16 – Touchdown

   The landing was just as anticlimactic as Captain Smith had hoped. It was impossible to tell the moment when Universe made contact; a full minute elapsed before the passengers realized that touchdown was complete, and raised a belated cheer.
   The ship lay at one end of a shallow valley, surrounded by hills little more than a hundred metres high. Anyone who had been expecting to see a lunar landscape would have been greatly surprised; these formations bore no resemblance at all to the smooth, gentle slopes of the Moon, sand-blasted by micrometeorite bombardment over billions of years.
   There was nothing here more than a thousand years old; the Pyramids were far more ancient than this landscape. Every time around the Sun, Halley was remoulded – and diminished – by the solar fires. Even since the 1986 perihelion passage, the shape of the nucleus had been subtly changed. Melding metaphors shamelessly, Victor Willis had nevertheless put it rather well when he told his viewers: 'The "peanut" has become wasp-waisted!'
   Indeed, there were indications that, after a few more revolutions round the Sun, Halley might split into two roughly equal fragments – as had Biela's comet, to the amazement of the astronomers of 1846.
   The virtually non-existent gravity also contributed to the strangeness of the landscape. All around were spidery formations like the fantasies of a surrealistic artist, and improbably canted rockpiles that could not have survived more than a few minutes even on the Moon.
   Although Captain Smith had chosen to land Universe in the depths of the polar night – all of five kilometres from the blistering heat of the Sun – there was ample illumination. The huge envelope of gas and dust surrounding the comet formed a glowing halo which seemed appropriate for this region; it was easy to imagine that it was an aurora, playing over the Antarctic ice. And if that was not sufficient, Lucifer provided its quota of several hundred full moons.
   Although expected, the complete absence of colour was a disappointment; Universe might have been sitting in an opencast coal mine: that, in fact, was not a bad analogy, for much of the surrounding blackness was due to carbon or its compounds, intimately mixed with snow and ice.
   Captain Smith, as was his due, was the first to leave the ship, pushing himself gently out from Universe's main airlock. It seemed an eternity before he reached the ground, two metres below; then he picked up a handful of the powdery surface, and examined it in his gloved hand.
   Aboard the ship, everyone waited for the words that would go into the history books.
   'Looks like pepper and salt,' said the Captain. 'If it were thawed out, it might grow a pretty good crop.'

   * * *

   The mission plan involved one complete Halley 'day' of fifty-five hours at the south pole, then – if there were no problems – a move of ten kilometres towards the very ill-defined equator, to study one of the geysers during a complete day-night cycle.
   Chief Scientist Pendrill wasted no time. Almost immediately, he set off with a colleague on a two-man jet-sled towards the beacon of the waiting probe. They were back within the hour, bearing prepackaged samples of comet which they proudly consigned to the deep-freeze.
   Meanwhile the other teams established a spider's web of cables along the valley, strung between poles driven into the friable crust. These served not only to link numerous instruments to the ship, but also made movement outside much easier. One could explore this portion of Halley without the use of cumbersome External Manoeuvring Units; it was only necessary to attach a tether to a cable, and then go along it hand over hand. That was also much more fun than operating EMUs, which were virtually one-man spaceships with all the complications they involved.
   The passengers watched all this with fascination, listening to the radioed conversations and trying to join in the excitement of discovery. After about twelve hours – considerably less in the case of ex-astronaut Clifford Greenburg – the pleasure of being a captive audience started to pall. Soon there was much talk about 'going outside' except from Victor Willis who was quite uncharacteristically subdued.
   'I think he's scared,' said Dimitri contemptuously. He had never liked Victor, since discovering that the scientist was completely tone-deaf. Though this was wildly unfair to Victor (who had gamely allowed himself to be used as a guinea pig for studies of his curious affliction) Dimitri was fond of adding darkly 'A man that hath no music in himself, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.'
   Floyd had made up his mind even before leaving Earth orbit. Maggie M was game enough to try anything and would need no encouragement. (Her slogan 'An author should never turn down the opportunity for a new experience' had impacted famously on her emotional life.)
   Yva Merlin, as usual, had kept everyone in suspense, but Floyd was determined to take her on a personal tour of the comet. It was the very least he could do to maintain his reputation; everyone knew that he had been partly responsible for getting the fabulous recluse on the passenger list, and now it was a running joke that they were having an affair. Their most innocent remarks were gleefully misinterpreted by Dimitri and the ship's physician Dr Mahindran, who professed to regard them with envious awe.
   After some initial annoyance – because it all too accurately recalled the emotions of his youth – Floyd had gone along with the joke. But he did not know how Yva felt about it, and had so far lacked the courage to ask her. Even now, in this compact little society where few secrets lasted more than six hours, she maintained much of her famous reserve – that aura of mystery which had fascinated audiences for three generations.
   As for Victor Willis, he had just discovered one of those devastating little details that can destroy the best-laid plans of mice and spacemen.
   Universe was equipped with the latest Mark XX suits, with non-fogging, non-reflective visors guaranteed to give an unparalleled view of space. And though the helmets came in several sizes, Victor Willis could not get into any of them without major surgery.
   It had taken him fifteen years to perfect his trademark ('a triumph of the topiary art,' one critic had called it, perhaps admiringly).
   Now only his beard stood between Victor Willis and Halley's Comet. Soon he would have to make a choice between the two.

17 – The Valley of Black Snow

   Captain Smith had raised surprisingly few objections to the idea of passenger EVAs. He agreed that to have come all this way, and not to set foot upon the comet, was absurd.
   'There'll be no problems if you follow instructions,' he said at the inevitable briefing. 'Even if you've never worn spacesuits before – and I believe that only Commander Greenburg and Dr Floyd have done so – they're quite comfortable, and fully automatic. There's no need to bother about any controls or adjustments, after you've been checked out in the airlock.
   'One absolute rule: only two of you can go EVA at one time. You'll have a personal escort, of course, linked to you by five metres of safety line – though that can be played out to twenty if necessary. In addition, you'll both be tethered to the two guide-cables we've strung the whole length of the valley. The rule of the road is the same as on Earth; keep to the right! If you want to overtake anyone, you only have to unclip your buckle – but one of you must always remain attached to the line. That way, there's no danger of drifting off into space. Any questions?'
   'How long can we stay out?'
   'As long as you like, Ms M'Bala. But I recommend that you return just as soon as you feel the slightest discomfort. Perhaps an hour would be best for the first outing – though it may seem like only ten minutes...'
   Captain Smith had been quite correct. As Heywood Floyd looked at his time-elapsed display, it seemed incredible that forty minutes had already passed. Yet it should not have been so surprising, for the ship was already a good kilometre away.
   As the senior passenger – by almost any reckoning – he had been given the privilege of making the first EVA. And he really had no choice of companion.
   'EVA with Yva!' chortled Mihailovich. 'How can you possibly resist! Even if,' he added with a lewd grin, 'those damn suits won't let you try all the Extravehicular Activities you'd like,'
   Yva had agreed, without any hesitation, yet also without any enthusiasm. That, Floyd thought wryly, was typical. It would not be quite true to say that he was disillusioned – at his age, he had very few illusions left – but he was disappointed. And with himself rather than Yva; she was as beyond criticism or praise as the Mona Lisa – with whom she had often been compared.
   The comparison was, of course, ridiculous; La Gioconda was mysterious, but she was certainly not erotic. Yva's power had lain in her unique combination of both – with innocence thrown in for good measure. Half a century later, traces of all three ingredients were still visible, at least to the eye of faith.
   What was lacking – as Floyd had been sadly forced to admit – was any real personality. When he tried to focus his mind upon her, all he could visualize were the roles she had played. He would have reluctantly agreed with the critic who had once said:
   'Yva Merlin is the reflection of all men's desires; but a mirror has no character.'
   And now this unique and mysterious creature was floating beside him across the face of Halley's Comet, as they and their guide moved along the twin cables that spanned the Valley of Black Snow. That was his name; he was childishly proud of it, even though it would never appear on any map. There could be no maps of a world where geography was as ephemeral as weather on Earth. He savoured the knowledge that no human eye had ever before looked upon the scene around him – or ever would again.
   On Mars, or on the Moon, you could sometimes -with a slight effort of imagination, and if you ignored the alien sky – pretend that you were on Earth. This was impossible here, because the towering – often overhanging – snow sculptures showed only the slightest concession to gravity. You had to look very carefully at your surroundings to decide which way was up.
   The Valley of Black Snow was unusual, because it was a fairly solid structure – a rocky reef embedded in volatile drifts of water and hydrocarbon ice. The geologists were still arguing about its origin, some maintaining that it was really part of an asteroid that had encountered the comet ages ago. Corings had revealed complex mixtures of organic compounds, rather like frozen coal-tar – though it was certain that life had never played any part in their formation.
   The 'snow' carpeting of the floor of the little valley was not completely black; when Floyd raked it with the beam of his flashlight it glittered and sparkled as if embedded with a million microscopic diamonds. He wondered if there were indeed diamonds on Halley: there was certainly enough carbon here. But it was almost equally certain that the temperatures and pressures necessary to create them had never existed here.
   On a sudden impulse, Floyd reached down and gathered two handfuls of the snow: he had to push with his feet against the safety line to do so, and had a comic vision of himself as a trapeze artist walking a tightrope – but upside down. The fragile crust offered virtually no resistance as he buried head and shoulders into it; then he pulled gently on his tether and emerged with his handful of Halley.
   He wished that he could feel it through the insulation of his gloves, as he compacted the mass of crystalline fluff into a ball that just fitted the palm of his hand. There it lay, ebony black yet giving fugitive flashes of light as he turned it from side to side.
   And suddenly, in his imagination, it became the purest white – and he was a boy again, in the winter playground of his youth, surrounded with the ghosts of his childhood. He could even hear the cries of his companions, taunting and threatening him with their own projectiles of immaculate snow...
   The memory was brief, but shattering, for it brought an overwhelming sensation of sadness. Across a century of time, he could no longer remember a single one of those phantom friends who stood around him; yet some, he knew, he had once loved...
   His eyes filled with tears, and his fingers clenched around the ball of alien snow. Then the vision faded; he was himself again. This was not a moment of sadness, but of triumph.
   'My God!' cried Heywood Floyd, his words echoing in the tiny, reverberant universe of his spacesuit, 'I'm standing on Halley's Comet – what more do I want! If a meteor hits me now, I won't have a single complaint!'
   He brought up his arms and launched the snowball towards the stars. It was so small, and so dark, that it vanished almost at once, but he kept on staring into the sky.
   And then, abruptly – unexpectedly – it appeared in a sudden explosion of light, as it rose into the rays of the hidden Sun. Black as soot though it was, it reflected enough of that blinding brilliance to be easily visible against the faintly luminous sky.
   Floyd watched it until it finally disappeared – perhaps by evaporation, perhaps by dwindling into the distance. It would not last long in the fierce torrent of radiation overhead; but how many men could claim to have created a comet of their own?

18 – 'Old Faithful'

   The cautious exploration of the comet had already begun while Universe still remained in the polar shadow. First, one-man EMUs (few people now knew that stood for External Manoeuvring Unit) gently jetted over both day– and nightside, recording everything of interest. Once the preliminary surveys had been completed, groups of up to five scientists flew out in the onboard shuttle, deploying equipment and instruments at strategic spots.
   The Lady Jasmine was a far cry from the primitive 'space pods' of the Discovery era, capable of operating only in a gravity-free environment. She was virtually a small spaceship, designed to ferry personnel and light cargo between the orbiting Universe and the surfaces of Mars, Moon, or the Jovian satellites. Her chief pilot, who treated her like the grande dame she was, complained with mock bitterness that flying round a miserable little comet was far beneath her dignity.
   When he was quite sure that Halley – on the surface at least – held no surprises, Captain Smith lifted away from the pole. Moving less than a dozen kilometres took Universe to a different world, from a glimmering twilight that would last for months to a realm that knew the cycle of night and day. And with the dawn, the comet came slowly to life.
   As the Sun crept above the jagged, absurdly close horizon, its rays would slant down into the countless small craters that pockmarked the crust. Most of them would remain inactive, their narrow throats sealed by incrustations of mineral salts. Nowhere else on Halley were such vivid displays of colour; they had misled biologists into thinking that here life was beginning, as it had on Earth, in the form of algal growths. Many had not yet abandoned that hope, though they would be reluctant to admit it.
   From other craters, wisps of vapour floated up into the sky, moving in unnaturally straight trajectories because there were no winds to divert them. Usually nothing else happened for an hour or two; then, as the Sun's warmth penetrated to the frozen interior, Halley would begin to spurt – as Victor Willis had put it 'like a pod of whales'.
   Though picturesque, it was not one of his more accurate metaphors. The jets from the dayside of Halley were not intermittent, but played steadily for hours at a time. And they did not curl over and fall back to the surface, but went rising on up into the sky, until they were lost in the glowing fog which they helped create.
   At first, the science team treated the geysers as cautiously as if they were vulcanologists approaching Etna or Vesuvius in one of their less predictable moods. But they soon discovered that Halley's eruptions, though often fearsome in appearance, were singularly gentle and well-behaved; the water emerged about as fast as from an ordinary firehose, and was barely warm. Within seconds of escaping from its underground reservoir, it would flash into a mixture of vapour and ice crystals; Halley was enveloped in a perpetual snowstorm, falling upwards... Even at this modest speed of ejection, none of the water would ever return to its source. Each time it rounded the Sun, more of the comet's life-blood would haemorrhage into the insatiable vacuum of space.
   After considerable persuasion, Captain Smith agreed to move Universe to within a hundred metres of 'Old Faithful', the largest geyser on the dayside. It was an awesome sight – a whitish-grey column of mist, growing like some giant tree from a surprisingly small orifice in a three-hundred-metre-wide crater which appeared to be one of the oldest formations on the comet. Before long, the scientists were scrambling all over the crater, collecting specimens of its (completely sterile, alas) multi-coloured minerals, and casually thrusting their thermometers and sampling tubes into the soaring water-ice-mist column itself. 'If it tosses any of you out into space,' warned the Captain, 'don't expect to be rescued in a hurry. In fact, we may just wait until you come back.'
   'What does he mean by that?' a puzzled Dimitri Mihailovich had asked. As usual, Victor Willis was quick with the answer.
   'Things don't always happen the way you'd expect in celestial mechanics. Anything thrown off Halley at a reasonable speed will still be moving in essentially the same orbit – it takes a huge velocity change to make a big differenc. So one revolution later, the two orbits will intersect again – and you'll be right back where you started. Seventy-six years older, of course.'
   Not far from Old Faithful was another phenomenon which no-one could reasonably have anticipated. When they first observed it, the scientists could scarcely believe their eyes. Spread out across several hectares of Halley, exposed to the vacuum of space, was what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary lake, remarkable only for its extreme blackness.
   Obviously, it could not be water; the only liquids which could be stable in this environment were heavy organic oils or tars. In fact, 'Lake Tuonela' turned out to be more like pitch, quite solid except for a sticky surface layer less than a millimetre thick. In this negligible gravity, it must have taken years – perhaps several trips round the warming fires of the Sun – for it to have assumed its present mirror-flatness.
   Until the Captain put a stop to it, the lake became one of the principal tourist attractions on Halley's Comet. Someone (nobody claimed the dubious honour) discovered that it was possible to walk perfectly normally across it, almost as if on Earth; the surface film had just enough adhesion to hold the foot in place. Before long, most of the crew had got themselves videoed apparently walking on water...
   Then Captain Smith inspected the airlock, discovered the walls liberally stained with tar, and gave the nearest thing to a display of anger that anyone had ever witnessed from him.
   'It's bad enough,' he said through clenched teeth, 'having the outside of the ship coated with – soot. Halley's Comet is about the filthiest place I've ever seen...'
   After that, there were no more strolls on Lake Tuonela.

19 – At the End of the Tunnel

   In a small, self-contained universe where everyone knows everyone else, there can be no greater shock than encountering a total stranger.
   Heywood Floyd was floating gently along the corridor to the main lounge when he had this disturbing experience. He stared in amazement at the interloper, wondering how a stowaway had managed to avoid detection for so long. The other man looked back at him with a combination of embarrassment and bravado, obviously waiting for Floyd to speak first.
   'Well, Victor!' he said at last. 'Sorry I didn't recognize you. So you've made the supreme sacrifice, for the cause of science – or should I say your public?'
   'Yes,' Willis answered grumpily. 'I did manage to squeeze into one helmet – but the damn bristles made so many scratching noises no-one could hear a word I said.'
   'When are you going out?'
   'Just as soon as Cliff comes back – he's gone caving with Bill Chant.'

   The first flybys of the comet, in 1986, had suggested that it was considerably less dense than water -which could only mean that it was either made of very porous material, or was riddled with cavities. Both explanations turned out to be correct.
   At first, the ever-cautious Captain Smith flatly forbade any cave-exploring. He finally relented when Dr Pendrill reminded him that his chief assistant Dr Chant was an experienced speleologist – indeed, that was one of the very reasons he had been chosen for the mission.
   'Cave-ins are impossible, in this low gravity,' Pendrill had told the reluctant Captain. 'So there's no danger of being trapped.'
   'What about being lost?'
   'Chant would regard that suggestion as a professional insult. He's been twenty kilometres inside Mammoth Cave. Anyway, he'll play out a guideline.'
   'Communications?'
   'The line's got fibre optics in it. And his suit radio will probably work most of the way.'
   'Umm. Where does he want to go in?'
   'The best place is that extinct geyser at the base of Etna Junior. It's been dead for at least a thousand years.'
   'So I suppose it should keep quiet for another couple of days. Very well – does anyone else want to go?'
   'Cliff Greenburg has volunteered – he's done a good deal of underwater cave-exploring, in the Bahamas.'
   'I tried it once – that was enough. Tell Cliff he's much too valuable. He can go in as far as he can still see the entrance – and no further. And if he loses contact with Chant, he's not to go after him, without my authority.'
   Which, the Captain added to himself, I would be very reluctant to give...

   Dr Chant knew all the old jokes about speleologists wanting to return to the womb, and was quite sure he could refute them.
   'That must be a damn noisy place, with all its thumpings and bumpings and gurglings,' he argued. 'I love caves because they're so peaceful and timeless. You know that nothing has changed for a hundred thousand years, except that the stalactites have grown a bit thicker.'
   But now, as he drifted deeper into Halley, playing out the thin, but virtually unbreakable thread that linked him to Clifford Greenburg, he realized that this was no longer true. As yet, he had no scientific proof, but his geologist's instincts told him that this subterranean world had been born only yesterday, on the time-scale of the Universe. It was younger than some of the cities of man.
   The tunnel through which he was gliding in long, shallow leaps was about four metres in diameter, and his virtual weightlessness brought back vivid memories of cave-diving on Earth. The low gravity contributed to the illusion; it was exactly as if he was carrying slightly too much weight, and so kept drifting gently downwards. Only the absence of all resistance reminded him that he was moving through vacuum, not water.
   'You're just getting out of sight,' said Greenburg, fifty metres in from the entrance. 'Radio link still fine. What's the scenery like?'
   'Very hard to say – I can't identify any formations, so I don't have the vocabulary to describe them. It's not any kind of rock – it crumbles when I touch it – I feel as if I'm exploring a giant Gruyère cheese.'
   'You mean it's organic?'
   'Yes – nothing to do with life, of course – but perfect raw material for it. All sorts of hydrocarbons – the chemists will have fun with these samples. Can you still see me?'
   'Only the glow of your light, and that's fading fast.'
   'Ah – here's some genuine rock – doesn't look as if it belongs here – probably an intrusion – ah – I've struck gold!'
   'You're joking!'
   'It fooled a lot of people in the old West – iron pyrites. Common on the outer satellites, of course, but don't ask me what it's doing here...'
   'Visual contact lost. You're two hundred metres in.'
   'I'm passing through a distinct layer – looks like meteoric debris – something exciting must have happened back then – I hope we can date it – wow!'
   'Don't do that sort of thing to me!'
   'Sorry – quite took my breath away – there's a big chamber ahead – last thing I expected – let me swing the beam around...
   'Almost spherical – thirty, forty metres across. And – I don't believe it – Halley is full of surprises – stalactites, stalagmites.'
   'What's so surprising about that?'
   'No free water, no limestone here, of course – and such low gravity. Looks like some kind of wax. Just a minute while I get good video coverage... fantastic shapes... sort of thing a dripping candle makes... that's odd...'
   'Now what?'
   Dr Chant's voice had shown a sudden alteration in tone, which Greenburg had instantly detected.
   'Some of the columns have been broken. They're lying on the floor. It's almost as if...'
   'Go on!'
   '... as if something has – blundered – into them.'
   'That's crazy. Could an earthquake have snapped them?'
   'No earthquakes here – only microseisms from the geysers. Perhaps there was a big blow-out at some time. Anyway, it was centuries ago. There's a film of this wax stuff over the fallen columns – several millimetres thick.'
   Dr Chant was slowly recovering his composure. He was not a highly imaginative man – spelunking eliminates such men rather quickly – but the very feel of the place had triggered some disturbing memory. And those fallen columns looked altogether too much like the bars of a cage, broken by some monster in an attempt to escape.
   Of course, that was perfectly absurd – but Dr Chant had learned never to ignore any premonition, any danger signal, until he had traced it to its origin. That caution had saved his life more than once; he would not go beyond this chamber until he had identified the source of his fear. And he was honest enough to admit that 'fear' was the correct word.
   'Bill – are you all right? What's happening?'
   'Still filming. Some of these shapes remind me of Indian temple sculpture. Almost erotic.'
   He was deliberately turning his mind away from the direct confrontation of his fears, hoping thereby to sneak up on them unawares, by a kind of averted mental vision. Meanwhile the purely mechanical acts of recording and collecting samples occupied most of his attention.
   There was nothing wrong, he reminded himself, with healthy fear; only when it escalated into panic did it become a killer. He had known panic twice in his life (once on a mountainside, once underwater) and still shuddered at the memory of its clammy touch. Yet – thankfully – he was far from it now, and for a reason which, though he did not understand it, he found curiously reassuring. There was an element of comedy in the situation.
   And presently he started to laugh – not with hysteria, but with relief.
   'Did you ever see those old Star Wars movies?' he asked Greenburg.
   'Of course – half a dozen times.'
   'Well, I know what's been bothering me. There was a sequence when Luke's spaceship dives into an asteroid – and runs into a gigantic snake-creature that lurks inside its caverns.'
   'Not Luke's ship – Hans Solo's Millennium Falcon. And I always wondered how that poor beast managed to eke out a living. It must have grown very hungry, waiting for the occasional titbit from space. And Princess Leia wouldn't have been more than an hors-d'oeuvre, anyway.'
   'Which I certainly don't intend to provide,' said Dr Chant, now completely at ease. 'Even if there is life here – which would be marvellous – the food chain would be very short. So I'd be surprised to find anything bigger than a mouse. Or, more likely, a mushroom... Now let's see – where do we go from here... There are two exits on the other side of the chamber... the one on the right is bigger... I'll take that...'
   'How much more line have you got?'
   'Oh, a good half-kilometre. Here we go... I'm in the middle of the chamber... damn, bounced off the wall... now I've got a hand-hold... going in head-first... smooth walls, real rock for a change... that's a pity..
   'What's the problem?'
   'Can't go any further. More stalactites... too close together for me to get through... and too thick to break without explosives. And that would be a shame... the colours are beautiful... first real greens and blues I've seen on Halley. Just a minute while I get them on video...
   Dr Chant braced himself against the wall of the narrow tunnel, and aimed the camera. With his gloved fingers be reached for the HI-INTENSITY switch, but missed it and cut off the main lights completely.
   'Lousy design,' he muttered. 'Third time I've done that.'
   He did not immediately correct his mistake, because he had always enjoyed that silence and total darkness which can be experienced only in the deepest caves. The gentle background noises of his life-support equipment robbed him of the silence, but at least...
   What was that? From beyond the portcullis of stalactites blocking further progress he could see a faint glow, like the first light of dawn. As his eyes grew adapted to the darkness, it appeared to grow brighter, and he could detect a hint of green. Now he could even see the outlines of the barrier ahead.
   'What's happening?' said Greenburg anxiously.
   'Nothing – just observing.'
   And thinking, he might have added. There were four possible explanations.
   Sunlight could be filtering down through some natural light duct – ice, crystal, whatever. But at this depth? Unlikely.
   Radioactivity? He hadn't bothered to bring a counter; there were virtually no heavy elements here. But it would be worth coming back to check.
   Some phosphorescent mineral – that was the one he'd put his money on. But there was a fourth possibility – the most unlikely, and most exciting, of all.
   Dr Chant had never forgotten a moonless – and Luciferless – night on the shores of the Indian Ocean, when he had been walking beneath brilliant stars along a sandy beach. The sea was very calm, but from time to time a languid wave would collapse at his feet – and detonate in an explosion of light.
   He had walked out into the shallows (he could still remember the feel of the water round his ankles, like a warm bath) and with every step he took there had been another burst of light. He could even trigger it by clapping his hands close to the surface.
   Could similar bioluminescent organisms have evolved, here in the heart of Halley's Comet? He would love to think so. It seemed a pity to vandalize something so exquisite as this natural work of art – with the glow behind it, the barrier now reminded him of an altar screen he had once seen in some cathedral – but he would have to go back and get some explosives. Meanwhile, there was the other corridor...
   'I can't get any further along this route,' he told Greenburg, 'so I'll try the other. Coming back to the junction – setting the reel on rewind.' He did not mention the mysterious glow, which had vanished as soon as he switched on his lights again.
   Greenburg did not reply immediately, which was unusual; probably he was talking to the ship. Chant did not worry; he would repeat his message as soon as he had got under way again.
   He did not bother, because there was a brief acknowledgement from Greenburg.
   'Fine, Cliff – thought I'd lost you for a minute. Back at the chamber – now going into the other tunnel – hope there's nothing blocking that.'
   This time, Greenburg replied at once.
   'Sorry, Bill. Come back to the ship. There's an emergency – no, not here – everything's fine with Universe. But we may have to return to Earth at once.'

   It was only a few weeks before Dr Chant discovered a very plausible explanation for the broken columns. As the comet blasted its substance away into space at each perihelion passage, its mass distribution continually altered. And so, every few thousand years, its spin became unstable, and it would change the direction of its axis – quite violently, like a top that is about to fall over as it loses energy. When that occurred, the resulting cometquake could reach a respectable five on the Richter scale.
   But he never solved the mystery of the luminous glow. Though the problem was swiftly overshadowed by the drama that was now unfolding, the sense of a missed opportunity would continue to haunt him for the rest of his life.
   Though he was occasionally tempted, he never mentioned it to any of his colleagues. But he did leave a sealed note for the next expedition, to be opened in 2133.

20 – Recall

   'Have you seen Victor?' said Mihailovich gleefully, as Floyd hurried to answer the Captain's summons. 'He's a broken man.'
   'He'll grow it back on the way home,' snapped Floyd, who had no time for such trivialities at the moment. 'I'm trying to find out what's happened.'
   Captain Smith was still sitting, almost stunned, in his cabin when he arrived. If this was an emergency affecting his own ship, he would have been a tornado of controlled energy, issuing orders right and left. But there was nothing he could do about this situation, except await the next message from Earth.
   Captain Laplace was an old friend; how could he have got into such a mess? There was no conceivable accident, error of navigation, or failure of equipment that could possibly account for his predicament. Nor, as far as Smith could see, was there any way in which Universe could help him get out of it. Operations Centre was just running round and round in circles; this looked like one of those emergencies, all too common in space, where nothing could be done except transmit condolences and record last messages. But he gave no hint of his doubts and reservations when he reported the news to Floyd.
   'There's been an accident,' he said. 'We've received orders to return to Earth immediately, to be fitted out for a rescue mission.'
   'What kind of accident?'
   'It's our sister ship, Galaxy. She was doing a survey of the Jovian satellites. And she's made a crash landing.'
   He saw the look of amazed incredulity on Floyd's face.
   'Yes, I know that's impossible. But you've not heard anything yet. She's stranded – on Europa.'
   'Europa!'
   'I'm afraid so. She's damaged, but apparently there's no loss of life. We're still awaiting details.'
   'When did it happen?'
   'Twelve hours ago. There was a delay before she could report to Ganymede.'
   'But what can we do? We're on the other side of the Solar System. Getting back to lunar orbit to refuel, then taking the fastest orbit to Jupiter – it would be – oh, at least a couple of months!' (And back in Leonov's day, Floyd added to himself, it would have been a couple of years...)
   'I know; but there's no other ship that could do anything.' -
   'What about Ganymede's own inter-satellite ferries?'
   'They're only designed for orbital operations.'
   'They've landed on Callisto.'
   'Much lower energy mission. Oh, they could just manage Europa, but with negligible payload. It's being looked into, of course.'
   Floyd scarcely heard the Captain; he was still trying to assimilate this astonishing news. For the first time in half a century – and only for the second time in all history! – a ship had landed on the forbidden moon. And that prompted an ominous thought.
   'Do you suppose,' he asked, 'that – whoever – whatever – is on Europa could be responsible?'
   'I was wondering about that,' said the Captain glumly. 'But we've been snooping around the place for years, without anything happening.'
   'Even more to the point – what might happen to us if we attempted a rescue?'
   'That's the first thing that occurred to me. But all this is speculation – we'll have to wait until we have more facts. Meanwhile – this is really why I called you – I've just received Galaxy's crew manifest, and I was wondering...'
   Hesitantly, he pushed the print-out across his desk. But even before Heywood Floyd scanned the list, he somehow knew what he would find.
   'My grandson,' he said bleakly.
   And, he added to himself, the only person who can carry my name beyond the grave.

III – EUROPAN ROULETTE

21 – The Politics of Exile

   Despite all the gloomier forecasts, the South African Revolution had been comparatively bloodless – as such things go. Television, which had been blamed for many evils, deserved some credit for this. A precedent had been set a generation earlier in the Philippines; when they know that the world is watching, the great majority of men and women tend to behave in a responsible manner. Though there have been shameful exceptions, few massacres occur on camera.
   Most of the Afrikaners, when they recognized the inevitable, had left the country long before the takeover of power. And – as the new administration bitterly complained – they had not gone empty-handed. Billions of rands had been transferred to Swiss and Dutch banks; towards the end, there had been mysterious flights almost every hour out of Cape Town and Jo'burg to Zurich and Amsterdam. It was said that by Freedom Day one would not find one troy ounce of gold or a carat of diamond in the late Republic of South Africa – and the mine workings had been effectively sabotaged. One prominent refugee boasted, from his luxury apartment in The Hague, 'It will be five years before the Kaffirs can get Kimberley working again – if they ever do.' To his great surprise, De Beers was back in business, under new name and management, in less than five weeks, and diamonds were now the single most important element in the new nation's economy.
   Within a generation, the younger refugees had been absorbed – despite desperate rearguard actions by their conservative elders – in the deracinated culture of the twenty-first century. They recalled, with pride but without boastfulness, the courage and determination of their ancestors, and distanced themselves from their stupidities. Virtually none of them spoke Afrikaans, even in their own homes.
   Yet, precisely as in the case of the Russian Revolution a century earlier, there were many who dreamed of putting back the clock – or, at least, of sabotaging the efforts of those who had usurped their power and privilege. Usually they channelled their frustration and bitterness into propaganda, demonstrations, boycotts, petitions to the World Council – and, rarely, works of art. Wilhelm Smuts' The Voortrekkers was conceded to be a masterpiece of (ironically) English literature, even by those who bitterly disagreed with the author.
   But there were also groups who believed that political action was useless, and that only violence would restore the longed-for status quo. Although there could not have been many who really imagined that they could rewrite the pages of history, there were not a few who, if victory was impossible, would gladly settle for revenge.
   Between the two extremes of the totally assimilated and the completely intransigent, there was an entire spectrum of political – and apolitical – parties. Der Bund was not the largest, but it was the most powerful, and certainly the richest, since it controlled much of the lost Republic's smuggled wealth, through a network of corporations and holding companies. Most of these were now perfectly legal, and indeed completely respectable.
   There was half a billion of Bund money in Tsung Aerospace, duly listed in the annual balance sheet. In 2059, Sir Lawrence was happy to receive another half-billion, which enabled him to accelerate the commissioning of his little fleet.
   But not even his excellent intelligence traced any connection between the Bund and Tsung Aerospace's latest charter mission, In any event, Halley was then approaching Mars, and Sir Lawrence was so busy getting Universe ready to leave on schedule that he paid little attention to the routine operations of her sister ships.
   Though Lloyd's of London did raise some queries about Galaxy's proposed routing, these objections were quickly dealt with. The Bund had people in key positions everywhere; which was unfortunate for the insurance brokers, but very good luck for the space lawyers.

22 – Hazardous Cargo

   It is not easy to run a shipping line between destinations which not only change their positions by millions of kilometres every few days, but also swing through a velocity range of tens of kilometres a second. Anything like a regular schedule is out of the question; there are times when one must forget the whole idea and stay in port – or at least in orbit – waiting for the Solar System to rearrange itself for the greater convenience of mankind.
   Fortunately, these periods are known years in advance, so it is possible to make the best use of them for overhauls, retrofits, and planet leave for the crew. And occasionally, by good luck and aggressive salesmanship, one can arrange some local chartering, even if only the equivalent of the old-time 'Once around the Bay' boat-ride.
   Captain Eric Laplace was delighted that the three-month stayover off Ganymede would not be a complete loss. An anonymous and unexpected grant to the Planetary Science Foundation would finance a reconnaissance of the Jovian (even now, no-one ever called it Luciferian) satellite system, paying particular attention to a dozen of the neglected smaller moons. Some of these had never even been properly surveyed, much less visited.
   As soon as he heard of the mission, Rolf van der Berg called the Tsung shipping agent and made some discreet enquiries.
   'Yes, first we'll head in towards Io – then do a flyby of Europa -'
   'Only a flyby? How close?'
   'Just a moment – odd, the flight plan doesn't give details. But of course she won't go inside the Interdiction Zone.'
   'Which was down to ten thousand kilometres at the last ruling... fifteen years ago. Anyway, I'd like to volunteer as Mission Planetologist. I'll send across my qualifications -'
   'No need to do so, Dr van der Berg. They've already asked for you.'

   It is always easy to be wise after the event, and when he cast his mind back (he had plenty of time for it later) Captain Laplace recalled a number of curious aspects of the charter. Two crew members were taken suddenly sick, and were replaced at short notice; he was so glad to have substitutes that he did not check their papers as closely as he might have done. (And even if he had, he would have discovered that they were perfectly in order.)
   Then there was the trouble with the cargo. As captain, he was entitled to inspect anything that went aboard the ship. Of course, it was impossible to do this for every item, but he never hesitated to investigate if he had good reason. Space crews were, on the whole, a highly responsible body of men; but long missions could be boring, and there were tedium-relieving chemicals which – though perfectly legal on Earth – should be discouraged off it.
   When Second Officer Chris Floyd reported his suspicions, the Captain assumed that the ship's chromatographic 'sniffer' had detected another cache of the high-grade opium which his largely Chinese crew occasionally patronized. This time, however, the matter was serious – very serious.
   'Cargo Hold Three, Item 2/456, Captain. The manifest says "Scientific apparatus". It contains explosives.'
   'What!'
   'Definitely, Sir. Here's the electrogram.'
   'I'll take your word for it, Mr Floyd. Have you inspected the item?'
   'No, Sir. It's in a sealed crew case, half a metre by one metre by five metres, approximately. One of the largest packages the science team brought aboard. It's labelled FRAGILE – HANDLE WITH CARE. But so is everything, of course.'
   Captain Laplace drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the grained plastic 'wood' of his desk. (He hated the pattern, and intended to get rid of it on the next refit.) Even that slight action started him rising out of his seat, and he automatically anchored himself by wrapping his foot around the pillar of the chair.
   Though he did not for a moment doubt Floyd's report – his new Second Officer was very competent, and the Captain was pleased that he had never brought up the subject of his famous grandfather -there could be an innocent explanation. The sniffer might have been misled by other chemicals with nervous molecular bondings.
   They could go down into the hold and force open the package. No – that might be dangerous, and could cause legal problems as well. Best to go straight to the top; he'd have to do that anyway, sooner or later.
   'Please bring Dr Anderson here – and don't mention this to anyone else,'
   'Very good, Sir.' Chris Floyd gave a respectful but quite unnecessary salute, and left the room in a smooth, effortless glide.
   The leader of the science team was not accustomed to zero gravity, and his entrance was quite clumsy. His obvious genuine indignation did not help, and he had to grab the Captain's desk several times in an undignified manner.
   'Explosives! Of course not! Let me see the manifest... 2/456...'
   Dr Anderson pecked out the reference on his portable keyboard, and slowly read off: "Mark V penetrometers, Quantity three." Of course – no problem.'
   'And just what,' said the Captain, 'is a penetrometer?' Despite his concern, he had difficulty in suppressing a smile; it sounded a little obscene.
   'Standard planetary sampling device. You drop it, and with any luck it will give you a core up to ten metres long – even in hard rock. Then it sends back a complete chemical analysis. The only safe way to study places like dayside Mercury – or Io, where we'll drop the first one.'
   'Dr Anderson,' said the Captain, with great selfrestraint, 'you may be an excellent geologist, but you don't know much about celestial mechanics. You can't just drop things from orbit -'
   The charge of ignorance was clearly unfounded, as the scientist's reaction proved.
   'The idiots!' he said. 'Of course, you should have been notified.'
   'Exactly. Solid fuel rockets are classified as "Hazardous Cargo". I want clearance from the underwriters, and your personal assurance that the safety systems are adequate; otherwise, they go overboard. Now, any other little surprises? Were you planning seismic surveys? I believe those usually involve explosives...'
   A few hours later, the somewhat chastened scientist admitted that he had also found two bottles of elemental fluorine, used to power the lasers which could zap passing celestial bodies at thousand-kilometre ranges for spectrographic sampling. As pure fluorine was about the most vicious substance known to man, it was high on the list of prohibited materials – but, like the rockets which drove the penetrometers down to their targets, it was essential for the mission.
   When he was quite satisfied that all the necessary precautions had been taken, Captain Laplace accepted the scientist's apologies, and his assurance that the oversight was entirely due to the haste with which the expedition had been organized.
   He felt sure that Dr Anderson was telling the truth, but already he felt that there was something odd about the mission.
   Just how odd he could never have imagined.

23 – Inferno

   Before the detonation of Jupiter, Io had been second only to Venus as the best approximation to Hell in the Solar System. Now that Lucifer had raised its surface temperature another couple of hundred degrees, even Venus could no longer compete.
   The sulphur volcanoes and geysers had multiplied their activity, now reshaping the features of the tormented satellite in years rather than decades. The planetologists had given up any attempt at mapmaking, and contented themselves with taking orbital photographs every few days. From these, they had constructed awe-inspiring time-lapse movies of inferno in action.
   Lloyd's of London had charged a stiff premium for this leg of the mission, but Io posed no real danger to a ship doing a flyby at a minimum range of ten thousand kilometres – and over the relatively quiescent nightside at that.
   As he watched the approaching yellow and orange globe – the most improbably garish object in the entire Solar System – Second Officer Chris Floyd could not help recalling the time, now half a century ago, when his grandfather had come this way. Here, Leonov had made its rendezvous with the abandoned Discovery, and here Dr Chandra had reawakened the dormant computer Hal. Then both ships had flown on to survey the enormous black monolith hovering at L1, the Inner Lagrange Point between Io and Jupiter.
   Now the monolith was gone – and so was Jupiter. The minisun that had risen like a phoenix from the implosion of the giant planet had turned its satellites into what was virtually another Solar System, though only on Ganymede and Europa were there regions with Earthlike temperatures. How long that would continue to be the case, no-one knew. Estimates of Lucifer's life-span ranged from a thousand to a million years.
   Galaxy's science team looked wistfully at the L1 point, but it was now far too dangerous to approach. There had always been a river of electrical energy – the Io 'flux tube' – flowing between Jupiter and its inner satellite, and the creation of Lucifer had increased its strength several hundredfold. Sometimes the river of power could even be seen by the naked eye, glowing yellow with the characteristic light of ionized sodium. Some engineers on Ganymede had talked hopefully about tapping the gigawatts going to waste next door, but no-one could think of a plausible way of doing so.
   The first penetrometer was launched, with vulgar comments from the crew, and two hours later drove like a hypodermic needle into the festering satellite. It continued to operate for almost five seconds – ten times its designed lifetime – broadcasting thousands of chemical, physical and rheological measurements, before Io demolished it.
   The scientists were ecstatic; van der Berg was merely pleased. He had expected the probe to work; Io was an absurdly easy target. But if he was right about Europa, the second penetrometer would surely fail.
   Yet that would prove nothing; it might fail for a dozen good reasons. And when it did, there would be no alternative but a landing.
   Which, of course, was totally prohibited – not only by the laws of man.

24 – Shaka the Great

   ASTROPOL – which, despite its grandiose title, had disappointingly little business off Earth – would not admit that SHAKA really existed. The USSA took exactly the same position, and its diplomats became embarrassed or indignant when anyone was tactless enough to mention the name.
   But Newton's Third Law applies in politics, as in everything else. The Bund had its extremists -though it tried, sometimes not very hard, to disown them – continually plotting against the USSA. Usually they confined themselves to attempts at commercial sabotage, but there were occasional explosions, disappearances and even assassinations.
   Needless to say, the South Africans did not take this lightly. They reacted by establishing their own official counter-intelligence services, which also had a rather free-wheeling range of operations – and likewise claimed to know nothing about SHAKA. Perhaps they were employing the useful CIA invention of 'plausible deniability'. It is even possible that they were telling the truth.
   According to one theory, SHAKA started as a codeword, and then – rather like Prokofiev's 'Lieutenant Kije' – had acquired a life of its own, because it was useful to various clandestine bureaucracies. This would certainly account for the fact that none of its members had ever defected, or even been arrested.
   But there was another, somewhat far-fetched explanation for this, according to those who believed that SHAKA really did exist. All its agents had been psychologically conditioned to self-destruct before there was any possibility of interrogation.
   Whatever the truth, no-one could seriously imagine that, more than two centuries after his death, the legend of the great Zulu tyrant would cast its shadow across worlds he never knew.

25 – The Shrouded World

   During the decade after the ignition of Jupiter, and the spreading of the Great Thaw across its satellite system, Europa had been left strictly alone. Then the Chinese had made a swift flyby, probing the clouds with radar in an attempt to locate the wreck of the Tsien. They had been unsuccessful, but their maps of dayside were the first to show the new continents now emerging as the ice-cover melted.
   They had also discovered a perfectly straight two-kilometre-long feature which looked so artificial that it was christened the Great Wall. Because of its shape and size it was assumed to be the Monolith -or a monolith, since millions had been replicated in the hours before the creation of Lucifer.
   However, there had been no reaction, or any hint of an intelligent signal, from below the steadily thickening clouds. So a few years later, survey satellites were placed in permanent orbit, and high-altitude balloons were dropped into the atmosphere to study its wind patterns. Terrestrial meteorologists found these of absorbing interest, because Europa – with a central ocean, and a sun that never set – presented a beautifully simplified model for their text-books.
   So had begun the game of 'Europan Roulette', as the administrators were fond of calling it whenever the scientists proposed getting closer to the satellite.
   After fifty uneventful years, it had become somewhat boring. Captain Laplace hoped it would remain that way, and had required considerable reassurance from Dr Anderson.
   'Personally,' he had told the scientist, 'I would regard it as a slightly unfriendly act, to have a ton of armour-piercing hardware dropped on me at a thousand kilometres an hour. I'm quite surprised the World Council gave you permission.'
   Dr Anderson was also a little surprised, though he might not have been had he known that the project was the last item on a long agenda of a Science SubCommittee late on a Friday afternoon. Of such trifles history is made.
   'I agree, Captain. But we are operating under very strict limitations, and there's no possibility of interfering with the – ah – Europans, whoever they are. We're aiming at a target five kilometres above sea level.'
   'So I understand. What's so interesting about Mount Zeus?'
   'It's a total mystery. It wasn't even there, only a few years ago. So you can understand why it drives the geologists crazy.'
   'And your gadget will analyse it when it goes in.'
   'Exactly. And – I really shouldn't be telling you this – but I've been asked to keep the results confidential, and to send them back to Earth encrypted. Obviously, someone's on the track of a major discovery, and wants to make quite sure they're not beaten to a publication. Would you believe that scientists could be so petty?'
   Captain Laplace could well believe it, but did not want to disillusion his passenger. Dr Anderson seemed touchingly naïve; whatever was going on – and the Captain was now quite certain there was much more to this mission than met the eye – Anderson knew nothing about it.
   'I can only hope, Doctor, that the Europans don't go in for mountain climbing. I'd hate to interrupt any attempt to put a flag on their local Everest.'

   There was a feeling of unusual excitement aboard Galaxy when the penetrometer was launched – and even the inevitable jokes were muted. During the two hours of the probe's long fall towards Europa, virtually every member of the crew found some perfectly legitimate excuse to visit the bridge and watch the guidance operation. Fifteen minutes before impact, Captain Laplace declared it out of bounds to all visitors, except the ship's new steward Rosie; without her endless supply of squeezebulbs full of excellent coffee, the operation could not have continued.
   Everything went perfectly. Soon after atmospheric entry, the air-brakes were deployed, slowing the penetrometer to an acceptable impact velocity. The radar image of the target – featureless, with no indication of scale – grew steadily on the screen. At minus one second, all the recorders switched automatically to high speed...
   But there was nothing to record. 'Now I know,' said Dr Anderson sadly, 'just how they felt at the Jet Propulsion Lab, when those first Rangers crashed into the Moon – with their cameras blind.'