. This little, faintly gleaming, nebulous cloud
could be seen from Earth with the naked eye. Long before this people had
discovered the secret of this cloud. The nebula proved to be a gigantic,
wheel-shaped stellar system one and a half times the size of our huge Galaxy.
The study of the Andromeda Nebula, despite the fact that it was 450,000 parsecs
distant from terrestrial observers, did much to help gain knowledge of our own Galaxy.
Mven Mass remembered from childhood the
magnificent photographs of the various galaxies that had been obtained by means
of electron inverted pictures or by radio telescopes such as the gigantic Pamir
and Patagonia installations, each of them almost 400 kilometres in diameter,
that penetrated even deeper into the Cosmos. The galaxies, monster clusters of
billions of celestial bodies separated by distances of millions of parsecs, had
always aroused in him an irrepressible desire to know the laws of their
constitution, the story of their origin and their further evolution. The main
thing that intrigued every inhabitant of Earth was the possibility of there
being life on the countless planetary systems in these islands of the Universe,
the question of the fires of thought and knowledge that burned there, of human
civilizations in those infinitely distant spaces of the Cosmos.
Three stars appeared on the screen that the
ancients had named Alpheratz, Mirach and Almak, (a, ft, y Andro-medae), arranged
in an ascending straight line. On either side of this line were the two
galaxies close to each other, the Andromeda Nebula or M 31, and the beautiful
spiral of M 33 in the Triangnlum Constellation. Mven Mass changed the metal
film.
He was now looking at the galaxy known in
ancient days as M 51, in the Canes Venatici, 800,000 parsecs away. This was one
of the few galaxies that we see "flat," our line of sight being
perpendicular to the plane of the "wheel." It has a very bright,
dense core made up of countless millions of stars from which two spiral arms
stretch out, each of them with similarly dense star clusters at the beginning.
Their long ends seem to get fainter and more nebulous until they disappear into
the darkness of space, stretching for tens of thousands of parsecs from each
other in opposite directions. Between the arms, or main branches, there are
short streams of stellar condensations and clouds of luminous gas alternating
with black "voids," accumulations of dark matter; the bright arms are
all curved like the blades of a turbine.
The huge galaxy NGK 4565 in the Coma Berenices
Constellation was a very beautiful one. At a distance of a million parsecs it
was seen edgeways. Leaning over to one side, like a soaring bird, the galaxy
spread its thin disc, apparently consisting of spiral branches, over a huge
area; the central core was a greatly oblate spheroid that burned brightly and
had the appearance of a solid gleaming mass. It could be clearly seen that the
islands of stars were so flat that the galaxy could be compared to a thin wheel
belonging to some clockwork mechanism. The edges of the wheel were indistinct,
they seemed to merge into the bottomless void. Our Sun is located on just such
an edge of a galaxy together with a tiny speck of dust called Earth that,
linked by the power of knowledge with many inhabited worlds, is spreading the
wings of human thought over the infinity of the Cosmos!
Mven Mass then switched the projector over to
the galaxy NGK 4594 in the Virgo Constellation; this galaxy, also visible in
its equatorial plane, had always interested him. It stood at a distance of ten
million parsecs from Earth and resembled a thick lentil of burning stellar
material wrapped in a layer of luminescent gas. A thick black line, a
condensation of dark material, cut the lentil along its equator. The galaxy
looked like a mysterious lantern shining out of an enormous abyss.
What worlds were hidden there, in a galaxy
whose total radiation was brighter than that of other galaxies and averaged
that of an F class star? Were there any mighty inhabited planets there? Was
thought there also grappling with the mysteries of nature?
The fact that the huge clusters of stars did
not answer made Mven Mass clench his fists. He realized the terrific distances
involved≈light from the galaxy he was looking at travelled thirty-two million
years to reach Earth. Sixty-four million years would be required to exchange
information!
Mven Mass selected another reel and on the
screen there appeared a big, bright, round patch of light amongst dispersed,
faint stars. An irregular black strip cut the patch in two, making the brightly
gleaming fiery masses on either side of it still brighter by contrast and
thickening towards its ends and overshadowing an extensive field of the burning
gas that formed a ring round the bright patch. This was a picture of colliding
galaxies in the Cygnus Constellation that had been obtained by the most
remarkably ingenious technical set-ups. This collision of giant galaxies, each
equal in size to our Galaxy or to the Andromeda Nebula, had long been known as
a source of radio emanation, probably the most powerful in the part of the
Universe that we could probe. Rapidly moving gas streams of colossal size set
up electromagnetic fields of such inconceivable power that they sent out news
of the titanic catastrophe to all ends of the Universe. Matter itself sent out
this alarm signal from a radio station with a power of a quintillion megawatts.
So great was the distance to the galaxies, however, that the picture on the
screen showed its state millions of years before. The present state of these
two galaxies, passing one through the other, will be known on Earth such a long
time after that we cannot say whether terrestrial man will continue to exist so
unimaginably long.
Mven Mass jumped up and leaned on the table
with both hands so hard that the joints cracked.
Transmission periods of millions of years,
covering tens of thousands of human generations and which actually amount to
that "never" that is killing to scientific thought, could disappear
at the wave of a magic wand≈Renn Bose's discovery and their joint experiment!
Inconceivably distant points of the Universe
would be within reach!
Astronomers in ancient days believed the
galaxies to be moving apart. The light that reached terrestrial telescopes from
distant stellar islands had been changed, light oscillations had lengthened,
turning to red waves. This reddening of the light was taken as evidence that
the galaxies were receding from the observer. People in the past were
accustomed to a direct, one-sided conception of phenomena and they created the
theory of a Universe that was moving apart or exploding, not realizing that
they saw only one side of the magnificent process of destruction and creation.
It was this one aspect≈dispersion and destruction, that is, the transition of
energy to a lower level in accordance with the second law of
thermodynamics≈that was conceivable to us and was recorded by instruments
constructed to sharpen our senses. The other aspect≈accumulation, concentration
and creation≈was outside man's concepts because life acquired its strength from
energy diffused by the stars, the suns, and our conception of the surrounding
Universe took shape on the basis of this. Man's mighty brain, however, penetrated
even into the hidden processes of the creation of worlds and of our Universe.
But in those distant times it still seemed that the greater the distance to a
galaxy the greater the speed of its motion away from the terrestrial observer.
As man penetrated farther into outer space he found galaxies with velocities
close to that of light. The end of the visible Universe was the point where
galaxies seemed to have reached that velocity although actually no light from
them could have reached us and we should not have seen them....
We now know why the light from these galaxies
is red. As is usually the case in science there proved to be more than one
cause≈it is not only due to their recession from us. The only light that
reaches us from distant stellar islands is that radiated by their brightest
centres. These huge masses of matter are encircled by annular electromagnetic
fields that strongly affect light rays, not only by their intensity but also on
account of the area they cover; they gradually slow down the light waves until
they become longer red waves. In very ancient times astronomers knew that light
from very dense stars turns red, the spectral lines shifting towards the red
end, so that the star seems to be receding like, for example, the second component
of Sirius, the white dwarf Sirius B. The farther away the galaxy, the more
centralized is the radiation that reaches us and the stronger the concentration
at the red end of the spectrum.
During a very long journey through space light
waves, on the other hand, are "shaken up" and the light quanta lose
part of their energy. This phenomenon has now been studied≈the red waves may
also be fatigued "old" waves of ordinary light. Even light waves that
penetrate everywhere "grow old" from their journey over tremendous
distances. What hope had man of overcoming such distances unless he attack
gravitation itself by means of its opposite, following Renn Bose's
calculations?
His anxiety was fading away! He was doing the
right thing by carrying out the unprecedented experiment!
Mven Mass, as usual, went out on the
observatory verandah and began walking swiftly up and down. The distant
galaxies still shone in his tired eyes, galaxies that sent waves of red light
to Earth like signals calling for help, like appeals to the all-conquering
thought of man. Mven Mass laughed softly and confidently. These red rays would
become as familiar to man as those at the Fete of the Flaming Bowls that had
wrapped Chara Nandi's body in the red light of life≈Chara, who had appeared to
him unexpectedly as the copper daughter of Epsilon Tucanae, the girl of his
impossible dreams.
And he would direct Renn Bose's vector
precisely at Epsilon Tucanae, not merely in the hope of seeing that wonderful
world, but also in honour of her, of its terrestrial representative!
Third Cycle School No. 410 was situated in
Southern Ireland. Broad fields, vineyards and oak groves ran down the slopes of
the green hills to the very sea. Veda Kong and Evda Nahl arrived when the children
were still in class; they walked along a corridor running round classrooms on
the perimeter of a circular building. The day was dull with a drizzle of rain
so that all classes were being held indoors instead of out in the open as was
more usual.
Veda Kong felt like a schoolgirl again as she
crept up to listen at the entrances to the classrooms which, as in the majority
of schools, were without doors and shut off by overlapping projecting walls.
Evda Nahl joined in the game and the two women peeped into class after class in
an attempt to find Evda's daughter and remain unnoticed themselves.
In the first classroom they saw a drawing in
blue chalk covering the whole length of one wall: it showed a vector that was
encircled by a spiral unfolding along it. Two sections of the spiral were
encircled by transverse ellipses in which a system of rectangular coordinates
was inscribed.
"Bipolar mathematics!'' exclaimed Veda in
mock horror.
"This is something more than that! Wait a
minute!" said Evda.
"Now that we know something about the
shadow functions of the cochlear, or spiral progressive movement, that occurs
along the vector,"≈the elderly teacher with deep-set, blazing eyes,
thickened one of the lines with his chalk ≈''we are close to understanding the
repagular calculus. The name of the calculus comes from the ancient Latin word
'repagulum,' a barrier or obstacle, and it is the transition from one quality
to another, seen in a two-sided aspect." The teacher pointed to an
extensive ellipse across the spiral. "In other words, it is the
mathematical analysis of mutually transitional phenomena ...."
Veda Kong disappeared behind the outjutting
wall, pulling her companion after her.
"That's something new! It's from that
branch of mathematics Renn Bose was talking to us about down on the
seashore."
"The school always gives its pupils the
newest of everything and discards whatever is outworn. If new generations
repeat old conceptions how can we expect to ensure rapid progress? As it is, a
terrible amount of time elapses before a child takes its place in the relay
race of knowledge. It takes dozens of years for a child to become fully
educated and ready to undertake gigantic tasks. This pulsation of the
generations, where you take one step forward and nine-tenths backward≈backward
while the next shift in the relay is learning≈is that most difficult of all
biological laws for man, the law of death and renascence. Much of what we
learned in mathematics, physics and biology is already out of date. Your
history is different, it grows old more slowly because it is very old
itself."
They glanced into another room. The
schoolmistress, Standing with her back to them, and the interested children,
did not notice them. The attentive faces of the pupils ≈they were young men and
women seventeen years of age, in the higher classes of the Third Cycle
School≈and their burning cheeks told how thrilled they were with the lesson.
"We, the human race, have passed through
many trials," the voice of the teacher resounded with her excitement,
"and the most important thing in your school history is the study of the
historic mistakes made by man and their consequences. We have passed through
the stage of the unbearable complication of life and things used by man and
have arrived at extreme simplicity. The complication of life led dialectically
to the simplification of spiritual culture. There must not be any unnecessary
thing to tie man up, his experiences and perceptions are finer when he leads a
simple life. Everything relating to everyday life is studied by the best brains
as befits important scientific problems. We have followed the general line of
development of the animal kingdom which was directed towards the liberation of
attention by making movements automatic and developing reflexes in the work of
the nervous system. The automation of the productive forces of society created
an analogous reflex system of control in production economy and released many
people for what is now man's chief occupation≈scientific research. Nature has
provided us with a big brain capable of scientific inquiry although at first it
was only used to search for food and investigate its edibility."
"Very good!" whispered Evda Nahl and
at that moment noticed her daughter. The girl did not suspect anything and sat
staring in contemplation at the corrugated glass that prevented the pupils from
seeing what was going on outside the classroom.
Veda Kong was curious to compare her with her
mother. They had the same long straight hair, the daughter's plaited with a
blue thread and tied up in two big loops. Both had the same oval face, narrow
at the chin and somewhat babyish from the too high forehead and the high
cheekbones protruding below the temples. A snow-white sweater of artificial
wool stressed the dark paleness of the girl's skin and the acute blackness of
her eyes, eyebrows and eyelashes. A necklace of red coral harmonized with the
girl's unquestionably original appearance.
Evda's daughter, like all other pupils, wore
wide shorts, hers differing only in a red fringe that was stitched into the
seams.
"An American Indian ornament,"
whispered Evda Nahl in answer to her friend's inquiring glance.
Evda and Veda just had time to step back into
the corridor when the teacher left the room followed by several pupils, Evda's
daughter amongst them. The girl stopped suddenly in her tracks as she noticed
her mother, her pride and an example to be followed. Although Evda did not know
it, there was a circle of her admirers in the school, youngsters who had
decided to take the same road in life as she had taken.
"Mother!" whispered the girl, casting
a shy glance at her mother's companion and clinging to Evda.
The teacher stopped and then came over to them,
giving them a nod of greeting.
"I must inform the school council,"
she said, disregarding Evda's gesture of protest, "we must gain something
from your visit."
"Better take advantage of her visit,"
said Evda as she introduced
Veda Kong.
The history teacher blushed deeply and looked
like a young girl.
"That's fine!" she said, trying to
keep her tone businesslike. "The school is about to graduate the senior
groups and a word from Evda Nahl to send them on their way coupled with a
review of the ancient cultures and races from Veda Kong will be something for
our youth to remember! Won't it, Rhea?"
Evda's daughter clapped her hands. The teacher
ran with the light gait of a gymnast to the subsidiary premises, contained in a
long straight building.
"Rhea, can you cut out the polytechnics
lesson today and come for a walk?" Evda suggested to her daughter. "I
shan't be able to see you again before you have to choose your matriculation
tasks. Last time we didn't come to a decision."
Rhea did not answer but took her mother's hand.
In each of the school cycles the lessons were interspersed with polytechnics.
At the moment they were to have one of Rhea's favourite occupations, the
grinding of optical lenses, but what could be more interesting or more
important than her mother's arrival?
Veda went away to a little observatory that she
could see in the distance, leaving mother and daughter alone. Rhea, clasping
her mother's strong arm like a child, walked beside her wrapped in thought.
"Where's your little Kay?" asked Evda
and the girl grew noticeably sad. Kay had been a ward of hers≈the older
school-children paid regular visits to first- and second cycle schools in their
vicinity to help with the teaching and upbringing of wards they had selected.
Integrated help for the teachers was absolutely essential to ensure
thoroughness of education.
"Kay was promoted to the second cycle and
has gone far away from here. It's such a pity ... why do they move us from
place to place every four years, when we are promoted to the next cycle?"
'"The psyche is wearied and becomes
sluggish where there is a uniformity of impressions and perception becomes
duller. The efficiency of teaching and upbringing grows less year by year. That
is why the twelve years of schooling are divided into three four-year cycles
and you move to another school after every cycle, each time to a different part
of the planet. It is only the babies in the zero cycle, from one to four years,
that do not need any change of place and conditions of upbringing."
"And why does each cycle have separate
schools and separate living quarters?"
''As you little people grow up and are trained
you become qualitatively different beings. If different age groups live
together it makes their training more difficult and is annoying to the
youngsters themselves. We have reduced the differences to a minimum by dividing
the children into three age groups, but this is still not a perfect system.
The first cycle, for example, obviously needs
splitting into two groups, and that will soon be done. But let us talk first
about your affairs and your dreams for the future. I shall have to deliver a
lecture to all of you and may be able to answer your questions."
Rhea began to confide her innermost thoughts to
her mother with the frankness of a child of the Great Circle Era who had never
experienced hurtful ridicule or misunderstanding. The girl was the incarnation
of youth that as yet knew nothing of life but was full of contemplative
anticipation. At the age of seventeen the girl was finishing school and
starting her three-year period of matriculation tasks, working amongst adults.
After the tasks her interests and abilities would be clearly defined. A
two-year higher education would follow that would give her the right to
independent work in the chosen field. In the course of a long life a man or
woman had time to take higher educational courses in five or six different
fields, changing work from time to time, but a great deal depended on the
choice of the first difficult tasks≈the Labours of Hercules, or matriculation
tasks. They were chosen after long contemplation and always following the
advice of older people.
"Have you passed the graduation
psychological tests yet?" asked Evda.
"Yes. I got 20 and 24 in the first eight
groups, 18 and 19 in the tenth and thirteenth and even 17 in the
seventeenth!" exclaimed Rhea proudly.
"That's wonderful!" said Evda in
pleased tones. "Everything is open to you. Have you stuck to the choice
you made for the first task?"
"Yes, I'm going to be a nurse on the
Island of Oblivion, and then all our circle are going to work at the Jutland
Psychological Hospital."
Rhea told her mother about the circle of her
"followers." Evda had plenty of good-natured jokes to make about
these zealous psychologists but nevertheless Rhea persuaded her mother to be
mentor for the members of the group who were also at the time selecting their
tasks.
"I shall have to live here until the end
of my holiday," laughed Evda, "and what will Veda Kong do?"
The girl suddenly remembered her mother's
companion.
"She's very nice," said Rhea,
seriously, "and almost as beautiful as you are!"
"She's much more beautiful!"
"No, I know ... and it's not because
you're my mother," said the girl, bashfully. "Perhaps she's better at
first glance but you have a spiritual tabernacle within you that Veda Kong
hasn't yet got. I don't say she won't have, it's just that she hasn't built it
yet... but she'll build it and then...."
"Then she'll outshine your mother like a
moon outshines the stars."
Rhea shook her head.
"And are you going to stand still? You'll
go farther than she!"
Evda passed her hand over the girl's smooth
hair and looked down into her upturned face.
"Isn't that enough eulogy, daughter? We're
wasting time!"
Veda Kong walked slowly down an avenue that led
her deeper into a grove of broad-leaved maples, whose heavy moist foliage
rustled dully. The first wraiths of the evening mist were making an effort to
rise from a nearby meadow but they were instantly dispersed by the wind. Veda
Kong was pondering over the mobile tranquillity of nature and thinking that the
sites for the schools were always so well chosen. The development of a keen
perception of nature and a sensitive communion with nature were an important
part of the child's training. Dulled interest in nature is, in actual fact, an
impediment to man's development, for one who has forgotten how to observe will
soon lose the ability to generalize. Veda thought about the ability to teach,
the most important of all competencies in the age when they had at last learned
that upbringing was more important than education and was the only way to prepare
the child for the difficult job of being a real man. The basis, of course, is
provided by inherent abilities but they might easily be left undeveloped,
without that chiselling of the human spirit that is done by the pedagogue.
Veda's mind turned back to those distant days
when she had been a third cycle schoolgirl, a mass of contradictions, burning
with the desire to sacrifice herself and at the same time judging the world by
herself alone, with all the egocentrism of healthy youth. How much the teachers
did for her in those days≈in truth there is no loftier profession in this world
of ours than that of teacher!
The future of mankind is in the hands of the
teacher for it is only by his efforts that man rises ever higher and becomes
more and more powerful, coping with the most arduous of all tasks, that of
overcoming himself, his greedy self-love and his unbridled desires.
Veda Kong turned towards a small bay surrounded
by pines where she could hear the sounds of youthful voices; soon she came upon
a dozen boys in plastic aprons busily trimming an oak beam with axes,
instruments that had been invented as far back as the stone age. The young
builders greeted the historian respectfully and explained to her that they
wanted to build a vessel without the aid of automatic saws and other machinery,
in the same way as the heroes of ancient days had done. The ship, when built,
was to take them to the ruins of Carthage, a trip they wanted to make during
their vacation, accompanied by the teachers of geography, history and
polytechnics.
Veda wished them success and intended to
continue on her way. A tall, thin lad with absolutely yellow hair stepped
forward.
"You came here with Evda Nahl, didn't you?
Then may I ask you a couple of questions?"
Veda laughingly consented.
"Evda Nahl works at the Academy of Sorrow
and Joy. We have studied the social organization of our planet and of several
other worlds, but we have not been told the significance of that Academy."
Veda told them of the great census conducted by
the Academy to compute sorrow and happiness in the lives of individuals and
investigate sorrow by age groups. It was followed by an analysis of sorrow and
joy for all the stages of the historical development of mankind. No matter what
qualitative differences there may have been in emotions, the sum totals,
investigated by big number stochastic 24 methods, showed some
important regularities. The Councils that directed the further development of
society did their utmost to correct any worsening and ensure improvement. Only when
joy predominated, or at least counterbalanced sorrow, was it considered that
society was developing successfully.
"And so the Academy of Sorrow and Joy is
the most important?" asked another boy, one with bold eyes. The others
smiled and the boy who had first spoken to Veda Kong explained what they were
laughing at.
"Oil is always looking for what is most
important. He dreams about the great leaders of the past...."
"That's a dangerous thing to do,"
smiled Veda. "As an historian I can tell you that the great leaders were
people who were themselves tied hand and foot and very dependent."
"Tied up by the conventionalism of their
actions?" asked the yellow-haired boy.
"Exactly. But you must remember that that
was in the unevenly and spontaneously developing ancient societies of the Era
of Disunity or even earlier. Today, leadership [a invested in each of the
Councils and is expressed by the fact that the action of all the others is
impossible without it."
"What about the Economic Council? Without
that Council nobody can undertake anything big," Oil objected cautiously,
somewhat abashed but still not confused.
"That's true because economics are the
only real basis of our existence. But it seems to me that you don't have quite
the right idea of what constitutes leadership. Have you studied the
cytoarchitectonics 25 of the human brain?"
The boys said that they had.
Veda took a stick from one of them and in the
sand drew circles to represent the administrative bodies.
"Here in the centre is the Economic
Council. We will draw direct links from it to the consultative bodies: the ASJ,
the Academy of Sorrow and Joy, the APF, the Academy of Productive Forces, the
ASP the Academy of Stochastics and Prognostication, the APL, the Academy of the
Psychophysiology of Labour. There is lateral connection with the Astronautical
Council, a body that functions independently. From the latter there is direct
communication with the ADR, the Academy of Directed Radiation, and the Outer
Stations of the Great Circle. Further...."
Veda drew an intricate diagram in the sand and
continued.
"Isn't that just like the human brain? The
research and registration centres are the sensory nerve centres. The Councils
are the associative centres. You know that all life consists of the dialectics
of attraction and repulsion, the rhythm of dispersal and accumulation,
excitation and inhibition. The chief inhibition centre is the Economic Council
that translates everything into the actual possibilities of the social organism
and its objective laws. Our brain and our society, both of which are
persistently advancing, have this dialectic interplay of opposing forces
brought into harmonic action. There was a time, long ago, when this was
incorrectly termed cybernetics, or the science of control, in an attempt to
reduce the most intricate interplay of inhibitions to the relatively simple
functioning of a machine. That attempt, however, was due to ignorance; the
greater the knowledge we acquired the more complicated we found the phenomena
and laws of thermodynamics, biology, and economics, and simplified conceptions
of nature or the processes of social development disappeared for ever."
The boys listened to Veda spellbound.
"What is the chief thing in such a social
structure?" she asked the lover of "chiefs" and "leaders."
He was so put out that he could not think of an answer and the first boy came
to his rescue.
"Its forward movement!" he answered,
boldly.
"A prize for such an excellent
answer!" exclaimed Veda admiringly; she looked at herself and then took an
enamel brooch, depicting an albatross over the blue sea, from her left
shoulder. She offered it to the lad on the palm of her hand. He was shyly
hesitant.
"As a reminder of today's talk and... of
forward movement!" Veda insisted and the lad took the albatross.
Holding up the blouse that was slipping from
her shoulder Veda made her way back through the park. The brooch had been a
present from Erg Noor and her sudden urge to give it away meant o lot≈amongst
other things it meant a strange desire to get rid of the past as quickly as
possible, to get rid of what had been or was being left behind....
The entire population of the school-town
gathered in the round hall in the centre of the school building. Evda Nahl, in
a black dress, stood on the central dais, illuminated from above, calmly
studying the rows of people in the audience. The people maintained perfect
silence, listening to her clear but not loud voice. Screaming loudspeakers were
used only for safety precautions and large halls had ceased to be necessary
since the stereoscopic televisophone (TVP) had come into general use.
"Seventeen is the turning point in life.
Soon you will pronounce the traditional words at a meeting of the Irish
Educational Division:
"'You, my elders, who have called me to a
life of endeavour, accept my ability and my desire, accept my labour and teach
me by day and by night. Hold out to me the hand of help, for the road is a hard
one, and I will follow you.'
"A very great deal is understood between
the lines of this ancient formula and that is what I am going to talk about
today.
"From childhood you have been taught the
philosophy of dialectics that long ago, in the secret books of the ancients,
was called the Secret of Duality. It was believed that its power could only
be achieved by the initiated≈mentally and morally lofty and strong individuals.
From childhood you have looked upon the world through the laws of dialectics
and its mighty strength is now at everybody's service. You have been born into
a well-ordered society created by countless generations of unknown toilers and
those who struggled for a better life in the dark ages of cruelty and tyranny.
Five hundred generations have passed since the formation of the first society
with a division of labour. In the course of that time the various races and
nations of the globe have mingled. Every one of us has drops of blood, or, as
we should say today, the mechanics of heredity, in him from each of those
peoples. A tremendous amount of work has been done to purge heredity of the consequences
of the incautious handling of radioactive materials and from the diseases that
were formerly widespread and interfered with it.
"The upbringing of the new man is an
elaborate task involving personal analysis and a very cautious approach to each
individual. The time has gone beyond recall when society could be satisfied
with people who had been brought up casually, whose insufficiencies were
excused by heredity or by man's inherent nature. Every badly brought up person
is today a reproach to the whole community, a grave mistake made by a large
number of people.
"You, who have not yet freed yourselves of
the egocentrism of youth or of an overestimation of your own ego must get a
clear understanding of how much depends on your own selves, to how great an
extent you are the creators of your own freedom and of an interest in life.
Many roads are open to each of you and this freedom of choice carries with it
full responsibility for that choice.
"Gone for all time are the back-to-nature
dreams of the uncultured, dreams of the freedom of primitive society and
primitive relations. Humanity, a union of gigantic masses of people, was faced
with the final choice≈either submit to social discipline, lengthy teaching and
training, or perish; there was no other way to live on our planet, generous as
her nature is. The puny philosophers who dreamed of nature did not understand
her or love her as she should be loved≈if they had they would have known her
merciless cruelty.
"The man of the new society was inevitably
faced with the necessity of disciplining his desires, will and thoughts. The
struggle against the personal, against the 'I' that is man's most dangerous
enemy, is essential for the good of society and for the maximum expansion of
his own intellect. This method of training mind and will is today obligatory
for every one of us as is the training of the body. The study of the laws of
nature and of society with its economics has replaced desire by definite
knowledge. When we say 'I want to' we mean 'I know that it can be done.'
"There is one other enemy amongst you, an
enemy against whom we fight from the time the child makes its first steps on earth;
that is, a crudeness of perception that sometimes seems to be primitive
naturalness. Crudeness means that the key to measure and understanding has been
lost and, consequently the key to love, since a measure of understanding is a
degree of love. Thousands of years ago the Hellenes said, metron ariston, the mean is
the most lofty. Today we still say that the basis of culture is an
understanding of moderation in all things.
"As the cultural level improved the striving for the crude pleasures of property grew weaker and there was less craving for a quantitative increase in the amount of property owned, which once acquired, soon began to pall and leave the owner still unsatisfied.
"We have taught you the greater pleasure
of austerity, the pleasure of helping one another, the genuine joy of work that
sets the heart on fire. We have helped you liberate yourselves from the power
of petty strivings and petty things and carry your joys and disappointments to
a higher sphere, the sphere of creative activity.
"Good physical training, the clean,
regular lives of dozens of generations have rid you of the third enemy of the
human psyche, indifference, the empty and indolent spirit that arises out of a
morbid insufficiency of energy in the body. You are going out in the world to
work charged with the necessary energy, with a balanced, healthy psyche which,
by virtue of the natural ratio of emotions, possesses more good than evil. The
better you are, the better and more elevated society will be≈the two
conceptions are interrelated. You will create a high spiritual milieu as an
integral part of society and society will elevate you. The social milieu is the
most important factor in the training and teaching of the individual. Man today
is training and learning his whole life long, so that society is constantly
progressing."
Evda Nahl stopped and smoothed her hair with
her hand, using exactly the same gesture as Rhea who sat there in front, never
once taking her eyes off her mother.
"At one time people called their urge to
comprehend reality a mere dream," she continued. "You will dream in
that way all your lives and will know joy in knowledge, in movement, in
struggle and in labour. Never pay any attention to the falls that follow
flights of the spirit because they are the regular turns of the spiral of
motion that we find in all matter. The reality of liberty is stern but you have
been prepared for it by the discipline of your schooling and upbringing; you,
therefore, are permitted all the changes of activity that constitute happiness
because you are conscious of your responsibility. The dream of tranquil
inactivity has not been justified by history because it is against the nature
of man the fighter. There always have been and still are specific difficulties
in every epoch, but a regular and rapid ascent to the heights of knowledge and
emotion, science and art has become the good fortune of all mankind!"
Evda Nahl finished her lecture and went down to
the front row of seats where Veda Kong greeted her as they had done Chara at
the fete. All those present stood up and repeated the gesture, in this way
expressing their admiration for an incomparable art.
The Corr Yule installation on the flat top of a
high -I mountain was no more than a thousand metres from the Astronautical
Council's Tibetan Observatory. It stood at a height of nearly 4,000 metres
where the only trees that would grow were a dark-green leafless variety with
branches bending inwards towards the top brought from Mars. Although the
light-yellow grass in the valleys waved in the wind these rigid iron-limbed
strangers from another world stood motionless. The slopes were covered with
streams of stones, the remnants of eroded rocks. The fields, patches and strips
of snow gleamed with that special whiteness that belongs to mountain snow under
a clear sky.
A tower built of steel tubes supporting two
latticed arches stood behind crumbling diorite walls belonging to a ruined
monastery that had been built with astounding audacity at that great height. On
the arches lay an inclined parabolic spiral of beryllium bronze dotted with the
gleaming white spots of rhenium contacts and open to the sky. Close beside it
lay a second spiral with the open end turned to the ground to form a cover over
eight huge cones made of the greenish borason amalgam. Energy was brought to
the installation by branches of the main pipe, six metres in diameter. The
valley was crossed by a line of pylons with directing rings, a temporary line
from the observatory's main that was used when transmissions requiring the
energy of all the world's stations were in progress. Renn Bose, scratching his
tousled head, reviewed with a pleased air the changes that had been made in the
former installation. It had all been done by volunteers in an incredibly short
time. The most difficult job had been the digging of deep, open trenches in the
hard stone of the mountain without the use of big mining machines. But that was
all over and the volunteer workers, justly believing themselves entitled to see
the great experiment as a reward for their labours, had moved to some distance
from the installation and found a place for their tents on the mountain slope
to the north of the observatory.
Mven Mass, who was in control of all
communications with the Cosmos, sat on a cold boulder opposite the physicist
and, shivering slightly from the cold, told him the latest news from the Great
Circle. Satellite 57 had been used recently for communication with spaceships
and planetships and had not been working for the Circle. Mven Mass also told
him of the death of Vlihh oz Ddiz near star E at which the weary physicist
showed more interest.
"The high gravitational tension of star E
will lead to its becoming overheated in its further evolution. It is becoming a
violet super-giant of tremendous power that is overcoming colossal gravitation.
The red end of the spectrum is missing altogether and, despite the strength of
the gravitational field, the waves of light rays are shortened and not
lengthened."
"They become very short violet or even
ultra-violet," agreed Mven Mass.
"That's not all. The process goes farther.
The quanta become bigger until at last the transition takes place≈ there is a
zero field and antispace≈the other side of the movement of matter that is
unknown to us on earth owing to the insignificant scale of everything we have.
We could not achieve anything like it even if we were to burn up all the
hydrogen in all the water on Earth."
Mven Mass made a lightning mental calculation.
"If we translate fifteen thousand trillion
tons of water into the energy of the hydrogen cycle on the principle of the
relativity of mass-energy we should get roughly a trillion tons of energy. The
Sun gives off 240 million tons a minute so that it would be equal to no more
than the Sun's radiation for ten years."
Renn Bose gave a smile of satisfaction.
"And how much does a blue super-giant
radiate?"
"I can't compute it at once. But you can
judge for yourself. In the Greater Magellanic Cloud there is a cluster, NGK
1910, near the Tarantula Nebula ... excuse me, I'm accustomed to using the old
names and numbers for heavenly bodies!"
"It doesn't matter at all!"
"Cluster 1910 is only 70 parsecs in
diameter but it contains no less than a hundred super-giant stars. And the
Tarantula Nebula is so bright that if it could be moved closer to us like, for
example, the Orion Nebula that everybody knows so well, it would be as bright
as our Moon. In that area there is the binary blue super-giant in the Dorado,
with clear-cut hydrogen lines in the spectrum and dark lines at the violet end.
It is greater than Earth's orbit in diameter and its luminosity is about half a
million of our suns! Is that the sort of star you mean? In that same cluster
there are stars bigger in size, with a diameter equal to Jupiter's orbit, but
they are only just beginning to warm up."
"We'll leave the super-giants alone. For
thousands of years people have been looking at the annular nebulae in Aquarius,
Ursa Major and Lyra, not realizing that they have before them neutral fields of
zero gravitation, which, according to the repagulum law, is the transition from
gravitation to antigravitation. It was there that the riddle of zero space was
hidden."
Renn Bose jumped up from where he had been
sitting on the doorstep of the control room, a shelter built of huge blocks of
cast stone.
"I'm sufficiently rested. We can begin
now."
Mven Mass' heart was beating fast and he was
almost choking from excitement. His breathing was deep and irregular. Renn Bose
remained quite calm, the feverish gleam of his eyes alone betraying the
concentration of thought and will-power that the physicist had achieved in order
to begin his dangerous experiment.
Mven Mass squeezed Renn Bose's tiny hand in his
huge palm. A nod of the head and Mven's tall figure was striding downhill along
the road to the observatory. The cold wind howled wildly down from the
ice-bound mountain giants that stood guard over the road. Mven Mass shivered
and involuntarily hurried his footsteps although, actually, there was no need
for haste. The experiment was to begin at sunset.
Mven Mass established radio communication with
Satellite 57, using the lunar waveband. The reflectors and directors set up on
the station were fixed on Epsilon Tucanae for the few minutes of the
satellite's revolution from 33╟ north latitude to the South Pole during which
the star was visible.
Mven Mass took his place at the control desk in
the underground room, a place very similar to that at the Mediterranean
Observatory.
For the thousandth time he looked through the
sheets of data on the planet of the star Epsilon Tucanae, again systematically
checked up the orbit of the planet and again got in touch with Satellite 57 and
gave instructions that at the moment when the field was switched they must very
slowly change direction along an arc four times greater than the parallax of
the star.
The time passed slowly. Mven Mass could not rid
himself of thoughts of Beth Lohn, the criminal mathematician. Renn Bose
appeared on the TVP screen seated at the control desk of his installation. His
stiff hair was sticking up more than usual.
The dispatchers at the power stations had been
warned and reported their readiness. Mven Mass' hand moved towards the switches
on his desk but a motion from Renn Bose in the screen stopped him.
"We must warn the reserve Q station on the
Antarctic. We have not got sufficient power."
"I've done that, they're ready."
The physicist pondered for a few more seconds.
"On the Chukotka Peninsula and on Labrador
there are F-energy stations. If you were to talk to them and ask them to switch
in at the moment of the field inversion ... I'm afraid the apparatus is imperfect...."
"I've done
that."
Renn Bose beamed and waved his hand.
The colossal column of energy reached Satellite
57. The excited young faces of the observers appeared in the hemispherical
screen at the observatory.
Mven Mass greeted the courageous young people,
checked up on the direction of the column to make sure that it would reach and
follow the satellite. Then he switched all the energy over to Renn Bose. The
physicist's head disappeared from the screen.
The indicators on the energy collector turned their
needles to the right showing a constant growth in the condensation of power.
The signals burned brighter and with a whiter light. As Renn Bose switched in
one field radiator after another the intensity indicators fell in jerks towards
zero. The sound of a muffled gong from the experimental station made the
African start, but he knew what to do: with a movement of a lever he switched
in the Q station and its power surged into the dying eyes of the indicators,
bringing life to their falling needles. Scarcely had Renn Bose switched on the
common inverter, however, than the needles again dropped to zero. Almost
instinctively Mven Mass switched in both F stations.
It seemed to him that the measuring instruments
had been extinguished≈a peculiar pale light filled the room. Sounds ceased.
Another second and the shadow of death crossed the consciousness of the
Director of the Outer Stations, dulling his senses. He struggled against a
nauseating dizziness, squeezing the edges of the desk in his hands and sobbing
from the effort and from a terrible pain in his spine. The pale light began to
grow brighter on one side of the underground room, but from which side, Mven
Mass could not determine, or had forgotten. Perhaps it came from the screen, or
from the direction of Renn Bose's installation....
Suddenly it seemed that a waving curtain had
been torn asunder and Mven Mass heard clearly the splashing of waves. An
indescribable perfume, one that could not be remembered, reached his widely
dilated nostrils. The curtain moved to the left and in the corner the former
grey hangings were still trembling. High copper mountains materialized before
his eyes with remarkable reality; they were surrounded by turquoise trees and
the violet waves of the sea splashed at Mven Mass' feet. The curtain moved
still farther to the left and he saw his dream. A red-skinned woman sat on the
upper platform of the staircase leaning on the polished surface of a white
stone table, staring at the ocean. Suddenly she saw something and her widely
placed eyes were filled with astonishment and admiration. The woman stood up
with magnificent elegance and stretched out her open hand to the African. She
was breathing spasmodically and in that moment of delirium she reminded Mven
Mass of Chara Nandi.
"Offa alii cor." Her gentle, melodious and strong voice penetrated to
Mven Mass' heart. He opened his mouth to answer her but in place of his vision
there was a green flame and a shattering whistle filled the room. As the
African lost consciousness he felt some soft, invincible power folding him in
three, rotating him like the blade of a turbine and then flattening him out
against something solid. Mven Mass' last thought was of the fate of Satellite
57, the station and Renn Bose....
The observatory staff and the builders who were
some distance away saw very little. Something flashed across the profound
Tibetan sky that dimmed the brightness of the stars. Some invisible power
crashed down on to the mountain on which the experimental station was situated.
Then came a whirlwind that swept up a mass of stones. A black stream, some five
hundred metres in diameter that seemed to have been fired from a gigantic
hydraulic gun raced towards the observatory building, swept upwards, turned
back and again struck the mountain, smashing the entire installation and
scattering the fragments. An instant later everything was quiet again. The
dust-filled air was saturated with the odour of hot stones and burning mixed
with a strange aroma similar to that of the flowering coast of a tropical sea.
At the site of the catastrophe the people saw
that a wide furrow with molten edges had been ploughed across the valley, and
that the side of the mountain facing it had been torn clean away. The
observatory building had not been touched. The furrow stretched as far as the
southeastern wall where it had destroyed the transformer chamber built against
it; it ended at the dome of the underground chamber cast from a four-metre
thick layer of molten basalt. The basalt was polished as though it had been worked
on a grinding machine. Part of it remained untouched and that had saved Mven
Mass and the underground chamber from complete destruction.
A stream of molten silver hardened in a
hollow≈the melted fuses of the power receiver!
Emergency lighting cables were soon connected
and when the searchlight from the lighthouse on the highway threw out its beam
an appalling sight met the eyes of the onlookers≈the whole of the metal
structure of the experimental installation was spread along the furrow in a
gleaming thin coating making the ground shine as though it had been
chromium-plated. A piece of the bronze spiral had been pressed into the
precipice formed where the side of the hill had been cut away as clean as with
a knife. The rocks had melted into a glassy mass, like sealing wax under a hot
stamp. The turns of the spiral of reddish metal with its white rhenium
tooth-like contacts were embedded in the rock and gleamed in the electric light
like a flower done in enamel. One glance at that piece of jewellery two hundred
metres in diameter was sufficient to arouse fear of the unknown force that had
operated there.
When the fallen boulders had been cleared away
from the entrance to the underground chamber rescue workers found Mven Mass on
his knees with his head resting on the bottom step. The Director of the Outer
Stations had apparently made an effort to escape the moment he regained
consciousness. There were doctors amongst the volunteers who had been working
there and his powerful organism aided by no less powerful medicines soon
recovered. Mven Mass got to his feet, still trembling and staggering and had to
be supported on both sides.
"Renn
Bose?"
The faces of the people surrounding the
scientist darkened at this question, and the Director of the observatory said
harshly:
"Renn Bose has been badly disfigured. He
is hardly expected to live."
"Where is
he?"
"He was found at the bottom of the eastern
slope of the mountain. He must have been hurled out of the installation
building. There is nothing left on top of the mountain, even the ruins have
been wiped off the face of the earth!"
"Is Renn Bose still lying there?"
"He must not be touched. Some bones have
been crushed, some ribs broken and his stomach injured."
"What's wrong with it?"
"His stomach has been split open and his
insides have fallen out."
Mven Mass' legs gave way under him and he
clutched spasmodically at the necks of those supporting him. His will and his
mind, however, were functioning clearly.
"Renn Bose must be saved at all costs. He
is the greatest of all scientists...."
"We know. There are five doctors there.
They have erected a sterilized operation tent over him. Two men who have
volunteered to give blood are lying beside him. The tiratron, the artificial
heart and liver are already working."
"Then help me to the telephone room.
Switch on to the world network and call the information centre in the northern
zone. How are things on Satellite 57?"
"We called the satellite but got no
answer."
"Are the telescopes in working
order?"
"Yes, they
are."
"Look for the satellite in the telescope
and examine it through the electronic inverter to get the maximum
magnification."
The night operator at the northern information
centre looked into his screen and saw a face smeared with blood, the eyes
gleaming feverishly. He had to study the face for some time before he
recognized Mven Mass who, as the Director of the Outer Stations, was a person
well known throughout the planet.
"I want Grom Orme, President of the
Astronautical Council and Evda Nahl, psychiatrist."
The operator nodded his head and began fiddling
with the switches and vernier scales of the memory machines. The answer came
back in a minute.
"Grom Orme is preparing some papers and is
spending the night at the Council. Shall I call the Council?"
"Yes, call them. And Evda Nahl?"
"She's at School No. 410 in Ireland. If
you need her I can try to call her to ..."≈here the operator looked up at
a diagram≈" ... to telephone station No. 5654SP!"
"She's badly needed. It is a matter of
life or death!"
The operator looked up from his diagrams.
"Has there been an accident?"
"A very serious accident."
"Then I'll hand everything over to my
assistant and get busy on your call alone. Wait for me."
Mven Mass dropped into an armchair that had
been pushed towards him, in an effort to gather his thoughts and regain his
strength. The Director of the observatory came running into the room.
"The situation of Satellite 57 has been
ascertained. There is no satellite."
Mven Mass jumped to his feet as though he had
not received any injuries.
"A piece of the bow which acts as a quay
for the reception of ships, has survived," continued the staggering
report, "and is still in the same orbit. There are probably some smaller
pieces but they have not yet been discovered."
"So the observers...."
"They must have been killed!"
Mven Mass clenched his fists and sank back into
the chair. A few minutes of oppressive silence followed, then the screen lit up
again.
"Grom Orme is at the Council
transmitter," said the operator and turned a handle. The screen showed a
huge, dimly-lit hall and then the well-known head of the President of the
Astronautical Council appeared. The narrow seemingly streamlined face, the big
aquiline nose, the deep-set eyes under sceptically raised brows, the
questioning twist of the tightly pressed lips.... Under Grom Orme's glance Mven
Mass hung his head like a naughty boy.
"Satellite 57 has just been
destroyed," began the African, plunging straight into his confession as he
would into dark water. Grom Orme started and his face seemed even sharper.
"How could that have happened?"
Briefly and precisely Mven Mass told him
everything, not hiding the illegality of the experiment or in any way sparing
himself. The President's brows knitted together, deep lines appeared at the
corners of his mouth but his glance remained calm.
"Wait a moment, I'll see about aid for
Renn Bose. Do you think that Ahf Noot...."
"Oh, if you could get Ahf Noot!"
The screen went dark. There was a long wait and
Mven Mass forced restraint upon himself with the last of his strength. He would
be all right, soon... ah, here was Grom Orme.
"I found Ahf Noot and have given him a
planetship. He will require an hour to prepare his apparatus and his
assistants. In two hours he'll be at your observatory. Make the necessary
arrangements for the handling of heavy cargo. Now about you≈did the experiment
succeed?"
The question took Mven Mass by surprise. He did
not doubt that he had seen Epsilon Tucanae. Was this, however, real contact
with an inaccessibly distant world? Or had it been a combination of the deadly
effect of the experiment on his organism and the burning desire to see that had
produced a very clear hallucination? Could he announce to the whole world that
the experiment had been a success, that fresh efforts, new sacrifices and
further expenditure to repeat it would be justified? Could he say that the
method adopted by Renn Bose was more successful than that of his predecessors?
For fear of risking anybody else's life they had foolishly carried out the
experiment alone, just the two of them. But what had Renn seen? What could he
tell them? ... Would he ever be able to talk ... if he had seen! ... Mven Mass
stood up still straighter. "I have no proof that the experiment was
successful. I don't know what Renn Bose saw...."
Undisguised sorrow was expressed on Grom Orme's
face. A minute before that he had only been attentive, now he had become stern.
"What do you propose to do?"
"Please permit me to hand over the station
to Junius Antus immediately. I am no longer worthy to direct it. Then, I'll
remain with Renn Bose to the end..." he stammered and then corrected
himself, "... until the end of the operation. Then ... then I'll go away
to the Island of Oblivion to await trial. I have already condemned myself!"
"Possibly you are right. Some of the
circumstances are not yet clear to me so I must reserve my judgement. Your
actions will be examined at the next meeting of the Astronautical Council. Whom
do you consider the most fitting successor to your post≈firstly for the work of
rebuilding the satellite?"
"I don't know a better candidate than Darr
Veter!" The President of the Council nodded his consent. For some time he
continued looking at the African as though he intended saying something, but
instead he just made a gesture of farewell. The screen was extinguished just in
time, for at that moment everything went hazy in Mven Mass' head.
"You tell Evda Nahl yourself," he
whispered to the observatory Director who was standing near by; then he fell,
made several attempts to get up and lost consciousness.
A little man with Mongoloid features, a merry
smile and unusually imperative in his words and actions became the centre of
attention at the Tibetan Observatory. The assistants that had come with him
obeyed him with that glad willingness with which faithful soldiers had probably
followed the great captains of ancient days. The authority of their teacher,
however, did not suppress their own ideas and enterprise. They constituted a
very harmonious little group of strong people worthy to give battle to man's
most terrible and implacable enemy≈death!
When Ahf Noot learned that Renn Bose's heredity
record had still not been received he gave vent to exclamations of indignation,
but was just as quickly calmed when he was told that it was being prepared by
Evda Nahl herself and that she would bring it in person.
The Director of the observatory asked quietly
what the card was needed for and in what way Renn's distant ancestors could
help. Ahf Noot screwed up his eyes slyly as though he were about to divulge a
great secret.
"Accurate knowledge of the heredity
structure of every person is needed both for an understanding of his
psychological structure and to help make predictions in that field; it also
provides important data on his neuro-physiological peculiarities, the
resistance factor of his organism, immunity, selective sensitivity to traumas
and allergy to medicines. The choice of treatment cannot be precise without an
understanding of the heredity structure and the conditions under which his
ancestors lived."
The Director wanted to ask more questions but
Ahf Noot stopped him.
"I've given you a sufficient answer for
independent thought. I have no time for more!"
The Director muttered some apology which the
surgeon did not wait to hear.
A portable operating theatre was erected at the
foot of the mountain: water, electricity and compressed air were laid on. A
huge number of workers offered their services and the building was ready in
three hours. Ahf Noot's assistants selected fifteen doctors from amongst the
volunteer builders to service the surgical clinic that had been so rapidly
built. Renn Bose was carried under a transparent plastic shield that had been
fully sterilized and had had sterilized air blown through it by means of
special filters. Ahf Noot and four of his assistants entered the first section
of the operating theatre and remained there several hours where they were
subjected to waves of bactericides and air saturated with antiseptic emanations
until their very breath became sterilized. In the meantime Renn Bose's body was
subjected to deep freezing. Then their swift and confident work began.
The shattered bones and torn blood vessels were
joined by means of tantalum hooks and plates that did not irritate the living
tissues. Ahf Noot sorted out the injured intestines and stomach: they were
quickly freed of the mortified parts, stitched up and placed in a jar of
healing solution B 314 that was prepared in conformity with the somatic
properties of the human organism. He then started on his hardest job. From
under the ribs he removed the blackened liver, pierced with fragments of the
rib bones, and, while his assistants held it suspended in position, he
confidently treated the fine hairs of the autonomous nerves of the sympathetic
and parasympathetic systems and pulled them into position behind it. The
slightest harm done to these finer branches of the nerves might lead to
serious, irreparable damage. With a lightning-like movement the surgeon cut
through the portal vein and joined the tubes of artificial blood vessels to the
two ends. Then he did the same with the artery and placed the removed liver in
a jar of solution B 314. After an operation lasting five hours all Renn Bose's
injured organs were in separate jars. Artificial blood flowed through his body,
pumped by the patient's own heart and an auxiliary double-heart, a tiny
automatic pump. Now they had to wait for the healing of the removed organs. Ahf
Noot could not simply replace the liver with another from the planet's surgical
fund because that would require further investigation and the condition of the
sick man would not permit of any delay. One of the surgeons stayed with the
outstretched body (it looked just like an anatomized corpse) until the next
shift of surgeons had undergone their sterilization.
The doors of the protective walls built round
the operation theatre opened noisily and Ahf Noot, squinting and stretching
himself like a beast of prey awakened from its slumber, appeared in the company
of his blood-smeared assistants. Evda Nahl, tired and pale, met him. and handed
him Renn Bose's heredity record. Ahf Noot snatched at it eagerly, glanced
through it and heaved a sigh of relief.
"I think everything will be all right.
Come on and get some sleep."
"But... suppose he wakes up?"
"Come along. He can't wake up. Do you
think we are so foolish that we did not take care of that?" "How long
must we wait?"
"Four or five days. If the biological
investigation is accurate and the calculations are correct we shall then be
able to make another operation, putting all the organs back. After that,
consciousness...." "How long can you stay here?"
"About ten days. The catastrophe
fortunately coincided with a break in my teaching work. I'll take advantage of
the opportunity to have a look at Tibet, I've never been here before. It is my
fate to live where there are moat people, in the inhabited zone!"
Evda Nahl gazed at the surgeon in admiration.
Ahf Noot smiled gloomily.
"You're looking at me in the same way as
people used to look at an image of a god. That does not befit the cleverest of
my pupils!"
"I really am seeing you in a different
way. This is the first time in my life that a person dear to me has been in the
hands of a surgeon and I can well understand the emotions of those who have come
in contact with your art≈knowledge combined with unexcelled skill!"
"All right! Admire us, if you must. I
shall have time to perform not only a second but even a third operation on your
physicist."
"What third operation?" asked Evda
Nahl, immediately on the alert. Ahf Noot, however, squinted cunningly and
pointed to the pathway leading to the observatory. Mven Mass, his head bowed,
was hobbling down.
"Here's another unwilling admirer of my
art. Have a talk with him, if you can't sleep, that is. I must sleep."
The surgeon disappeared round an irregularity
in the hill in the direction of the temporary home of the doctors. From afar
Evda Nahl could see how haggard the Director of the Outer Stations had grown
and how much he had aged: but then, Mven Mass was no longer Director. She told
him everything she had learned from Ahf Noot and the African heaved a sigh of
relief.
"Then I'll go away in ten days'
time."
"Are you doing the right thing, Mven? I'm
still suffering too much from shock to be able to think over what has happened,
but it doesn't seem to me that your guilt is so great as to require such
condemnation."
Mven Mass frowned painfully.
"I was carried away by Renn Bose's
brilliant theories. I had no right to apply all Earth's power to the first
attempt."
''Renn Bose showed you that an attempt would be
useless with less power," she objected.
"That's true, but we should have made
indirect experiments first. I was insanely impatient and did not want to wait
years. Don't waste words≈the Council will confirm my decision and the Control
of Honour and Justice will not annul it."
"I'm a member of the Control of Honour and
Justice myself!"
"And apart from you there are ten other
people. Since my case concerns the whole planet there will be a decision by the
Joint Controls of North and South≈twenty-one people besides you."
Evda Nahl laid a hand on the African's
shoulder.
"Let's sit down, Mven, you're weak on your
legs. Did you know that when the first doctors looked at Renn they decided to
call a death concilium?"
"I know, they were two short. All doctors
are conservative, and according to an old rule that they haven't got down to
changing, there must be twenty-two people to decide to give a patient an easy
death."
"Until recently the death concilium
consisted of sixty doctors!"
"That is a relic of the days when there
was a fear of the right to put a patient out of his suffering being misused; in
those days doctors used to condemn the sick to long and useless suffering and
their relatives to senseless moral torment, even when there was not the
slightest hope and death would have been a quick and easy release. But still,
you see how useful tradition has been in this case, they were two short and I
was able to get Ahf Noot, thanks to Grom Orme."
"That's what I wanted to remind you of.
Your own concilium of social death so far consists of only one man!"
Mven Mass took Evda's hand and raised it to his
lips and she permitted him this gesture of great and intimate friendship. She
was, at the moment, the only friend of a strong man oppressed by moral
responsibility. The only one? And if Chara had been in her place? No... to
receive Chara now the African would need great spiritual uplift and he still
had not found strength enough for that. Let everything go its own way until Renn
Bose recovered and the Astronautical Council held its meeting.
"Do you know what the third operation is
that Renn has to undergo?" asked Evda, to change the subject. Mven Mass
thought for a moment and then recalled a conversation he had had with Ahf Noot.
"Noot wants to take advantage of Renn's
being opened up to cleanse his organs of accumulations of entropy. It is
usually done by physiochemotherapy and takes a long time, but it can be done in
conjunction with such extensive surgery much more quickly and thoroughly."
Evda Nahl thought over everything she knew of
the basis of longevity, the cleansing of the organism of entropy. Man's fish,
saurian and arboreal ancestors have left contradictory vestiges of ancient
physiological structures in his organism each of which has its own specific way
of forming entropic remnants of their activity. Thousands of years of study of
these ancient centres of entropy accumulation, formerly the cause of senility
and sickness, have resulted in the elaboration of cleansing by chemical and ray
treatment and of methods of stimulating the aging organism with wave baths.
In nature living beings are freed of
accumulated entropy through being born of different individuals coming from
different places and possessing different lines of heredity. This juggling with
heredity in the struggle against entropy and the absorption of fresh strength
from the surrounding world is one of the most difficult riddles of science that
biologists, physicists, palaeontologists and mathematicians have been battling
with for thousands of years. But the struggle has been worth it, expectation of
life is now almost two hundred years and, more important still, that exhausting
period of decay in old age has been eliminated.
Mven Mass guessed the psychiatrist's thoughts.
"I have been thinking of the new and great
contradiction of our lives," said the African. "I mean the power of
biological medicine that fills the body with new strength and the constantly
increasing creative labour of the brain that burns a man up so quickly. How
complicated everything is in the laws of our world."
"That's true and explains why we are
lagging behind with the development of man's third system of signals,"
agreed Evda Nahl. "Thought-reading greatly facilitates communication
between individuals but requires a great expenditure of energy and weakens the
inhibitory nerve centres. This latter effect is the most dangerous."
"And still the majority of the people, the
real workers, live only half the possible number of years owing to their tremendous
nervous tension. As far as I can understand, medicine cannot combat this except
by forbidding people to work. But, then, who will give up his work for the sake
of a few extra years of life?"
"Nobody, naturally, because people only
fear death and try to hang on to life when their lives have been passed in
isolation and in sorrowful expectation of joys never experienced," said
Evda Nahl pensively; despite herself she could not help remembering that people
live longer on the Island of Oblivion than anywhere else.
Mven Mass once again understood her unspoken
thoughts and grimly suggested that they return to the observatory to rest. Evda
consented.
Two months later Evda Nahl found Chara Nandi in
the upper hall of the Palace of Information, whose tall columns gave it the
appearance of a Gothic cathedral. The rays of the sun, slanting down from high
windows, crossed at half the height of the hall creating a warm glow above and
soft twilight below.
The girl stood leaning against a column, her
hands folded behind and her legs crossed. Evda Nahl, as usual, could not help
admiring her simple attire≈a short grey dress trimmed with blue and with a very
low-cut bodice.
Chara glanced over her shoulder as Evda
approached and her sorrowful eyes lit up.
"What are you doing here, Chara? I thought
you were practising a new dance to surprise us with."
"Dances are a thing of the past,"
said Chara, seriously. "I'm choosing a job in a field I'm acquainted with.
There is a vacancy at a factory growing artificial leather somewhere in the
South Seas near Celebes and another at the station developing perennial plants
in the old Atakama Desert. I was happy working in the Atlantic Ocean,
everything was so clear and bright and joyful there from the power of the sea
and an unthinking contact with it... I enjoyed skilful play in competition with
the waves, the big waves that are always there waiting for you and, as soon as
you've finished work...."
"I, too, have only to give way to
melancholy to recall my first work in the psychological sanatorium in New
Zealand where I was just an ordinary nurse. And Renn Bose, today even, after
his terrible accident, says that he was happiest when he was working on
helicopter traffic control. But, Chara, surely you know that's just weakness!
It's only fatigue from the tremendous strain that was necessary for you to keep
at the high artistic level you have achieved. It is going to be worse later on
when your body ceases to be so splendidly charged with vital energy. But as
long as it remains what it is, please give us the pleasure of admiring your
skill and your beauty."
"You don't know how it is with me, Evda.
Every new dance I prepare is a matter of joyful search. I realize that I shall
once more be giving people something good, something that brings them joy and
reaches to the very depths of their emotions and that is what I live by. The
moment comes when my plan is put into effect and I give myself up entirely to
one burst of passion, to furious, flaming voluptuousness. I suppose this is
transmitted to the audience and accounts for the enthusiasm with which the
dance is received. I give all of myself to you all!"
"And then what next? A sudden
anticlimax?"
"Yes! I'm just like a song that has flown
away and vanished into thin air, I'm an exile from a vanished world that nobody
wants and to whom nothing is left but the admiration of naive youth. I do not
create anything that is registered by the intellect!"
"You do more than that, you leave
something in the hearts of people!"
"That's all very immaterial and
transient≈I was thinking of myself!"
"Have you ever been in love, Chara?"
The girl lowered her eyelashes and her chin
stuck out.
"Would that be like me?" she answered
with another question.
Evda Nahl shook her head.
"I mean that tremendous big emotion that
you, but not everybody, are capable of."
"I know what you mean, the poverty of my
intellectual life leaves me a richness of emotion...."
"That's the right idea in essence but I
would explain it differently; you are so gifted emotionally that the other side
docs not necessarily have to be poor, although, of course, it will naturally be
weaker by the law of contradictions. We're talking too much in the abstract and
I have an urgent matter to talk to you about, something that directly concerns
our conversation. Mven Mass...."
The girl flinched and Evda Nahl felt that she
was inwardly putting up barriers against her. She took Chara under the arm and
led her to a side gallery of the hall where the dark wooden panelling
harmonized beautifully with the blue-gold of the stained glass in the arched
windows.
"Chara, my dear, you are an earthly,
light-loving flower transplanted on to the planet of a double star. There are
two suns in the sky, one blue and the other red, and the flower does not know
which one to turn to. You are a daughter of the red sun, why do you turn to the
blue?"
Strongly but gently Evda drew the girl to her
shoulder and Chara suddenly snuggled up to her. The famous psychiatrist stroked
the girl's thick, somewhat harsh hair, thinking all the time how thousands of
years of training had changed man's petty private joys for something greater
and common to all. But how far they still were from victory over the loneliness
of the soul, especially in a soul complicated by a gamut of feelings and impressions,
nurtured by a body rich in life. Aloud she said:
"Mven Mass≈do you know what's happened to
him?"
"Of course, the whole planet is talking
about his unsuccessful experiment!''
"And what do you think?"
"I think he was right!"
"So do I. That's why we have to get him
off the Island of Oblivion. A month from now there will be the annual meeting
of the Astronautical Council. His misdeeds will be discussed and the Council's
decision will be handed over to the Control of Honour and Justice that
constitutes the guardian of every person on the planet. I have every reason to
hope for a lenient verdict, but Mven Mass must be here. A man whose emotions
are quite as strong as yours must not remain long on the island, especially as
he is alone!"
"Am I really so much of an ancient woman
that I build up plans for my life to depend on what a man is doing, even if it
is the man I've chosen myself?"
"Chara, my child, don't! I've seen you
together and I know what you mean to him and he to you. Don't blame him for not
having seen you, for having hidden from you. Think what it would mean to a man,
one of the same type as yourself, to come to you whom he loves≈yes, it's true,
Chara≈badly defeated and liable to judgement and exile. Could he have come to
you, one of the world's beauties?"
"That's not what I was thinking of, Evda.
Does he need me now that he is weary and broken? I'm afraid he may not have the
strength necessary for a great flight of the spirit, not intellectual, but
emotional this time, for such love as I believe we are both capable of. If he
doesn't possess strength enough he might lose faith in himself a second time
and that would be too much for him. That's why I thought that it would be
better for me to be ... in the Atakama Desert!"
"You're right, Chara, but only from one
side. You have forgotten his loneliness and the unnecessary self-condemnation
of a great and passionate man who has nothing to support him once he has left
our world. I would go there myself but I have Renn Rose on my hands, he's just
pulling through, and, as he's badly wounded, he comes first. Darr Veter's been
appointed to build the new satellite and that's his share in helping Mven Mass.
I'm making no mistake when I tell you quite seriously to go to him, ask nothing
of him, not even a tender glance, no plans for the future, no love ... only
give him your support, dispel his doubts in his own right and then bring him
back to our world. You have strength enough to do that, Chara. Will you
go?"
The girl was breathing fast, she raised her
childishly trusting eyes to the older woman and there were tears in them.
"I'll go today!"
Evda Nahl kissed Chara heartily.
"You're right, you must hurry. We'll go to
Asia Minor together on the Spiral Way. Renn Bose is in a surgical sanatorium on
the Island of Rhodes and I'll send you on to Deir-es-Sohr where there is a
helicopter base belonging to the technical and medical first-aid service on the
Australia and New Zealand route. I can imagine the pleasure it will give the
pilot to take the famous dancer Chara≈ alas, not the biologist Chara!≈to any
place she wants to visit."
The chief conductor of train 116/78 invited
Evda Nahl and her companion to pay a visit to the central control room. A
corridor, covered with a silicolloid hood, ran along the whole length of the
huge cars. Mechanics walked up and down this corridor, from one end of the
train to the other, watching instruments indicating the temperature of the
axles, the strain on the springs and frame of each of the cars. Geiger counters
kept a check on lubrication and brakes. The two women went up a spiral
staircase and walked along the corridor until they came to a big cabin high up
over the streamlined nose of the first car. In a crystal ellipsoid twenty-two
feet above the railway line sat two mechanics one on either side of the
pyramidal hood of the electronic robot driver. Parabolic screens showed them
everything that was going on on both sides and behind the train. The whiskers
of the antenna that trembled on the roof belonged to an apparatus that should
give warning of anything appearing on the line of the Spiral Way for the next
50 kilometres although the circumstances under which anything could appear
would be very extraordinary.
Evda and Chara sat down on a sofa against the
bade wall of the cabin placed half a metre higher than the seats of the
mechanics and allowed themselves to be hypnotized by the railway lines racing
swiftly towards them. The gigantic railway crossed mountain ranges, was carried
over the plains along huge embankments and crossed narrow waters and bays by
viaducts built deep in the water. The forest planted on the sides of the
colossal cuttings and embankments formed a continuous carpet owing to the
train's uniform speed of 200 kilometres an hour, a carpet that was reddish,
light or dark green depending on the trees of the district≈pines, eucalypti, or
olives. The calm waters of the Archipelago were set in motion on both sides of
the bridge by the movement of the air as it was cut by the ten-metre-wide
train. The big ripples ran out fanwise, darkening the transparent blue water.
The two women sat in silence, watching the line
and wrapped up, each in her own thoughts and cares. So they sat for four hours
on end. Another four hours were spent in the comfortable chairs of the saloon
on the second storey amongst the other passengers until they parted near the
coast of Asia Minor. Evda transferred to an electrobus that would take her to
the nearest port and Chara continued her way to the East Taurus station, the
junction of the First Meridian Branch. Another two hours and Chara found
herself on a hot plain, in a haze of hot dry air. Here on the edge of the
former Syrian Desert was the airport Deir-es-Sohr, where spiral helicopters,
dangerous in inhabited areas, could land and take off.
Chara Nandi would never forget the weary hours
she spent at Deir-es-Sohr waiting for the plane to come in. Time and again she
thought over her words and her actions, trying to imagine her meeting with Mven
Mass; she built up plans for the search for him on the Island of Oblivion,
where everything was blurred in the procession of uneventful days.
At last she was on her way: below spread the
endless fields of thermo-elements in the Nefud and Rub-el-Hali deserts, huge
stations for the conversion of sunshine into electric power. They were arranged
in straight rows and had blinds that shielded them at night and from the dust;
built on consolidated sand dunes, on plateaux cut away with a slope to the
south and over a labyrinth of filled-in wadis, they stood there as a monument
to man's terrific struggle for energy, a struggle that had begun when the
ancient coal and oil resources were exhausted, after the first failures with
atomic energy, when mankind came to the conclusion that the chief source of
energy would have to be that of the sun in two forms≈hydroelectric power
stations and sun stations. When new forms of energy, P, Q and F energy were
discovered, the necessity for severe economy disappeared. A whole forest of
windmotors stood motionless along the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula,
another reserve power capacity for the northern living zone. In an instant the
helicopter had crossed the barely noticeable line of the coast and was airborne
over the Indian Ocean. Five thousand kilometres was an insignificant distance
for the swift aircraft. Very soon Chara Nandi, followed by good wishes and
hopes for a speedy return, left the helicopter, stepping wearily on her shaky
legs.
The director of the landing field sent his
daughter with a tiny flat-bottomed motor-boat to take Chara to the Island of
Oblivion. The two girls were frankly delighted with the high speed of the tiny
boat as it skimmed the big waves of the open sea. They went straight to a big
bay on the east coast of the island where there was a medical station belonging
to the Great World.
Coconut palms, their feathered leaves bowed
over the wavelets lapping gently against the shore, welcomed Chara to the
island. The medical station was deserted, all its workers having gone inland to
destroy ticks discovered on certain rodents in the forest.
There was a stable at the station. Horses were
still bred for work in places like the Island of Oblivion or at sanatoria where
helicopters could not be used on account of the noise or electric cars on
account of the absence of roads. Chara slept for a while, changed her clothes
and then went to look at the rare and beautiful animals. There she met a woman
who was skilfully operating two machines≈a feed distributor and a
stable-cleaning machine. Chara helped her with her work and the woman answered
her questions. Chara asked her the best way to look for somebody on the island.
The woman advised her to join one of the destroyer caravans that travelled all
over the island and knew the place much better than the local inhabitants. Chara
approved of this idea.
The hydroplane was crossing Palk Strait against a strong head wind, leaping over the flat-topped rollers. Two thousand years before there had been a ridge of coral reefs and shallows there known as Adam's Bridge. Recent geological processes had created a deep gulf in place of the ridge and deep waters now divided the lovers of repose from a mankind that was surging ever forward.
Mven Mass stood against the rail, his feet
placed wide apart peering at the Island of Oblivion as it gradually grew in
size on the horizon. This huge island, washed by warm currents, was a natural
paradise. In man's primitive religious conceptions paradise had been a happy
refuge after death where there were no cares or labour. The Island of Oblivion
was also a happy asylum for those who were not attracted by the feverish
activity of the Great World and who did not want to work on the same level as
other people.
Here in the lap of mother nature, they lived
out their years in the peace and calm known to the ancient cultivator of the
soil, fisherman or herdsman.
Although mankind had given their weaker
brothers a large area of wonderfully fruitful land, the primitive economy of
the island could not fully guarantee the population against famine especially
in periods of drought or other calamities that were so common where the
productive forces were poorly developed. The Great World, therefore, was
constantly allotting part of its reserve supplies to the Island of Oblivion.
Foodstuffs, preserved to last for many years,
medicines, means of biological protection and other necessities were shipped to
the island through three ports on the north-western, southern and eastern
coasts. The three chief local governors also lived in the north, east and south
and were known as the Directors of Animal Husbandry, Agriculture and Fisheries
respectively. These people, elected by the islanders themselves, were always
noted for their strong character. Some of them might have become pitiless tyrants
if it had not been for the constant watch kept by the Economic and Health
Councils and by the Control of Honour and Justice.
Not only on the island, but also in the Great
World it occasionally happened that men of the hated category of
"bulls" tried to enter into conspiracies and organize rebellions but
the detachments of the Destroyer Battalions were as ruthless in dealing with
wilful murderers as they were with sharks, bacteria and poisonous reptiles.
As he gazed at his future asylum Mven Mass began
to wonder whether he, too, was a ''bull", but he put the thought aside in
disgust. A "bull" was a strong and energetic man but one completely
unaffected by the sufferings of others, a man who thought only of his own,
usually unworthy, pleasures. People who, in the past obtained such characters
from an unfortunate combination of inherited qualities had to keep themselves
in hand and in training throughout their lives in order to be worthy members of
the new society. The sufferings, quarrels and misfortunes of mankind in the
distant past had always been aggravated by such people who, in various guises,
proclaimed themselves the sole holders of the truth, the rulers who claimed the
right to suppress all those whose opinions did not agree with theirs, the right
to eradicate all other ways of thought or of life. Since then mankind has
avoided the slightest sign of the absolute in opinions, desires and tastes and
had become more wary of the "bulls" than of anything else. They, the
"bulls," ignoring the inviolable laws of economics, with no thought
for the future, lived only for the present. The wars and disorganized economy
of the Era of Disunity had led to the plundering of the planet. In those days
forests were felled, supplies of coal and oil that had accumulated in the
course of millions of years were burned up, the atmosphere was polluted by
carbon monoxide and other filth that belched out of improperly constructed
factories, beautiful and harmless animals were annihilated, and this went on
until the world at last arrived at the communist structure of society, the only
system that could ensure man's continued existence. Great difficulties were
left for the descendants. In the Era of Unity the most complicated
reorganization of the world had to be undertaken in countries whose trees had
degenerated into bushes and their cattle into dwarfs. The earth had been
littered with rubbish of all sorts≈broken glass, paper, rusty iron≈and the
rivers and sea-coasts had been polluted by waste oil and chemicals. Only when
the water, air and earth had been properly cleansed did man see his planet in
its present form where he could go anywhere barefoot without fear of hurting
his feet.
But had not he, Mven Mass, who had been less
than two years in an important post, destroyed an artificial satellite built by
thousands of people employing miracles of the engineer's art? Four competent
scientists, any of whom might have become a Renn Bose, had been killed and Renn
Bose himself had been saved with the greatest difficulty. Again the figure of
Beth Lohn, hiding somewhere in the mountains and valleys of the Island of
Oblivion, arose before his eyes, this time arousing great sympathy in him.
Before he had left, Mven Mass had seen photographs of the mathematician, and
had remembered his energetic face with its massive jaw and sharp eyes,
deep-sunk and close to each other≈he remembered his whole athletic frame....
The hydroplane engineer came over to Mven Mass.
"There's heavy surf. We shan't be able to put in to the coast, the waves
are beating over the mole. We'll have to make for the southern port."
"There's no need to. You have life rafts.
I can put my clothes on one and swim ashore."
The engineer and helmsman looked at Mven Mass
with respect. Surf-capped white waves piled up on the shallows and poured down
in heavy, thundering cascades. Closer to the shore a disorderly swirl of waves
whipped the sand and foam together and raced far up the low beach. The warm,
fine rain that fell from the low-hanging clouds was swept at a slant by the wind
and mixed with the wisps of foam.
Some grey figures were dimly visible on the
beach through the veil of haze.
The engineer and the helmsman exchanged glances
as Mven Mass stripped and packed up his clothes. Those who went to the Island
of Oblivion were no longer under the guardianship of society where everybody
protected everybody else and helped him. Mven Mass' personality aroused the
involuntary respect of the helmsman and he decided to warn him of the great
danger he was running. The African waved his hand carelessly. The engineer
brought him a small hermetically sealed case.
"Here is a month's supply of concentrated
foods, take it with you."
Mven Mass thought for a second then put the
case and his clothes in the waterproof chamber, buckled the flap tightly and
with the little raft under his arm put his leg over the rail.
"Swing her round!" he commanded. The
hydroplane leaned over in a sharp turn. Mven Mass, thrown far away from the
tiny vessel, began his furious fight with the waves. Those on the boat saw him
rise on the crest of a wave, disappear into a trough and reappear on another
crest.
"With his strength he'll manage it all
right," said the engineer, with a sigh of relief. "We're drifting, we
must get away from here."
The screw raced and the little vessel jumped
forward and lifted up on a wave that ran counter to it. Mven Mass' dark figure
appeared at full height on the beach and merged with the haze of rain.
Across the sandy beach, beaten hard by the
waves, a group of people wearing nothing but loin-cloths came to meet him. They
were dragging a huge, madly writhing fish in triumph. When they noticed Mven
Mass they stopped and greeted him in friendly manner.
"A new one from that world," said one
of the fishermen with a smile. "He swims well. Come and live with
us!"
Mven Mass gave the fishermen a frank, friendly
look and shook his head.
"It would be hard for me to live here on
the sea-coast and always be looking at the expanse of water and thinking of my
beautiful lost world. I'm going into the interior, on to the plateau where the
herdsmen live."
One of the fishermen with a lot of grey in his
thick beard that apparently was here considered an adornment to a man, laid his
hand on the newcomer's wet shoulder.
''Could you have been compelled to come here?"
Mven Mass gave a bitter smile and tried to
explain what had brought him there.
The fisherman looked at the newcomer sadly and
with sympathy.
'"We do not understand each other. Go your
way," he said, pointing to the south-east, where the blue terraces of
distant mountains could be seen through a break in the clouds. "It is a
long way and there is no other means of transport here than..." and the
islander slapped the powerful muscles of his legs.
Mven Mass was glad to get away as quickly as
possible and with long, swinging steps went up the winding path that led to
some low hills.
The way to the centre of the island was a
little more than two hundred kilometres and Mven Mass was in no hurry. Why
should he be? Wearisome days, not filled by any sort of useful labour, dragged
on slowly. At first, when he had not fully recovered from the catastrophe, his
tired body demanded repose, the tranquillity of nature. If he had not been
conscious of the tremendous loss he had suffered he would have enjoyed the
silence of the deserted, wind-swept plateaux and the blackness and primordial
silence of hot, tropical nights.
But as day followed day, the African, wandering
about the island in search of some work to interest him, began to yearn for the
Great World. The peaceful valleys with their groves of hand-cultivated
fruit-trees no longer gave him pleasure nor was he lulled by the almost
hypnotic gurgle of the pure mountain streams on whose banks he could now sit
for countless hours in the heat of the afternoon or on a moonlit night.
Countless hours ... why should he count that
which was of no use to him there, time? He bad as much as he wanted, an ocean
of time but he felt that his own, individual time was so insignificant. One
brief and soon-forgotten moment! That was what happened to the lives of our
stone age ancestors, lives full of courage and real heroism.
Only then did Mven Mass feel how well the
island had been named≈the Island of Oblivion! The stupid namelessness of the
ancient ways of life, the doings and feelings of man! Deeds were forgotten by
descendants because they were performed for the satisfaction of individual
needs and did not make the life of the community easier and better, did not
brighten life with creative art.
Mven was accepted into a company of herdsmen in
the centre of the island and for two months pastured herds of buffalo at the
foot of a huge mountain bearing the clumsily long name it had been given by the
people who inhabited the island in ancient days.
For a long time he boiled his black porridge in
a sooty pot and a month before he had had to seek fruits and nuts in the forest
in competition with the greedy monkeys who threw their shells and peelings at
him. That had happened when he had given the food he brought from the
hydroplane to an old couple in a distant valley in accordance with the rule of
the Great Circle World and its greatest joy: first give pleasure to others.
Then he had discovered what it meant to have to seek food in unpopulated desert
places. What a senseless waste of time.
Mven Mass got up from the stone on which he had
been sitting and glanced round. The sun was setting behind the edge of the
plateau and the wooded, rounded top of a hill rose up before him.
Below in the twilight murmured a swift rivulet
flowing between growths of tall, feathered bamboos. Half a day's journey on
foot or on the back of a buffalo at an even slower pace, stood the almost
six-thousand-year-old ruins of the ancient capital of the island. Other bigger
and better preserved cities had also been abandoned. Mven Mass took no interest
in them so far.
The herd lay like black boulders in the dark
grass. Night fell quickly. The stars came out in their thousands to twinkle in
the black sky. This was the darkness to which the astronomer was accustomed ...
the well-known outlines of the constellations ... the bright lights of the
bigger stars. From there he could see the fatal Tucana ≈ but how weak human
eyes are! Never again would he see the magnificent spectacle of the Cosmos, the
spirals of the gigantic galaxies, the mysterious planets and blue suns. All
these were now only points of light immeasurably distant. Did it matter any
more whether they were stars or lanterns hanging on a crystal sphere, as the
ancients used to think. To the unaided eye it was all the same!
The African scraped together the brushwood he
had made ready. There was another article that had become necessary, a small
lighter. Perhaps soon he would follow the example of some of the local
inhabitants and inhale narcotic smoke to make the endlessly lengthy days seem
shorter.
Tongues of flame played amongst the sticks,
driving away the darkness and extinguishing the stars. The big animals were
snuffling peacefully near by. Mven Mass stared pensively into the fire.
Had this bright planet of ours become a gloomy
home for him?
No, his proud renunciation was nothing more
than the self-confidence of ignorance. Ignorance of his own self, an
underestimation of the loftiness of the full creative life he had lived, a
misunderstanding of his love for Chara. It would be better to sacrifice his
life for one hour of some worth-while deed for the Great World than to live
here a whole century.
On the Island of Oblivion there were about two
hundred medical centres where doctor volunteers from the Great World provided
the local inhabitants with everything modern medicine could offer. The youth of
the Great World also served in the Destroyer Battalions that prevented the
island from becoming a breeding ground for the ancient diseases and for harmful
animal life. Mven Mass deliberately avoided meeting these people so that he
should not feel himself an outcast from the world of beauty and knowledge.
At dawn Mven Mass was relieved by another
herdsman. He was free for two days and decided to go to a small town to get a
cloak as the nights in the mountains were chilly.
It was a calm, hot day when Mven Mass left the
plateau and descended to the wide plain, a veritable sea of pale lilac and
golden-yellow flowers over which countless brightly coloured insects were
hovering. Puffs of a light breeze made the tops of the plants wave and the
flowers gently brushed their heads against Mven Mass' bare knees as he walked
through them. When he reached the middle of the huge field he stood still for a
moment to enjoy the simple and joyful beauty of that aroma-filled natural
garden. Bending down, the African passed the palms of his hands pensively over
the wind-rocked flowers, and felt he was reliving a childhood dream.
A faint, rhythmical tinkle reached his ears.
Mven Mass raised his head and saw a girl walking along swiftly, up to her waist
in flowers. She turned to one side and Mven Mass looked admiringly at her
graceful figure in the midst of that sea of flowers. A feeling of deep regret
seized him: that could have been Chara if... if things had turned out
differently.
His scientist's sharp powers of observation
told him at once that the girl was worried. She kept looking back and increased
her pace without reason as though she were afraid she were being followed. Mven
Mass changed his direction and quickly caught up with the girl.
The girl stopped. A brightly-coloured shawl was
wrapped tightly round her body with the ends crossed and the hem of her red
skirt was wet with dew. The thin bracelets on her bare arms tinkled more loudly
as she threw back from her face a lock of hair that the wind had tousled. Her
sorrowful eyes were looking out in concentration from under short curls that
fell carelessly on her cheeks and forehead. The girl was breathing heavily,
apparently from her long walk. A few beads of perspiration showed on her
pretty, tanned face. She made a few uncertain steps towards Mven Mass.
"Who are you and where are you hurrying
to?" he asked. "Perhaps you are in need of help?"
The girl stared intently at him and then
answered, hurriedly and jerkily:
"I'm Onar from the 5th Settlement. But I
don't need help."
"I think you do! You're tired and
something is
bothering you. What can be threatening you? Why do you refuse my help?"
The girl looked at him and her eyes beamed,
pure and profound, like those of a woman of the Great World.
"I know who you are! You are the big man
from there," and she waved her hand in the direction of Africa and the
sea. "You are kind and credulous."
"You be the same! Is somebody after
you?"
"Yes!" gasped the girl in despair,
"he's chasing after me!"
"Who is he that dares to make you fear him
and to chase after you?"
The girl blushed and hesitated.
"There's one man who wants me to be
his...."
"But surely you can choose for yourself
whether to respond or not, can't you? How can he compel you to love him? Let
him come here and I'll tell him...."
"Oh, no! He also came from the Great
World, but a long time ago, and he's strong, only he's not like you, he's
terrible!"
Mven Mass laughed a carefree laugh.
"Where are you going?"
"To the 5th Settlement. I've been to the
town and I met...."
Mven Mass nodded his head and took the girl by
the hand. She allowed her fingers to remain in his big hand and together they
went along a side path leading to the settlement.
On the way the girl, from time to time looking
back apprehensively, told him that the man who was persecuting her was always
accompanied by two other strong and evil men who were in every way obedient to
him.
Her fear to speak frankly made Mven Mass
indignant. He had been trained from childhood by history lessons, through
books, films and music to hate all those who oppressed people, all the secret
organizations that had existed in the past, everything that was hidden from the
conscience and judgement of the people, everything that meant bloodshed and
unhappiness. He could not tolerate the existence of oppression, even if it were
only occasional, on their well-ordered earth!
"Why don't your people do something?"
exclaimed Mven Mass, "and why doesn't the Control of Honour and Justice
know about it? Don't your schools teach you history and don't you know what
even tiny centres of brute force may lead to?"
"We're taught... we know ..."
answered Onar, mechanically, looking straight in front of her. The flowery
plain had come to an end and the path disappeared among the bushes in a sharp
bend. Two men jumped out at the bend, barring the road to them. The girl
snatched her hand away frantically, whispering, "I'm afraid for you, go
away, man from the Great World!"
"Seize her!" came an imperative voice
from behind the bushes. In the Great Circle Era nobody spoke so roughly. Mven
Mass instinctively thrust the girl behind him and began to try his persuasion
on these incomprehensibly wild people, but he stopped talking when he realized
that his words did not reach them.
The broad-shouldered young men ran up to him
and tried to push him away from the girl but Mven Mass stood as firm as a rock.
Then one of them gave him a lightning-like blow
in the face with his fist. Mven Mass staggered. Never in his life had he seen
deliberate, spiteful blows struck for the purpose of causing hurt, to stun and
insult a man.
The other man punched him in the kidneys and
through the ringing in his ears Mven Mass heard Onar's pitiful cry. Fury
overcame him and he threw himself on his enemies, trying to crush them. Two
deadly blows in the stomach and the jaw brought the African to the ground. Onar
dropped to her knees, covering him with her body but her enemies seized her
with a howl of triumph. They pulled her elbows bads behind her and she
straightened up in pain, her head thrown back. Hands filthy from earth and Mven
Mass' blood squeezed her helplessly writhing body and the girl sobbed, her face
purple with anger.
"Bring her here!" came the loud voice
again. An elderly man of tremendous height came out of the bushes. He was naked
to the waist and athletic muscles rippled under the grey hair that covered his
torso.
Mven Mass, however, had already recovered. He
had had more serious tussles during his youth when he was performing his
Labours of Hercules and had fought against sharks and octopuses, beings not
bound by human laws. He tried to remember all he had been taught about
hand-to-hand fighting with the monsters.
Mven Mass remained on the ground for a few second
to get his breath and then with one powerful leap reached the men who were
dragging Onar away. One of them turned to meet the attack and Mven punched him
exactly on a nerve centre. He fell to the ground with a bestial howl and a
moment later was followed by his companion, brought down by a well-placed kick.
The girl was free. Mven stood face to face with the third man, the leader of
the gang, who was lifting his hand to strike. He cast one glance at his
fury-distorted face to note the spot where he would deliver him one crushing
blow≈and staggered back. He recognized that powerful face that had so long
tormented him in his dreams when he was wondering about his right to carry out
the Tibetan experiment.
"Beth Lohn!"
Lohn stood still, staring at the unknown
dark-skinned man who had now lost all his customary good nature.
The two confederates jumped up, still writhing
with pain and wanted to attack again but the mathematician waved them back
imperiously.
"Beth Lohn, I have thought a lot about the
possibility of meeting you, believing you to be my companion in
misfortune" exclaimed Mven Mass, "but I never expected the meeting
would be like this!"
"Like what?" asked Beth Lohn
insolently, hiding the wrath that burned in his eyes.
Mven Mass waved the question aside. "What
is the use of empty words? In that world you did not use them and acted, even
if criminally, for the sake of a great idea. For the sake of what are you
acting here?"
"For my own sake, for myself alone!"
said Beth Lohn contemptuously, spitting the words through his teeth. "I
have considered others and the common good long enough. Now I realize that it
is all of no use to a man. Some of the wise men in ancient times knew it,
too."
"You never did think of others, Beth
Lohn," Mven Mass said, interrupting him. "Giving way to your own
desires in everything you have become what you are now ≈rapist, deceiver, an
animal, almost!"
The mathematician made as if to attack Mven
Mass but restrained himself.
"Is it proper for a man of the Great World
to lie? I have never been a deceiver."
"What about them?" Mven Mass pointed
to the two young men who were listening to the conversation in bewilderment.
"Where are you taking them? What are you leading them to≈the narcotic
bullets of the Destroyer Battalion? You know very well that brute force,
apparent power over other people, is the way to repudiation and death."
"I did not deceive them in any way. They
came of their own free will...."
"You, with your powerful intellect and
will-power made use of the weakness of the human spirit, of their willingness
to submit, a factor that was responsible for many of the calamities of the
ancient world. In the old days men could avoid responsibility by laying the
blame on the stronger, by submitting blindly and obediently and then laying the
blame for their own ignorance, laziness and weak will on to God, an idea, a
military or political leader. Was that the same thing as reasonable obedience
to a teacher of our world? What you want is to train people who are loyal to
you in the same way as oppressors of the past did, you want human robots."
"Enough, you talk too much."
"I see that you've lost too much and I
want...."
"And I don't want! Get out of my
way!"
Mven Mass did not budge. With his head bent, he
stood confidently and threateningly in front of Beth Lohn and could feel the
girl's trembling shoulder against his back. That shiver enraged him far more
than the blows he had received.
The former mathematician stood stock still,
staring straight at the African, straight into black eyes that were burning
with rage.
"Go!" he said with a loud gasp,
stepping back from the path and ordering his companions to do the same. Mven
Mass again took Onar by the hand and led her through the bushes; he could feel
Beth Lohn's stare of hatred following him.
At a bend in the path Mven Mass stopped so
suddenly that Onar bumped into him.
"Beth Lohn, let's go back to the Great
World together!"
The mathematician burst out laughing with his
former abandon but Mven's sharp ear caught a note of bitterness behind his
bravado.
"Who are you to suggest such a thing? Do
you know?..."
"Yes, I know. I have also carried out a
forbidden experiment and killed people I should have protected.... My path in
science was close to yours and we, you and I and others, are already on the eve
of victory! People need you, but not such as you are today."
The mathematician stepped up to Mven Mass and
lowered his eyes, then suddenly turned away and contemptuously spat out coarse
words of refusal over his shoulder. Mven Mass continued his way along the path
without a word.
The 5th Settlement was about six miles away.
The African learned that the girl lived quite alone and advised her to go to
the east coast, to a seaside village where she would not meet the brutal Beth
Lohn again.
Formerly a famous scientist, he had become a
tyrant to the quiet little settlements of the mountain district that lived such
a secluded life. In order to avoid any evil consequences Mven Mass decided to
go into the settlement at once and ask for the three men to be kept under
observation.
Mven Mass said good-bye to Onar on the
outskirts of the settlement. The girl told him that there were rumours that
tigers had appeared in the forests that covered the round-topped mountain; they
had either escaped from the reservation or were still living in the dense
jungles that surrounded the island's highest mountain. She grasped his hand and
implored him to take care of himself and not go through the mountains at night.
Mven Mass made his way back quickly and as he thought over everything that had
happened he could see the girl's last look, a look that was filled at once with
both anxiety and loyalty such as were rarely met with in the Great World. For
the first time in his life Mven Mass thought of the true heroes of the distant
past, people who had remained good in face of humiliation, wrath and physical
suffering, something that required indomitable courage and fortitude. For the
first time in his life he realized that the people of ancient times whose life
seemed so hard to his contemporaries had also known the meaning of happiness,
hope and creative activity, at times, perhaps, even to a greater extent than
was the case in the Great Circle Era.
It was almost with anger that Mven Mass
recalled the theoreticians of those days who based their prophecy that mankind
would not improve in a million years on a false understanding of the slowness
of the mutation of species in nature.
If they had loved people more and had
understood the dialectics of development such ridiculous ideas would never have
entered their heads.
The sunset turned red the clouds that lay on
the rounded spur of a gigantic mountain. Mven Mass jumped into a stream to wash
off the dirt and blood of battle.
Refreshed and calm at last he sat down on a
flat stone to dry himself and rest. He would not be able to get to the town
before nightfall but he expected to be able to cross the mountain when the moon
came up. As he sat contemplating the water gurgling over the stones he suddenly
felt that somebody's eyes were fixed on him but could not see anybody. The same
feeling that unseen eyes were watching him was still with him when he crossed
the stream and began to climb the slope.
Mven Mass walked quickly along the cart road
leading to a plateau about 1,800 metres high, passing from terrace to terrace
in order to cross a wooded spur which was the shortest way to the town. The
thin crescent of the new moon would light the way for no more than an hour and
a half and it would be very difficult to ascend a steep mountain path in the
dark.
Mven Mass, therefore, had to hurry. Occasional
low trees cast shadows that made black lines on the dry moonlit earth. Mven
Mass kept a sharp look-out in order not to stumble over the countless roots
that lay in his way but all the time he was thinking deeply.
From somewhere far away to the right, where the
slope was gentler and lay in deep shadow, came a menacing growl that made the
earth tremble as it carried over the ground. It was answered by a low roar from
amongst the patches and strips of moonlight in the forest. These sounds had a
strength in them that penetrated deep into a man's soul, arousing a long
forgotten feeling of fear and doom in the victim selected by an invincible
beast of prey. To counteract the ancient fear, in the African's heart there
burned the no less ancient fury of battle, inherited from countless generations
of nameless heroes that had defended the rights of the human race to live
amongst mammoths, lions, giant bears, savage bulls and ruthless wolf-packs in
exhausting days spent in hunting and nights spent in fear-filled defence.
Mven Mass stood still, looking round and
holding his breath. Nothing moved in the silence of the night but when he
walked on a few steps along the path, he was certain that he was being followed.
Tigers! ≈ was it possible that Onar's information was really correct?
He began to run, trying to decide what to do
when the animals, there were clearly two of them, attacked him.
It was senseless to try to escape up a tall
tree that a tiger could climb better than a man. What was there to fight with?
There was nothing at hand but stones, lie could not even break a decent club
off the branches of trees as hard as iron. When the growls came from behind him
and close at hand he realized that he was lost. The dusty branches of the trees
that now overshadowed the path stifled him, he wanted to gain courage for the
last few moments from the eternal depths of the starry sky, to the study of
which all his past life had been devoted. Mven Mass ran on with long strides.
Fate favoured him for he came to a place in the forest where there was a big,
open glade. In the centre of the glade he noticed a heap of big boulders, ran
to it, seized a thirty-kilogram sharp-cornered block of stone and turned
towards the forest. He could now see vaguely moving, phantom-like figures. They
were striped and were easily lost amongst the shadows of the scanty trees. The
moon was already so low that its edge touched the tree-tops. The lengthened
shadows lay across the glade like paths and the huge cats were crawling along
them towards Mven Mass. He felt approaching death in the same way as he had
done in the underground chamber at the Tibetan Observatory. This time it was
not coming from inside him but from outside, it gleamed in the green flame of
the animals' phosphorescent eyes. Mven Mass breathed in a puff of wind that
came through the heated air, glanced up at the shining glory of the Cosmos,
straightened his back and raised the big stone above his head.
"I'm with you!" A tall shadow spread
across the glade from the darkness of the slope threateningly brandishing a
knotted branch. For a moment the astounded Mven Mass forgot all about the
tigers≈he recognized the mathematician. Beth Lohn, out of breath from his
headlong race stood beside Mven Mass, gasping spasmodically. The giant cats had
at first drawn back but now they began steadily approaching the men. The tiger
on his left was no more than thirty paces away and had drawn up its hind legs
to spring.
"Quicker!" a loud shout resounded
across the glade. As the pale flashes of grenade-throwers came from three
points behind Mven's back he dropped his stone in his surprise at the
suddenness of it. The nearer tiger reared up on its hind legs to full height,
the paralyzing grenades burst like the beating of drums and the animal lay
stretched out on its bade. The other leaped towards the forest but from there
three figures on horseback appeared. A glass bomb with a powerful electric
charge struck the tiger on the forehead and he stretched out with his heavy
head in the dry grass.
One of the horsemen rode forward. Never before
had the working dress worn by people of the Great World seemed so elegant to
Mven Mass≈wide shorts and shirt of strong, artificial blue linen open at the
neck and with breast pockets.
'"Mven Mass, I felt that you were in
danger!"
Could he fail to recognize that high-pitched
voice that was still full of alarm! Chara Nandi! The African forgot to answer
her and stood rooted to the spot until the girl sprang from her horse and ran
to him. She was followed by her five companions whom Mven Mass could not get a
glimpse of because the moon had hidden behind the trees; the wind died down and
stifling darkness enveloped the glade and the forest. Chara's hand found Mven's
elbow. He took her thin wrist and laid her hand on his chest where his heart
was beating wildly. Chara's fingertips stroked a bulging muscle and that gentle
caress gave Mven Mass a sense of tranquillity such as he had never known
before.
"Chara, this is Beth Lohn, my new
friend." He turned round and found that the mathematician had disappeared.
"Beth Lohn, don't go away!" he
shouted with all his might into the darkness.
"I'll come back!" a powerful voice
answered from a distance and this time there was no bitter insolence in it.
One of Chara's companions, a youth of medium
height, apparently the leader of the group, took a lantern that was hanging
behind his saddle. A faint light together with an unseen radio ray rose into
the air and Mven Mass guessed that they were expecting an aircraft of some
sort. All five were little more than boys, members of a Destroyer Battalion who
had chosen, as one of their Labours of Hercules, the security service that
fought against dangerous animals on the Island of Oblivion. Chara Nandi had
joined them in her search for Mven Mass.
"You're mistaken if you think we're so
astute," said the leader when they were sitting in a circle round the
lantern and Mven Mass began asking the inevitable questions, "a girl with
an ancient Greek name helped us." "Onar!" exclaimed Mven Mass.
"Yes, Onar. Our detachment was approaching the 5th Settlement from the
south when the girl came running up to us on the verge of collapse. She
confirmed the rumour about the tigers that had brought us here and persuaded us
to ride after you immediately as there was a danger that they might attack you
when you were crossing the mountain. As you see we were only just in time. A
cargo helicopter will come soon and we'll send your temporarily paralysed
enemies to a reservation. If they really turn out to be man-eaters they'll be
killed. But such a rare animal must not be destroyed until it has been
tested."
"What sort of test?" The boy raised
his brows.
"That's outside your competency. To begin
with they'll probably be given a tranquillizer.... Now and again people who
have too much misapplied energy and strength have to be dealt with in that way,
too." "How is it done?" asked Mven Mass. "I know of a case
of an unbelievably brutal athlete here who forgot his social duties and obligations.
He was given an injection to lower vital activity and bring his physical
strength down to the level of his weak will and intellect thus balancing the
two sides of his being. In the last three years he has learnt a lot≈your
enemies will be taught in the same way."
A loud rumble interrupted the youth. A huge,
dark mass came slowly down to them. A blinding light flooded the whole glade.
The striped cats were enclosed in soft containers such as were used for fragile
goods. The big airship, poorly visible in the darkness, disappeared, leaving
the glade to the calm light of the stars. One of the five lads had gone off
with the tigers and Mven Mass had been given his horse.
Mven's horse and Chara's walked along side by
side. The path led down to the valley of the River Galle at whose mouth, on the
sea-coast, the medical station and Destroyer Battalion base were situated.
"This is the first time I've been to the
sea since I came to the island," said Mven Mass, breaking the silence.
"Until now it has seemed to me that the sea is a wall that I'm forbidden
to cross and which marks off my world."
"The island has been a new school for
you," said Chara joyfully but half-questioningly.
"Yes, in a short time here I've
experienced a lot and have done some new thinking. All these ideas I've had on
my mind for a long time...."
Mven Mass told her about his fears that man, by
repeating the mistakes of the past, even if in a much less ugly form, is
developing in a too rational, too technical manner. It seemed to Mven that on
the planet of Epsilon Tucanae there was a mankind very much like ours and very
beautiful in body that had paid greater attention to the perfection of the
emotional side of the psyche.
"I've suffered a great deal from this
sense of imperfect harmony with life," answered the girl after a pause.
"I've always wanted more of the old and much less of what is around me. I
dreamed of the epoch that had not expended the strength and feelings
accumulated in the primitive period, the Age of Eros in Mediterranean Antiquity.
It would be a good thing for the Great World to set up a reservation for the
Life of Antiquity where we could rest and acquire emotional strength. I have
always tried to arouse a real strength of feeling in my audiences but, I'm
afraid, only Evda Nahl has fully understood me!"
"And Mven Mass!" added the African,
seriously, telling her how she had appeared to him as the copper-coloured
daughter of Tucana. The girl raised her face and in the timid light of early
dawn Mven Mass saw eyes so big and profound that he felt a slight dizziness,
moved away from her and laughed.
"There was a time when our ancestors in
their novels about the future imagined us as weakly, rickety beings with
overgrown skulls. Despite the millions of animals that were tormented and
slaughtered in the name of science they did not come any nearer to an
understanding of the brain mechanism of man and simply because they used a
knife where the most delicate measuring instruments in the molecule and atom
range were needed. We now know that strong intellectual activity requires a
powerful body, full of vital energy and that that body will produce strong
emotions that we have so far learned only to suppress and, by suppressing them,
make ourselves the poorer!"
"We are still chained to the
intellect," agreed Chara. "A lot has been done but the intellectual
side continues to advance while the emotional lags behind and that is what must
be looked after≈so that emotion should not demand an intellectual chain but
that reason should at times need emotion's chains. I have come to regard this
as so important that I intend to write a book about it."
"Oh, of course," exclaimed Chara
enthusiastically, but grew timid and continued, "very few great scientists
have devoted themselves to research into the laws of the beautiful and the
fullness of emotions≈I'm not talking about psychology."
"I can understand you," answered the
African, admiring the girl who, in her confusion, had raised her proud head
higher to the rays of the rising sun that again gave her skin the colour of
burnished copper. Chara sat easily and lightly on the big black horse that
walked in step with Mven Mass' roan.
"We are lagging behind!" exclaimed
the girl slackening her reins and urging her horse forward. The African
overtook her and they cantered together along the smooth old road. They soon
caught up with the others, reined in their horses and again Chara turned to
Mven Mass.
"What about that girl, Onar?"
"She must go to the Great World. You said
yourself that she had remained on the island quite by chance because she was
attached to her mother who came here and died recently. It would be good for
Onar to work with Veda, women's gentle and sensitive hands are needed at the
excavations.... And there are thousands of other jobs for which they are needed
... and Beth Lohn, the new Beth Lohn who will come back with us, he'll find her
in a new way."
Chara frowned and the bird that flew over her
eyes spread its wings still more widely.
"And you won't leave your stars?"
"Whatever the decision of the Council may
be I shall continue my study of the Cosmos. But first I have to write...."
"About the stars of the human soul?"
"Quite right, Chara! So great is their
variety that it takes my breath away." Noticing that the girl was smiling
gently at him, Mven Mass stopped, "Don't you agree?"
"Of course I do. I was thinking about your
experiment. You did it out of your passionately impatient desire to give people
the fullness of the world. In that you were an artist and not a
scientist."
"And Renn
Bose?"
"He's different. For him