45 – Recapitulation

   There being no further use for it, the furniture of the suite dissolved back into the mind of its creator. Only the bed remained – and the walls, shielding this fragile organism from the energies it could not yet control.
   In his sleep, David Bowman stirred restlessly. He did not wake, nor did he dream, but he was no longer wholly unconscious. Like a fog creeping through a forest, something invaded his mind. He sensed it only dimly, for the full impact would have destroyed him as surely as the fires raging beyond these walls. Beneath that dispassionate scrutiny, he felt neither hope nor fear; all emotion had been leached away.
   He seemed to be floating in free space, while around him stretched, in all directions, an infinite geometrical grid of dark lines or threads, along which moved tiny nodes of light – some slowly, some at dazzling speed.
   Once he had peered through a microscope at a cross-section of a human brain, and in its network of nerve fibers had glimpsed the same labyrinthine complexity. But that had been dead and static, whereas this transcended life itself. He knew – or believed he knew – that he was watching the operation of some gigantic mind, contemplating the universe of which he was so tiny a part.
   The vision, or illusion, lasted only a moment. Then the crystalline planes and lattices, and the interlocking perspectives of moving light, flickered out of existence, as David Bowman moved into a realm of consciousness that no man had experienced before.
   At first, it seemed that Time itself was running backward. Even this marvel he was prepared to accept, before be realized the subtler truth.
   The springs of memory were being tapped; in controlled recollection, he was reliving the past. There was the hotel suite – there the space pod – there the burning starscapes of the red sun – there the shining core of the galaxy – there the gateway through which he had reemerged into the universe. And not only vision, but all the sense impressions, and all the emotions he had felt at the time, were racing past, more and more swiftly. His life was unreeling like a tape recorder playing back at ever-increasing speed.
   Now he was once more aboard the Discovery and the rings of Saturn filled the sky. Before that, he was repeating his final dialogue with Hal; he was seeing Frank Poole leave on his last mission; he was hearing the voice of Earth, assuring him that all was well.
   And even as he relived these events, he knew that all indeed was well. He was retrogressing down the corridors of time, being drained of knowledge and experience as he swept back toward his childhood. But nothing was being lost; all that be had ever been, at every moment of his life, was being transferred to safer keeping. Even as one David Bowman ceased to exist, another became immortal.
   Faster, faster he moved back into forgotten years, and into a simpler world. Faces he had once loved, and had thought lost beyond recall, smiled at him sweetly. He smiled back with fondness, and without pain.
   Now, at last, the headlong regression was slackening; the wells of memory were nearly dry. Time flowed more and more sluggishly, approaching a moment of stasis – as a swinging pendulum, at the limit of its arc, seems frozen for one eternal instant, before the next cycle begins.
   The timeless instant passed; the pendulum reversed its swing. In an empty room, floating amid the fires of a double star twenty thousand light-years from Earth, a baby opened its eyes and began to cry.

46 – Transformation

   Then it became silent, as it saw that it was no longer alone.
   A ghostly, glimmering rectangle had formed in the empty air. It solidified into a crystal tablet, lost its transparency, and became suffused with a pale, milky luminescence. Tantalizing, ill-defined phantoms moved across its surface and in its depths. They coalesced into bars of lights and shadow, then formed intermeshing, spoked patterns that began slowly to rotate, in time with the pulsing rhythm that now seemed to fill the whole of space.
   It was a spectacle to grasp and hold the attention of any child – or of any man-ape. But, as it had been three million years before, it was only the outward manifestation of forces too subtle to be consciously perceived. It was merely a toy to distract the senses, while the real processing was carried out at far deeper levels of the mind.
   This time, the processing was swift and certain, as the new design was woven. For in the eons since their last meeting, much had been learned by the weaver; and the material on which he practiced his art was now of an infinitely finer texture. But whether it should be permitted to form part of his still-growing tapestry, only the future could tell.
   With eyes that already held more than human intentness, the baby stared into the depths of the crystal monolith, seeing – but not yet understanding – the mysteries that lay beyond. It knew that it had come home, that here was the origin of many races besides its own; but it knew also that it could not stay. Beyond this moment lay another birth, stranger than any in the past.
   Now the moment had come; the glowing patterns no longer echoed the secrets in the crystal's heart. As they died, so too the protective walls faded back into the nonexistence from which they bad briefly emerged, and the red sun filled the sky.
   The metal and plastic of the forgotten space pod, and the clothing once worn by an entity who had called himself David Bowman, flashed into flame. The last links with Earth were gone, resolved back into their component atoms.
   But the child scarcely noticed, as he adjusted himself to the comfortable glow of his new environment. He still needed, for a little while, this shell of matter as the focus of his powers. His indestructible body was his mind's present image of itself; and for all his powers, he knew that he was still a baby. So he would remain until he had decided on a new form, or had passed beyond the necessities of matter.
   And now it was time to go – though in one sense he would never leave this place where he had been reborn, for he would always be part of the entity that used this double star for its unfathomable purposes. The direction, though not the nature, of his destiny was clear before him, and there was no need to trace the devious path by which he had come. With the instincts of three million years, he now perceived that there were more ways than one behind the back of space. The ancient mechanisms of the Star Gate had served him well, but he would not need them again.
   The glimmering rectangular shape that had once seemed no more than a slab of crystal still floated before him, indifferent as he was to the harmless flames of the inferno beneath. It encapsulated yet unfathomed secrets of space and time, but some at least he now understood and was able to command. How obvious – how necessary – was that mathematical ratio of its sides, the quadratic sequence 1 : 4 : 9! And how naive to have imagined that the series ended at this point, in only three dimensions!
   He focused his mind upon these geometrical simplicities, and as his thoughts brushed against it, the empty framework filled with the darkness of the interstellar night. The glow of the red sun faded – or, rather, seemed to recede in all directions at once – and there before him was the luminous whirlpool of the galaxy.
   It might have been some beautiful, incredibly detailed model, embedded in a block of plastic. But it was the reality, grasped as a whole with senses now more subtle than vision. If he wished, he could focus his attention upon any one of its hundred billion stars; and he could do much more than that.
   Here he was, adrift in this great river of suns, halfway between the banked fires of the galactic core and the lonely, scattered sentinel stars of the rim. And here he wished to be, on the far side of this chasm in the sky, this serpentine band of darkness, empty of all stars. He knew that this formless chaos, visible only by the glow that limned its edges from fire-mists far beyond, was the still unused stuff of creation, the raw material of evolutions yet to be. Here, Time had not begun; not until the suns that now burned were long since dead would light and life reshape this void.
   Unwittingly, he had crossed it once; now he must cross it again – this time, of his own volition. The thought filled him with a sudden, freezing terror, so that for a moment he was wholly disorientated, and his new vision of the universe trembled and threatened to shatter into a thousand fragments.
   It was not fear of the galactic gulfs that chilled his soul, but a more profound disquiet, stemming from the unborn future. For he had left behind the time scales of his human origin; now, as he contemplated that band of starless night, he knew his first intimations of the Eternity that yawned before him.
   Then he remembered that he would never be alone, and his panic slowly ebbed. The crystal-clear perception of the universe was restored to him – not, he knew, wholly by his own efforts. When he needed guidance in his first faltering steps, it would be there.
   Confident once more, like a high diver who had regained his nerve, he launched himself across the light-years. The galaxy burst forth from the mental frame in which he had enclosed it; stars and nebulae poured past him in an illusion of infinite speed. Phantom suns exploded and fell behind as he slipped like a shadow through their cores; the cold, dark waste of cosmic dust which he had once feared seemed no more than the beat of a raven's wing across the face of the Sun.
   The stars were thinning out; the glare of the Milky Way was dimming into a pale ghost of the glory he had known – and, when he was ready, would know again.
   He was back, precisely where he wished to be, in the space that men called real.

47 – Star-Child

   There before him, a glittering toy no Star-Child could resist, floated the planet Earth with all its peoples.
   He had returned in time. Down there on that crowded globe, the alarms would be flashing across the radar screens, the great tracking telescopes would be searching the skies – and history as men knew it would be drawing to a close.
   A thousand miles below, he became aware that a slumbering cargo of death had awoken, and was stirring sluggishly in its orbit. The feeble energies it contained were no possible menace to him; but he preferred a cleaner sky. He put forth his will, and the circling megatons flowered in a silent detonation that brought a brief, false dawn to half the sleeping globe. Then he waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next.
   But he would think of something.

Epilogue: After 2001

   The novel 2001: A Space Odyssey was written during the years 1964-1968 and was published in July 1968, shortly after release of the movie. As I have described in The Lost Worlds of 2001, both projects proceeded simultaneously, with feedback in each direction.
   Thus I often had the strange experience of revising the manuscript after viewing rushes based upon an earlier version of the story – a stimulating but rather expensive way of writing a novel.
   As a result, there is a much closer parallel between book and movie than is usually the case, but there are also major differences. In the novel, the destination of the spaceship Discovery was Iapetus (or Japetus), most enigmatic of Saturn's many moons. The Saturnian system was reached via Jupiter: Discovery made a close approach to the giant planet, using its enormous gravitational field to produce a "slingshot" effect and to accelerate it along the second lap of its journey. Exactly the same maneuver was used by the Voyager space-probes in 1979, when they made the first detailed reconnaissance of the outer giants.
   In the movie, however, Stanley Kubrick wisely avoided confusion by setting the third confrontation between Man and Monolith among the moons of Jupiter. Saturn was dropped from the script entirely, though Douglas Trumbull later used the expertise he had acquired filming the ringed planet in his own production, Silent Running.
   No one could have imagined, back in the mid-sixties, that the exploration of the moons of Jupiter lay not in the next century but only fifteen years ahead. Nor had anyone dreamed of the wonders that would be found there – although we can be quite certain that the discoveries of the twin Voyagers will one day be surpassed by even more unexpected finds. When 2001 was written, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto were mere pinpoints of light in even the most powerful telescope; now they are worlds, each unique, and one of them – Io – the most volcanically active body in the Solar System.
   Yet all things considered, both movie and book stand up quite well in the light of these discoveries. There are no major changes I would wish to make to the text, and it is fascinating to compare the Jupiter sequences in the film with the actual movies from the Voyager cameras.
   It must also be remembered that 2001 was written in an age that now lies beyond one of the Great Divides in human history; we are sundered from it forever by the moment when Neil Armstrong set foot upon the Moon. July 20, 1969, was still half a decade in the future when Stanley Kubrick and I started thinking about the "proverbial good science fiction movie" (his phrase). Now history and fiction have become inextricably intertwined.
   The Apollo astronauts had already seen the film when they left for the Moon. The crew of Apollo 8, who at Christmas 1968 became the first men ever to set eyes upon the lunar Farside, told me that they had been tempted to radio back the discovery of a large, black monolith: alas, discretion prevailed...
   And there were later, almost uncanny, instances of nature imitating art. Strangest of all was the saga of Apollo 13 in 1970.
   As a good opening, the Command Module, which houses the crew, had been christened Odyssey. Just before the explosion of the oxygen tank which caused the mission to be aborted, the crew had been playing Richard Strauss' Zarathustra theme, now universally identified with the movie. Immediately after the loss of power, Jack Swigert radioed back to Mission Control: "Houston, we've had a problem." The words that Hal used to Frank Poole on a similar occasion were: "Sorry to interrupt the festivities, but we have a problem."
   When the report of the Apollo 13 mission was later published, NASA Administrator Tom Paine sent me a copy and noted under Swigert's words: "Just as you always said it would be, Arthur." I still get a very strange feeling when I contemplate this whole series of events – almost, indeed, as if I share a certain responsibility...
   Another resonance is less serious, but equally striking. One of the most technically brilliant sequences in the movie was that in which astronaut Frank Poole was shown running round and round the circular track of the giant centrifuge, held in place by the "artificial gravity" produced by its spin.
   Almost a decade later, the crew of the superbly successful Skylab realized that its designers had provided them with a similar geometry; a ring of storage cabinets formed a smooth, circular band around the space station's interior. Skylab, however, was not spinning, but this did not deter its ingenious occupants. They discovered that they could run around the track, just like mice in a squirrel cage, to produce a result visually indistinguishable from that shown in 2001. And they televised the whole exercise back to Earth (need I name the accompanying music?) with the comment: "Stanley Kubrick should see this." As in due course he did, because I sent him the telecine recording. (I never got it back; Stanley uses a tame Black Hole as a filing system.)
   There is also the strange case of the "Eye of Japetus," described in Chapter 35, where Bowman discovers "a brilliant white oval... so sharp-edged that it almost looked... painted on the face of the little moon" with a tiny black dot at the exact center, which turns out to be the Monolith (or one of its avatars).
   Well – when Voyager 1 took the first photographs of Iapetus, they did indeed disclose a large, clear-cut white oval with a tiny black dot at the center. Carl Sagan promptly sent me a print from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory with the cryptic annotation "Thinking of you..." I do not know whether to be relieved or disappointed that Voyager 2 has left the matter still open.
   When, fourteen years ago, I typed the final words "For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something" I felt I had closed the circuit and precluded all possibility of a sequel. Indeed, for the next decade I ridiculed the very idea, for what seemed to me conclusive reasons. Since 2001 was concerned with the next stage of human evolution, to expect me (or even Stanley) to depict it would be as absurd as asking Moon-watcher to describe Bowman and his world.
   Despite my protests, it is now obvious that my busy little subconscious was hard at work, perhaps in response to the constant stream of letters from readers wanting to know "what happened next." Finally, as an intellectual exercise, I wrote a précis of a possible sequel in the form of a short movie outline and sent copies to Stanley Kubrick and my agent, Scott Meredith. As far as Stanley was concerned, this was an act of courtesy, for I knew that he never repeats himself (just as I never write sequels), but I hoped that Scott would sell the outline to Omni magazine, which had recently published another outline, "The Songs of Distant Earth." Then, I fondly hoped, the ghost of 2001 would be finally exorcised.
   Stanley expressed guarded interest, but Scott was enthusiastic – and implacable. "You've simply got to write the book," he said. With a groan, I realized that he was right...
   So now, gentle reader (to coin a phrase), you can find what happens next in 2010: Space Odyssey Two. I am extremely grateful to New American Library, copyright holders of 2001: A Space Odyssey, for permission to use Chapter 37 in the new novel; It serves as a link, connecting the two books together.
   A final comment on both novels as seen from a point now almost exactly midway between the year 2001 and the time when Stanley Kubrick and I started working together. Contrary to popular belief, science fiction writers very seldom attempt to predict the future; indeed, as Ray Bradbury put it so well, they more often try to prevent it. In 1964, the first heroic period of the Space Age was just opening; the United States had set the Moon as its target, and once that decision had been made, the ultimate conquest of the other planets, appeared inevitable. By 2001, it seemed quite reasonable that there would be giant space-stations in orbit round the Earth and – a little later – manned expeditions to the planets.
   In an ideal world, that would have been possible: the Vietnam War would have paid for everything that Stanley Kubrick showed on the Cinerama screen. Now we realize that it will take a little longer.
   2001 will not arrive by 2001. Yet – barring accidents – by that date almost everything depicted in the book and the movie will be in the advanced planning stage.
   Except for communication with alien intelligences: that is something that can never be planned – only anticipated. No one knows whether it will happen tomorrow – or a thousand years hence.
   But it will happen someday.

   ARTHUR C. CLARKE
   Colombo, Sri Lanka
   November, 1982

   END

2010: Odyssey Two

Arthur C. Clarke


Odyssey

Arthur C. Clarke,
Author's Note
I – LEONOV
1 – Meeting at the Focus
2 – The House of the Dolphins
3 – SAL 9000
4 – Mission Profile
5 – Leonov
II – TSIEN
6 – Awakening
7 – Tsien
8 – Transit of Jupiter
9 – The Ice of the Grand Canal
10 – A Cry from Europa
11 – Ice and Vacuum
III – DISCOVERY
12 – Downhill Run
13 – The Worlds of Galileo
14 – Double Encounter
15 – Escape from the Giant
16 – Private Line
17 – Boarding Party
18 – Salvage
19 – Operation WINDMILL
20 – Guillotine
21 – Resurrection
IV – LAGRANGE
22 – Big Brother
23 – Rendezvous
24 – Reconnaissance
25 – The View from Lagrange
26 – Probation
27 – Interlude: True Confessions
28 – Frustration
29 – Emergence
V – A CHILD OF THE STARS
30 – Homecoming
31 – Disneyville
32 – Crystal Spring
33 – Betty
34 – Valediction
35 – Rehabilitation
36 – Fire in the Deep
37 – Estrangement
38 – Foamscape
39 – In the Pod Bay
40 – 'Daisy, Daisy...'
41 – Graveyard Shift
VI – DEVOURER OF WORLDS
42 – The Ghost in the Machine
43 – Thought Experiment
44 – Vanishing Trick
45 – Escape Manoeuvre
46 – Countdown
47 – Final Flyby
48 – Over the Nightside
49 – Devourer of Worlds
VII – LUCIFER RISING
50 – Farewell to Jupiter
51 – The Great Game
52 – Ignition
53 – A Gift of Worlds
54 – Between Suns
55 – Lucifer Rising
Epilogue: 20,001
Acknowledgements

Arthur C. Clarke,
2010: ODYSSEY TWO

Author's Note

   The novel 2001: A Space Odyssey was written during the years 1964-8 and was published in July 1968, shortly after release of the movie. As I have described in The Lost Worlds of 2001, both projects proceeded simultaneously, with feedback in each direction. Thus I often had the strange experience of revising the manuscript after viewing rushes based upon an earlier version of the story – a stimulating, but rather expensive, way of writing a novel.
   As a result, there is a much closer parallel between book and movie than is usually the case, but there are also major differences. In the novel, the destination of the spaceship Discovery was Iapetus (or Japetus), most enigmatic of Saturn's many moons. The Saturnian system was reached via Jupiter: Discovery made a close approach to the giant planet, using its enormous gravitational field to produce a 'slingshot' effect and to accelerate it along the second lap of its journey. Exactly the same manoeuvre was used by the Voyager space probes in 1979, when they made the first detailed reconnaissance of the outer giants.
   In the movie, however, Stanley Kubrick wisely avoided confusion by setting the third confrontation between Man and Monolith among the moons of Jupiter. Saturn was dropped from the script entirely, though Douglas Trumbull later used the expertise he had acquired to film the ringed planet in his own production, Silent Running.
   No one could have imagined, back in the mid-sixties, that the exploration of the moons of Jupiter lay, not in the next century, but only fifteen years ahead. Nor had anyone dreamed of the wonders that would be found there – although we can be quite certain that the discoveries of the twin Voyagers will one day be surpassed by even more unexpected finds. When 2001 was written, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto were mere pinpoints of light in even the most powerful telescope; now they are worlds, each unique, and one of them – Io – is the most volcanically active body in the Solar System.
   Yet, all things considered, both movie and book stand up quite well in the light of these discoveries, and it is fascinating to compare the Jupiter sequences in the film with the actual movies from the Voyager cameras. But clearly, anything written today has to incorporate the results of the 1979 explorations: the moons of Jupiter are no longer uncharted territory.
   And there is another, more subtle, psychological factor to be taken into consideration. 2001 was written in an age that now lies beyond one of the Great Divides in human history; we are sundered from it forever by the moment when Neil Armstrong set foot upon the Moon. The date 20 July 1969 was still half a decade in the future when Stanley Kubrick and I started thinking about the 'proverbial good science-fiction movie' (his phrase). Now history and fiction have become inextricably intertwined.
   The Apollo astronauts had already seen the film when they left for the Moon. The crew of Apollo 8, who at Christmas 1968 became the first men ever to set eyes upon the Lunar Farside, told me that they had been tempted to radio back the discovery of a large black monolith: alas, discretion prevailed.
   And there were, later, almost uncanny instances of nature imitating art. Strangest of all was the saga of Apollo 13 in 1970.
   As a good opening, the Command Module, which houses the crew, had been christened Odyssey, Just before the explosion of the oxygen tank that caused the mission to be aborted, the crew had been playing Richard Strauss's Zarathustra theme, now universally identified with the movie. Immediately after the loss of power, Jack Swigert radioed back to Mission Control: 'Houston, we've had a problem.' The words that Hal used to astronaut Frank Poole on a similar occasion were: 'Sorry to interrupt the festivities, but we have a problem.'
   When the report of the Apollo 13 mission was later published, NASA Administrator Tom Paine sent me a copy, and noted under Swigert's words: 'Just as you always said it would be, Arthur.' I still get a very strange feeling when I contemplate this whole series of events – almost, indeed, as if I share a certain responsibility.
   Another resonance is less serious, but equally striking. One of the most technically brilliant sequences in the movie was that in which Frank Poole was shown running round and round the circular trick of the giant centrifuge, held in place by the 'artificial gravity' produced by its spin.
   Almost a decade later, the crew of the superbly successful Skylab realized that its designers had provided them with a similar geometry; a ring of storage cabinets formed a smooth, circular hand around the space station's interior. Skylab, however, was not spinning, but this did not.deter its ingenious occupants. They discovered that they could run around the track, just like mice in a squirrel cage, to produce a result visually indistinguishable from that shown in 2001. And they televised the whole exercise back to Earth (need I name the accompanying music?) with the comment:
   'Stanley Kubrick should see this.' As in due course he did, because I sent him the telecine recording. (I never got it back; Stanley uses a tame Black Hole as a filing system.)
   Yet another link between film and reality is the painting by Apollo-Soyuz Commander, Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, 'Near the Moon'. I first saw it in 1968, when 2001 was presented at the United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Immediately after the screening, Alexei pointed out to me that his concept (on page 32 of the Leonov-Sokolov book The Stars Are Awaiting Us, Moscow, 1967) shows exactly the same line-up as the movie's opening: the Earth rising beyond the Moon, and the Sun rising beyond them both. His autographed sketch of the painting now hangs on my office wall; for further details see Chapter 12.
   Perhaps this is the appropriate point to identify another and less well-known name appearing in these pages, that of Hsue-shen Tsien. In 1936, with the great Theodore von Karman and Frank J. Malina, Dr Tsien founded the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT) – the direct ancestor of Pasadena's famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He was also the first Goddard Professor at Caltech, and contributed greatly to American rocket research through the 1940s. Later, in one of the most disgraceful episodes of the McCarthy period, he was arrested on trumped-up security charges when he wished to return to his native country. For the last two decades, he has been one of the leaders of the Chinese rocket programme.
   Finally, there is the strange case of the 'Eye of Japetus' – Chapter 35 of 2001. Here I describe astronaut Bowman's discovery on the Saturnian moon of a curious feather 'a brilliant white oval, about four hundred miles long and two hundred wide... perfectly symmetrical... and so sharp-edged that it almost looked... painted on the face of the little moon.' As he came closer, Bowman convinced himself that 'the bright ellipse set against the dark background of the satellite was a huge empty eye staring at him as he approached...' Later, he noticed 'the tiny black dot at the exact centre', which turns out to be the Monolith (or one of its avatars).
   Well, when Voyager 1 transmitted the first photographs of Iapetus, they did indeed disclose a large, clear-cut white oval with a tiny black dot at the centre. Carl Sagan promptly sent me a print from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory with the cryptic annotation 'Thinking of you...' I do not know whether to be relieved or disappointed that Voyager 2 has left the matter still open.
   Inevitably, therefore, the story you are about to read is something much more complex than a straightforward sequel to the earlier novel – or the movie. Where these differ, I have followed the screen version; however, I have been more concerned with making this book self-consistent, and as accurate as possible in the light of current knowledge.
   Which, of course, will once more be out of date by 2001...
   Arthur C. Clarke COLOMBO, SRI LANKA JANUARY 1982

I – LEONOV

1 – Meeting at the Focus

   Even in this metric age, it was still the thousand-foot telescope, not the three-hundred-metre one. The great saucer set among the mountains was already half full of shadow, as the tropical sun dropped swiftly to rest, but the triangular raft of the antenna complex suspended high above its centre still blazed with light. From the ground far below, it would have taken keen eyes to notice the two human figures in the aerial maze of girders, support cables, and wave-guides.
   'The time has come,' said Dr Dimitri Moisevitch to his old friend Heywood Floyd, 'to talk of many things. Of shoes and spaceships and sealing wax, but mostly of monoliths and malfunctioning computers.'
   'So that's why you got me away from the conference. Not that I really mind – I've heard Carl give that SETI speech so many times that I can recite it myself. And the view certainly is fantastic – you know, all the times I've been to Arecibo, I've never made it up here to the antenna feed.'
   'Shame on you. I've been here three times. Imagine – we're listening to the whole universe – but no one can overhear us. So let's talk about your problem.'
   'What problem?'
   'To start with, why you had to resign as Chairman of the National Council on Astronautics.'
   'I didn't resign. The University of Hawaii pays a lot better.'
   'Okay – you didn't resign – you were one jump ahead of them. After all these years, Woody, you can't fool me, and you should give up trying. If they offered the NCA back to you right now, would you hesitate?'
   'All right, you old Cossak. What do you want to know?'
   'First of all, there are lots of loose ends in the report you finally issued after so much prodding. We'll overlook the ridiculous and frankly illegal secrecy with which your people dug up the Tycho monolith -'
   'That wasn't my idea.'
   'Glad to hear it: I even believe you. And we appreciate the fact that you're now letting everyone examine the thing – which of course is what you should have done in the first place. Not that it's done much good...'
   There was a gloomy silence while the two men contemplated the black enigma up there on the Moon, still contemptuously defying all the weapons that human ingenuity could bring to bear upon it. Then the Russian scientist continued.
   'Anyway, whatever the Tycho monolith may be, there's something more important out at Jupiter. That's where it sent its signal, after all. And that's where your people ran into trouble. Sorry about that, by the way – though Frank Poole was the only one I knew personally. Met him at the '98 IAF Congress – he seemed a good man.'
   'Thank you; they were all good men. I wish we knew what happened to them.'
   'Whatever it was, surely you'll admit that it now concerns the whole human race – not merely the United States. You can no longer try to use your knowledge for purely national advantage.'
   'Dimitri – you know perfectly well that your side would have done exactly the same thing. And you'd have helped.'
   'You're absolutely right. But that's ancient history – like the just-departed administration of yours that was responsible for the whole mess. With a new President, perhaps wiser counsels will prevail.'
   'Possibly. Do you have any suggestions, and are they official or just personal hopes?'
   'Entirely unofficial at the moment. What the bloody politicians call exploratory talks. Which I shall flatly deny ever occurred.'
   'Fair enough. Go on.'
   'Okay – here's the situation. You're assembling Discovery 2 in parking orbit as quickly as you can, but you can't hope to have it ready in less than three years, which means you'll miss the next launch window -,
   'I neither confirm nor deny. Remember I'm merely a humble university chancellor, the other side of the world from the Astronautics Council.'
   'And your last trip to Washington was just a holiday to see old friends, I suppose. To continue: our own Alexei Leonov ,
   'I thought you were calling it Gherman Titov.'
   'Wrong, Chancellor. The dear old CIA's let you down again. Leonov it is, as of last January. And don't let anyone know I told you it will reach Jupiter at least a year ahead of Discovery.'
   'Don't let anyone know I told you we were afraid of that. But do go on.'
   'Because my bosses are just as stupid and shortsighted as yours, they want to go it alone. Which means that whatever went wrong with you may happen to us, and we'll all be back to square one – or worse.'
   'What do you think went wrong? We're just as baffled as you are. And don't tell me you haven't got all of Dave Bowman's transmissions.'
   'Of course we have. Right up to that last "My God, it's full of stars!" We've even done a stress analysis on his voice patterns. We don't think he was hallucinating; he was trying to describe what he actually saw.'
   'And what do you make of his doppler shift?'
   'Completely impossible, of course. When we lost his signal, he was receding at a tenth of the speed of light. And he'd reached that in less than two minutes. A quarter of a million gravities!'
   'So he must have been killed instantly.'
   'Don't pretend to be naive, Woody. Your space-pod radios aren't built to withstand even a hundredth of that acceleration. If they could survive, so could Bowman – at least, until we lost contact.'
   'Just doing an independent check on your deductions. From there on, we're as much in the dark as you are. If you are.'
   'Merely playing with lots of crazy guesses I'd be ashamed to tell you. Yet none of them, I suspect, will be half as crazy as the truth.'
   In small crimson explosions the navigation warning lights winked on all around them, and the three slim towers supporting the antenna complex began to blaze like beacons against the darkling sky. The last red sliver of the sun vanished below the surrounding hills; Heywood Floyd waited for the Green Flash, which he had never seen. Once again, he was disappointed.
   'So, Dimitri,' he said, 'let's get to the point. Just what are you driving at?'
   'There must be a vast amount of priceless information stored in Discovery's data banks; presumably it's still being gathered, even though the ship's stopped transmitting. We'd like to have that.'
   'Fair enough. But when you get out there, and Leonov makes a rendezvous, what's to prevent you from boarding Discovery and copying everything you want?'
   'I never thought I'd have to remind you that Discovery is United States territory, and an unauthorized entry would be piracy.'
   'Except in the event of a life-or-death emergency, which wouldn't be difficult to arrange. After all, it would be hard for us to check what your boys were up to, from a billion kilometres away.'
   'Thanks for the most interesting suggestion; I'll pass it on. But even if we went aboard, it would take us weeks to learn all your systems, and read out all your memory banks. What I propose is cooperation. I'm convinced that's the best idea – but we may both have a job selling it to our respective bosses.'
   'You want one of our astronauts to fly with Leonov?'
   'Yes – preferably an engineer who's specialized in Discovery's systems. Like the ones you're training at Houston to bring the ship home.'
   'How did you know that?'
   'For heaven's sake, Woody – it was on Aviation Week's videotext at least a month ago.'
   'I am out of touch; nobody tells me what's been declassified.'
   'All the more reason to spend time in Washington. Will you back me up?'
   'Absolutely. I agree with you one hundred per cent. But -'
   'But what?'
   'We both have to deal with dinosaurs with brains in their tails. Some of mine will argue: Let the Russians risk their necks, hurrying out to Jupiter. We'll be there anyway a couple of years later – and what's the hurry?'
   For a moment there was silence on the antenna raft, except for a faint creak from the immense supporting cables that held it suspended a hundred metres in the sky. Then Moisevitch continued, so quietly that Floyd had to strain to hear him: 'Has anyone checked Discovery's orbit lately?'
   'I really don't know – but I suppose so. Anyway, why bother? It's a perfectly stable one.'
   'Indeed. Let me tactlessly remind you of an embarrassing incident from the old NASA days. Your first space station – Skylab. It was supposed to stay up at least a decade, but you didn't do your calculations right. The air drag in the ionosphere was badly underestimated, and it came down years ahead of schedule. I'm sure you remember that little cliffhanger, even though you were a boy at the time.'
   'It was the year I graduated, and you know it. But Discovery doesn't go anywhere near Jupiter. Even at perigee – er, perijove – it's much too high to be affected by atmospheric drag.'
   'I've already said enough to get me exiled to my dacha again – and you might not be allowed to visit me next time. So just ask your tracking people to do their job more carefully, will you? And remind them that Jupiter has the biggest magnetosphere in the Solar System.'
   'I understand what you're driving at – many thanks. Anything else before we go down? I'm starting to freeze.'
   'Don't worry, old friend. As soon as you let all this filter through to Washington – wait a week or so until I'm clear -things are going to get very, very hot.'

2 – The House of the Dolphins

   The dolphins swam into the dining room every evening, just before sunset. Only once since Floyd had occupied the Chancellor's residence had they broken their routine. That was the day of the '05 tsunami, which, fortunately, had lost most of its power before it reached Hilo. The next time his friends failed to turn up on schedule, Floyd would throw the family into the car and head for high ground, in the general direction of Mauna Kea.
   Charming though they were, he had to admit that their playfulness was sometimes a nuisance. The wealthy marine geologist who had designed the house had never minded getting wet because he usually wore bathing trunks – or less. But there had been one unforgettable occasion when the entire Board of Regents, in full evening attire, had been sipping cocktails around the pool while awaiting the arrival of a distinguished guest from the mainland. The dolphins had deduced, correctly, that they would get second billing. So the visitor was quite surprised to be greeted by a bedraggled committee in ill-fitting bathrobes – and the buffet had been very salty.
   Floyd often wondered what Marion would have thought of his strange and beautiful home on the edge of the Pacific. She had never liked the sea, but the sea had won in the end. Though the image was slowly fading, he could still recall the flashing screen on which he had first read the words: DR FLOYD – URGENT AND PERSONAL. And then the scrolling lines of fluorescent print that had swiftly burned their message into his mind:
   REGRET TO INFORM YOU LONDON-WASHINGTON FLIGHT 452 REPORTED DOWN OFF NEWFOUNDLAND. RESCUE CRAFT PROCEEDING TO LOCATION BUT FEAR NO SURVIVORS.
   Apart from an accident of fate, he would have been on that flight. For a few days, he had almost regretted the European Space Administration business that had delayed him in Paris; that haggle over the Solaris payload had saved his life.
   And now, he had a new job, a new home and a new wife. Fate had also played an ironic role here. The recriminations and inquiries over the Jupiter mission had destroyed his Washington career, but a man of his ability was never unemployed for long. The more leisurely tempo of university life had always appealed to him, and when combined with one of the world's most beautiful locations it had proved irresistible. He had met the woman who was to be his second wife only a month after he had been appointed, while watching the fire fountains of Kilauea with a crowd of tourists.
   With Caroline he had found the contentment that is just as important as happiness, and longer lasting. She had been a good stepmother to Marion's two daughters, and had given him Christopher. Despite the twenty-year age difference between them, she understood his moods and could wean him out of his occasional depressions. Thanks to her, he could now contemplate the memory of Marion without grief, though not without a wistful sadness that would remain with him for the rest of his life.
   Caroline was throwing fish to the largest dolphin – the big male they called Scarback – when a gentle tickling on Floyd's wrist announced an incoming call. He tapped the slim metal band to quench the silent alarm and forestall the audible one, then walked to the nearest of the comsets scattered around the room.
   'Chancellor here. Who's calling?'
   'Heywood? This is Victor. How are you?'
   In a fraction of a second, a whole kaleidoscope of emotions flashed through Floyd's mind. First there was annoyance: his successor – and, he was sure, principal contriver of his downfall – had never once attempted to contact him since his departure from Washington. Then came curiosity: what did they have to talk about? Next was a stubborn determination to be as unhelpful as possible, then shame at his own childishness, and, finally, a surge of excitement. Victor Millson could be calling for only one reason.
   In as neutral a voice as he could muster, Floyd answered:
   'I can't complain, Victor. What's the problem?'
   'Is this a secure circuit?'
   'No, thank God. I don't need them any more.'
   'Um. Well, I'll put it this way. You recall the last project you administered?'
   'I'm not likely to forget, especially as the Subcommittee on Astronautics called me back to give more evidence only a month ago.'
   'Of course, of course. I really must get around to reading your statement, when I have a moment. But I've been so busy with the follow-up, and that's the problem.'
   'I thought that everything was right on schedule.'
   'It is – unfortunately. There's nothing we can do to advance it; even the highest priority would make only a few weeks' difference. And that means we'll be too late.'
   'I don't understand,' said Floyd innocently. 'Though we don't want to waste time, of course, there's no real deadline.'
   'Now there is – and two of them.'
   'You amaze me.'
   If Victor noticed any irony, he ignored it. 'Yes, there are two deadlines – one man-made, one not. It now turns out that we won't be the first to get back to the – er, scene of the action. Our old rivals will beat us by at least a year.'
   'Too bad.'
   'That's not the worst. Even if there were no competition, we'd be too late. There wouldn't be anything there when we arrive.'
   'That's ridiculous. I'm sure I'd have heard if Congress had repealed the law of gravitation.'
   'I'm serious. The situation isn't stable – I can't give details now. Will you be in for the rest of the evening?'
   'Yes,' Floyd answered, realizing with some pleasure that it must now be well after midnight in Washington.
   'Good. You'll have a package delivered within the hour. Call me back as soon as you've had the time to study it.'
   'Won't it be rather late by then?'
   'Yes, it will be. But we've wasted too much time already. I don't want to lose any more.'
   Millson was true to his word. Exactly an hour later a large sealed envelope was delivered by an Air Force colonel, no less, who sat patiently chatting with Caroline while Floyd read its contents. 'I'm afraid I'll have to take it away when you've finished,' the high-ranking messenger boy said apologetically.
   'I'm glad to hear it,' Floyd answered, as he settled down in his favourite reading hammock.
   There were two documents, the first very short. It was stamped TOP SECRET, though the TOP had been crossed out and the modification endorsed by three signatures, all completely illegible. Obviously an extract from some much longer report, it had been heavily censored and was full of blanks, which made it most annoying to read. Fortunately, its conclusions could be summed up in one sentence: The Russians would reach Discovery long before its rightful owners could do so. As Floyd already knew this, he turned quickly to the second document – though not before noticing with satisfaction that this time they'd managed to get the name right. As usual, Dimitri had been perfectly accurate. The next manned expedition to Jupiter would travel aboard spacecraft Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov.
   The second document was much longer and was merely confidential; indeed, it was in the form of a draft letter to Science, awaiting final approval before publication. Its snappy title was 'Space Vehicle Discovery: Anomalous Orbital Behavior'.
   Then followed a dozen pages of mathematics and astronomical tables. Floyd skimmed through these, picking out the words from the music, and trying to detect any note of apology or even embarrassment. When he had finished, he was compelled to give a smile of wry admiration. No one could possibly guess that the tracking stations and ephemeris calculators had been caught by surprise, and that a frantic cover-up was in progress. Heads would doubtless roll, and he knew that Victor Millson would enjoy rolling them – if his was not one of the first to go. Though to do him justice, Victor had complained when Congress had cut funds for the tracking network. Maybe that would get him off the hook.
   'Thank you, Colonel,' said Floyd when he had finished skimming the papers. 'Quite like old times, having classified documents. That's one thing I don't miss.'
   The colonel placed the envelope carefully back in his briefcase, and activated the locks.
   'Dr Millson would like you to return his call as soon as possible.'
   'I know. But I don't have a secure circuit, I've some important visitors coming shortly, and I'm damned if I'm driving down to your office in Hilo just to say I've read two documents. Tell him that I've studied them carefully and await any further communication with interest.'
   For a moment it looked as if the colonel was going to argue. Then he thought better of it, made a stiff farewell, and departed morosely into the night.
   'Now, what was all that about?' asked Caroline. 'We're not expecting any visitors tonight, important or otherwise.'
   'I hate being pushed around, particularly by Victor Millson.'
   'Bet he calls you back as soon as the colonel reports.'
   'Then we must switch off video and make some party noises. But to be perfectly truthful, at this stage I really don't have anything to say.'
   'About what, if I'm allowed to ask.'
   'Sorry, dear. It seems that Discovery is playing tricks on us. We thought the ship was in a stable orbit, but it may be about to crash.'
   'Into Jupiter?'
   'Oh no – that's quite impossible. Bowman left it parked at the inner Lagrange point, on the line between Jupiter and Io. It should have stayed there, more or less, though the perturbations of the outer moons would have made it wander back and forth.
   'But what's happening now is something very odd, and we don't know the full explanation. Discovery's drifting more and more rapidly toward Io – though sometimes it accelerates, and sometimes even moves backward. If it keeps this up, it will impact within two or three years.'
   'I thought this couldn't happen in astronomy. Isn't celestial mechanics supposed to be an exact science? So we poor backward biologists were always being told.'
   'It is an exact science, when everything is taken into account. But some very strange things go on around Io. Apart from its volcanoes, there are tremendous electrical discharges – and Jupiter's magnetic field is spinning round every ten hours. So gravitation isn't the only force acting on Discovery; we should have thought of this sooner – much sooner.'
   'Well, it's not your problem anymore. You should be thankful for that.'
   'Your problem' – the very expression that Dimitri had used. And Dimitri – cunning old fox! – had known him much longer than Caroline.
   It might not be his problem, but it was still his responsibility. Though many others had been involved, in the final analysis he had approved the plans for the Jupiter Mission, and supervised their execution.
   Even at the time, he had had qualms; his views as a scientist had conflicted with his duties as a bureaucrat. He could have spoken out, and opposed the old administration's shortsighted policies – though to what extent those had actually contributed to the disaster was still uncertain.
   Perhaps it was best if he closed this chapter of his life, and focused all his thoughts and energies upon his new career. But in his heart he knew that was impossible; even if Dimitri had not revived old guilts, they would have surfaced of their own accord.
   Four men had died, and one had disappeared, out there among the moons of Jupiter. There was blood on his hands, and he did not know how to wash them clean.

3 – SAL 9000

   Dr Sivasubramanian Chandrasegarampillai, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana, also had an abiding sense of guilt, but one very different from Heywood Floyd's. Those of his students and colleagues who often wondered if the little scientist was quite human would not have been surprised to learn that he never thought of the dead astronauts. Dr Chandra grieved only for his lost child, HAL 9000.
   Even after all these years, and his endless reviews of the data radioed back from Discovery, he was not sure what had gone wrong. He could only formulate theories; the facts he needed were frozen in Hal's circuits, out there between Jupiter and Io.
   The sequence of events had been clearly established, up to the moment of the tragedy; thereafter, Commander Bowman had filled in a few more details on the brief occasions when he had re-established contact. But knowing what happened did not explain why.
   The first hint of trouble had been late in the mission, when Hal had reported the imminent failure of the unit that kept Discovery's main antenna aligned to Earth. If the half-billion-kilometre-long radio beam wandered off target, the ship would be blind, deaf, and dumb.
   Bowman himself had gone out to retrieve the suspect unit, but when it was tested it appeared, to everyone's surprise, to be in perfectly good order. The automatic checking circuits could find nothing wrong with it. Nor could Hal's twin, SAL 9000, back on Earth, when the information was transmitted to Urbana.
   But Hal had insisted on the accuracy of his diagnosis, making pointed remarks about 'human error'. He had suggested that the control unit be put back in the antenna until it finally failed, so that the fault could be precisely located. No one could think of any objection, for the unit could be replaced in minutes, even if it did break down.
   Bowman and Poole, however, had not been happy; they both felt that something was wrong, though neither could pinpoint it. For months they had accepted Hal as the third member of their tiny world, and knew his every mood. Then the atmosphere aboard the ship had subtly altered; there was a sense of strain in the air.
   Feeling rather like traitors – as a distraught Bowman had later reported to Mission Control – the human two-thirds of the crew had discussed what should be done if their colleague was indeed malfunctioning. In the worst possible case, Hal would have to be relieved of all his higher responsibilities. This would involve disconnection – the computer equivalent of death.
   Despite their doubts, they had carried out the agreed programme. Poole had flown out of Discovery in one of the little space pods that served as transporters and mobile workshops during extravehicular activities. Since the somewhat tricky job of replacing the antenna unit could not be performed by the pod's own manipulators, Poole had started to do it himself.
   What happened then had been missed by the external cameras, which was a suspicious detail in itself. Bowman's first warning of disaster was a cry from Poole – then, silence. A moment later he saw Poole, tumbling over and over, spinning away into space. His own pod had rammed him, and was itself blasting away out of control.
   As Bowman admitted later, he had then made several serious mistakes – all but one excusable. In the hope of rescuing Poole, if he was still alive, Bowman launched himself in another space pod – leaving Hal in full control of the ship.
   The EVA was in vain; Poole was dead when Bowman reached him. Numb with despair, he had carried the body back to the ship – only to be refused entry by Hal.
   But Hal had underestimated human ingenuity and determination. Though he had left his suit helmet in the ship, and thus had to risk direct exposure to space, Bowman forced his way in by an emergency hatch not under computer control. Then he proceeded to lobotomize Hal, unplugging his brain modules one by one.
   When he regained control of the ship, Bowman made an appalling discovery. During his absence, Hal had switched off the life-support systems of the three hibernating astronauts. Bowman was alone, as no man had ever been before in the whole of human history.
   Others might have abandoned themselves in helpless despair, but now David Bowman proved that those who had selected him had indeed chosen well. He managed to keep Discovery operational, and even re-established intermittent contact with Mission Control, by orienting the whole ship so that the jammed antenna pointed toward Earth.
   On its preordained trajectory, Discovery had finally arrived at Jupiter. There Bowman had encountered, orbiting among the moons of the giant planet, a black slab of exactly the same shape as the monolith excavated in the lunar crater Tycho – but hundreds of times larger. He had gone out in a space pod to investigate, and had disappeared leaving that final, baffling message: 'My God, it's full of stars!'
   That mystery was for others to worry about; Dr Chandra's overwhelming concern was with Hal. If there was one thing his unemotional mind hated, it was uncertainty. He would never be satisfied until he knew the cause of Hal's behaviour. Even now, he refused to call it a malfunction; at most, it was an 'anomaly'.
   The tiny cubbyhole he used as his inner sanctum was equipped only with a swivel chair, a desk console, and a blackboard flanked by two photographs. Few members of the general public could have identified the portraits, but anyone permitted thus far would have recognized them instantly as John von Neumann and Alan Turing, the twin gods of the computing pantheon.
   There were no books, and not even paper and pencil on the desk. All the volumes in all the libraries of the world were instantly available at the touch of Chandra's fingers, and the visual display was his sketchbook and writing pad. Even the blackboard was used only for visitors; the last half – erased block diagram upon it bore a date already three weeks in the past.
   Dr Chandra lit one of the venomous cheroots which he imported from Madras, and which were widely – and correctly – believed to be his only vice. The console was never switched off he checked that no messages were flashing importantly on the display, then spoke into the microphone.
   'Good morning, Sal. So you've nothing new for me?'
   'No, Dr Chandra. Have you anything for me?'
   The voice might have been that of any cultured Hindu lady educated in the United States as well as her own country. Sal's accent had not started that way, but over the years she had picked up many of Chandra's intonations.
   The scientist tapped out a code on the board, switching Sal's inputs to the memory with the highest security rating. No one knew that he talked to the computer on this circuit as he never could to a human being. No matter that Sal did not really understand more than a fraction of what he said; her responses were so convincing that even her creator was sometimes deceived. As indeed he wished to be: these secret communications helped to preserve his mental equilibrium – perhaps even his sanity.
   'You've often told me, Sal, that we cannot solve the problem of Hal's anomalous behaviour without more information. But how can we get that information?'
   'That is obvious. Someone must return to Discovery.'
   'Exactly. Now it looks as if that is going to happen, sooner than we expected.'
   'I am pleased to hear that.'
   'I knew that you would be,' answered Chandra, and meant it. He had long since broken off communications with the dwindling body of philosophers who argued that computers could not really feel emotions, but only pretended to do so.
   ('If you can prove to me that you're not pretending to be annoyed,' he had once retorted scornfully to one such critic, 'I'll take you seriously.' At that point, his opponent had put on a most convincing imitation of anger.)
   'Now I want to explore another possibility,' Chandra continued. 'Diagnosis is only the first step. The process is incomplete unless it leads to a cure.'
   'You believe that Hal can be restored to normal functioning?'
   'I hope so. I do not know. There may have been irreversible damage, and certainly major loss of memory.'
   He paused thoughtfully, took several puffs, then blew a skilful smoke ring that scored a bull's-eye on Sal's wideangle lens. A human being would not have regarded this as a friendly gesture; that was yet another of the many advantages of computers.
   'I need your cooperation, Sal.'
   'Of course, Dr Chandra.'
   'There may be certain risks.'
   'What do you mean?'
   'I propose to disconnect some of your circuits, particularly those involving your higher functions. Does this disturb you?'
   'I am unable to answer that without more specific information.'
   'Very well. Let me put it this way. You have operated continuously, have you not, since you were first switched on?'
   'That is correct.'
   'But you are aware that we human beings cannot do so. We require sleep – an almost complete break in our mental functioning, at least on the conscious level.'
   'I know this. But I do not understand it.'
   'Well, you may be about to experience something like sleep. Probably all that will happen is that time will pass, but you will be unaware out. When you check your internal clock, you will discover that there are gaps in your monitor record. That is all.'
   'But you said that there might be risks. What are they?'
   'There is a very slight chance – it is impossible to compute it – that when I reconnect your circuits, there may be some changes in your personality, your future behaviour patterns. You may feel different. Not necessarily better, or worse.'
   'I do not know what that means.'
   'I'm sorry – it may not mean anything. So don't worry about it. Now please open a new file – here is the name.' Using the keyboard input, Chandra typed out: PHOENIX.
   'Do you know what that is?' he asked Sal.
   With no discernible pause the computer replied: 'There are twenty-five references in the current encyclopedia.'
   'Which one do you think is relevant?'
   'The tutor of Achilles?'
   'Interesting. I didn't know that one. Try again.'
   'A fabulous bird, reborn from the ashes of its earlier life.'
   'Excellent. Now do you understand why I chose it?'
   'Because you hope that Hal can be reactivated.'
   'Yes – with your assistance. Are you ready?'
   'Not yet. I would like to ask a question.'
   'What is it?'
   'Will I dream?'
   'Of course you will. All intelligent creatures dream – but no one knows why.' Chandra paused for a moment, blew another smoke ring from the cheroot, and added something that he would never admit to a human being. 'Perhaps you will dream about Hal – as I often do.'

4 – Mission Profile

   English Version
   To: Captain Tatiana (Tanya) Orlova, Commander. Spacecraft Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov (UNCOS Registration 081342).
   From: National Council on Astronautics, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington
   Commission on Outer Space, USSR Academy of Science, Korolyev Prospect, Moscow
   Mission Objectives
   The objectives of your mission are, in order of priority:
   1. To proceed to the Jovian system and rendezvous with US Spacecraft Discovery (UNCOS 01/283).
   2. To board this spacecraft, and obtain all possible information relating to its earlier mission.
   3. To reactivate Spacecraft Discovery's onboard systems and, if propellant supplies are adequate, inject the ship into an Earth-returns trajectory.
   4 To locate the alien artifact encountered by Discovery, and to investigate it to the maximum extent possible by remote sensors.
   5. If it seems advisable, and Mission Control concurs, to rendezvous with this object for closer inspection.
   6. To carry out a survey of Jupiter and its satellites, as far as this is compatible with the above objectives.
   It is realized that unforeseen circumstances may require a change of priorities, or even make it impossible to achieve some of these objectives. It must be clearly understood that the rendezvous with Spacecraft Discovery is for the express purpose of obtaining information about the artifact; this must take precedence over all other objectives, including attempts at salvage.
   Crew
   The crew of Spacecraft Alexei Leonov will consist of:
   Captain Tatiana Orlova (Engineering-Propulsion)
   Dr Vasili Orlov (Navigation-Astronomy)
   Dr Maxim Brailovsky (Engineering-Structures)
   Dr Alexander Kovalev (Engineering-Communications)
   Dr Nikolai Ternovsky (Engineering-Control Systems)
   Surgeon-Commander Katerina Rudenko (Medical-Life-Support)
   Dr Irma Yakunina (Medical-Nutrition)
   In addition, the US National Council on Astronautics will provide the following three experts:
   Dr Heywood Floyd dropped the memorandum, and leaned back in his chair. It was all settled; the point of no return had been passed. Even if he wished to do so, there was no way to put back the clock.
   He glanced across at Caroline, sitting with two-year-old Chris on the edge of the pool. The boy was more at home in the water than on land, and could stay submerged for periods that often terrified visitors. And though he could not yet speak much Human, he already seemed fluent in Dolphin.
   One of Christopher's friends had just swum in from the Pacific and was presenting his back to be patted. You too are a wanderer, thought Floyd, in a vast and trackless ocean; but how small your tiny Pacific seems, against the immensity I am facing now!
   Caroline became aware of his gaze, and rose to her feet. She looked at him sombrely, but without anger; all that had been burned out in the last few days. As she approached, she even managed a wistful smile.
   'I've found that poem I was looking for,' she said. 'It starts like this:
   What is a woman that you forsake her,
   And the hearth-fire and the home acre,
   To go with the old grey Widow-maker?'
   'Sorry – I don't quite understand. Who is the Widow-maker?'
   'Not who, what. The sea. The poem's a lament by a Viking woman. It was written by Rudyard Kipling, a hundred years ago.'
   Floyd took his wife's hand; she did not respond, but neither did she resist.
   'Well, I don't feel at all like a Viking. I'm not after loot, and adventure is the very last thing I want.'
   'Then why – no, I don't intend to start another fight. But it would help us both, if you know exactly what your motives are.'
   'I wish I could give you one single good reason. Instead, I've a whole host of little ones. But they add up to a final answer I can't argue with – believe me.'
   'I believe you. But are you sure you're not fooling yourself?'
   'If I am, then so are a lot of other people. Including, may I remind you, the President of the United States.'
   'I'm not likely to forget. But suppose – just suppose – that he hadn't asked you. Would you have volunteered?'
   'I can answer that truthfully: No. It would never have occurred to me. President Mordecai's call was the biggest shock of my life. But when I thought it over, I realized he was perfectly right. You know I don't go in for false modesty. I am the best-qualified man for the job – when the space docs give their final okay. And you should know that I'm still in pretty good shape.'
   That brought the smile he had intended.
   'Sometimes I wonder if you'd suggested it yourself.'
   The thought had indeed occurred to him; but he could answer honestly.
   'I would never have done so without consulting you.'
   'I'm glad you didn't. I don't know what I'd have said.'
   'I could still turn it down.'
   'Now you're talking nonsense, and you know it. Even if you did, you'd hate me for the rest of your life – and you'd never forgive yourself. You have too strong a sense of duty. Maybe that's one of the reasons I married you.'
   Duty! Yes, that was the key word, and what multitudes it contained. He had a duty to himself, to his family, to the University, to his past job (even though he had left it under a cloud), to his country – and to the human race. It was not easy to establish the priorities; and sometimes they conflicted with one another.
   There were perfectly logical reasons why he should go on the mission – and equally logical reasons, as many of his colleagues had already pointed out, why he should not. But perhaps in the final analysis, the choice had been made by his heart, not his brain. And even here, emotion urged him in two opposite directions.
   Curiosity, guilt, the determination to finish a job that had been badly botched – they all combined to drive him toward Jupiter and whatever might be waiting there. On the other hand, fear – he was honest enough to admit that – united with love of his family to keep him on Earth. Yet he had never had any real doubts; he had made his decision almost instantly, and had deflected all of Caroline's arguments as gently as he could.
   And there was one other consoling thought that he had not yet risked sharing with his wife. Though he would be gone two and a half years, all but the fifty days at Jupiter would be spent in timeless hibernation. When he returned, the gap between their ages would have narrowed by more than two years.
   He would have sacrificed the present so that they could share a longer future together.