Title: 3001 The final odissey
Author: Arthur C. Clarke
3001 The final Odissey

PROLOGUE

The Firstborn
   

    Call them the Firstborn. Though they were not remotely human, they were 
flesh and blood, and when they looked out across the deeps of space, they felt 
awe, and wonder - and loneliness. As soon as they possessed the power, they 
began to seek for fellowship among the stars.

    In their explorations, they encountered life in many forms, and watched the 
workings of evolution on a thousand worlds. They saw how often the first faint 
sparks of intelligence flickered and died in the cosmic night.

    And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than 
Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields 
of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped.

    And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.

    The great dinosaurs had long since passed away, their morning promise 
annihilated by a random hammerblow from space, when the survey ship entered the 
Solar System after a voyage that had already lasted a thousand years. It swept 
past the frozen outer planets, paused briefly above the deserts of dying Mars, 
and presently looked down on Earth.

    Spread out beneath them, the explorers saw a world swarming with life. For 
years they studied, collected, catalogued. When they had learned all that they 
could, they began to modify. They tinkered with the destiny of many species, on 
land and in the seas. But which of their experiments would bear fruit, they 
could not know for at least a million years.

    They were patient, but they were not yet immortal. There was so much to do 
in this universe of a hundred billion suns, and other worlds were calling. So 
they set out once more into the abyss, knowing that they would never come this 
way again. Nor was there any need: the servants they had left behind would do 
the rest.

    On Earth, the glaciers came and went, while above them the changeless Moon 
still carried its secret from the stars. With a yet slower rhythm than the polar 
ice, the tides of civilization ebbed and flowed across the Galaxy. Strange and 
beautiful and terrible empires rose and fell, and passed on their knowledge to 
their successors.

    And now, out among the stars, evolution was driving towards new goals. The 
first explorers of Earth had long since come to the limits of flesh and blood; 
as soon as their machines were better than their bodies, it was time to move. 
First their brains, and then their thoughts alone, they transferred into shining 
new homes of metal and gemstone. In these, they roamed the Galaxy. They no 
longer built spaceships. They were spaceships.

    But the age of the Machine-entities swiftly passed. In their ceaseless 
experimenting, they had learned to store knowledge in the structure of space 
itself, and to preserve their thoughts for eternity in frozen lattices of light.

    Into pure energy, therefore, they presently transformed themselves; and on a 
thousand worlds, the empty shells they had discarded twitched for a while in a 
mindless dance of death, then crumbled into dust.

    Now they were Lords of the Galaxy, and could rove at will among the stars, 
or sink like a subtle mist through the very interstices of space. Though they 
were freed at last from the tyranny of matter, they had not wholly forgotten 
their origin, in the warm slime of a vanished sea. And their marvellous 
instruments still continued to function, watching over the experiments started 
so many ages ago.

    But no longer were they always obedient to the mandates of their creators; 
like all material things, they were not immune to the corruption of Time and its 
patient, unsleeping servant, Entropy.

    And sometimes, they discovered and sought goals of their own.

    

I
STAR CITY

    

1
Comet Cowboy

    

    Captain Dimitri Chandler [M2973.04.21/93.106//Mars//I SpaceAcad3005] - or 
'Dim' to his very best friends - was understandably annoyed. The message from 
Earth had taken six hours to reach the space-tug Goliath, here beyond the orbit 
of Neptune; if it had arrived ten minutes later he could have answered 'Sorry - 
can't leave now - we've just started to deploy the sun-screen.'

    The excuse would have been perfectly valid: wrapping a comet's core in a 
sheet of reflective film only a few molecules thick, but kilometres on a side, 
was not the sort of job you could abandon while it was half-completed.

    Still, it would be a good idea to obey this ridiculous request: he was 
already in disfavour sunwards, through no fault of his own. Collecting ice from 
the rings of Saturn, and nudging it towards Venus and Mercury, where it was 
really needed, had started back in the 2700s - three centuries ago. Captain 
Chandler had never been able to see any real difference in the 'before and 
after' images the Solar Conservers were always producing, to support their 
accusations of celestial vandalism. But the general public, still sensitive to 
the ecological disasters of previous centuries, had thought otherwise, and the 
'Hands off Saturn!' vote had passed by a substantial majority. As a result, 
Chandler was no longer a Ring Rustler, but a Comet Cowboy.

    So here he was at an appreciable fraction of the distance to Alpha Centauri, 
rounding up stragglers from the Kuiper Belt. There was certainly enough ice out 
here to cover Mercury and Venus with oceans kilometres deep, but it might take 
centuries to extinguish their hell-fires and make them suitable for life. The 
Solar Conservers, of course, were still protesting against this, though no 
longer with so much enthusiasm. The millions dead from the tsunami caused by the 
Pacific asteroid in 2304 - how ironic that a land impact would have done much 
less damage! - had reminded all future generations that the human race had too 
many eggs in one fragile basket.

    Well, Chandler told himself, it would be fifty years before this particular 
package reached its destination, so a delay of a week would hardly make much 
difference. But all the calculations about rotation, centre of mass, and thrust 
vectors would have to be redone, and radioed back to Mars for checking. It was a 
good idea to do your sums carefully, before nudging billions of tons of ice 
along an orbit that might take it within hailing distance of Earth.

    As they had done so many times before, Captain Chandler's eyes strayed 
towards the ancient photograph above his desk. It showed a three-masted 
steamship, dwarfed by the iceberg that was looming above it - as, indeed, 
Goliath was dwarfed at this very moment.

    How incredible, he had often thought, that only one long lifetime spanned 
the gulf between this primitive Discovery and the ship that had carried the same 
name to Jupiter! And what would those Antarctic explorers of a thousand years 
ago have made of the view from his bridge? They would certainly have been 
disoriented, for the wall of ice beside which Goliath was floating stretched 
both upwards and downwards as far as the eye could see. And it was strange-
looking ice, wholly lacking the immaculate whites and blues of the frozen Polar 
seas. In fact, it looked dirty - as indeed it was. For only some ninety per cent 
was water-ice: the rest was a witch's brew of carbon and sulphur compounds, most 
of them stable only at temperatures not far above absolute zero. Thawing them 
out could produce unpleasant surprises: as one astrochemist had famously 
remarked, 'Comets have bad breath'.

    'Skipper to all personnel,' Chandler announced. 'There's been a slight 
change of programme. We've been asked to delay operations, to investigate a 
target that Spaceguard radar has picked up.'

    'Any details?' somebody asked, when the chorus of groans over the ship's 
intercom had died away.

    'Not many, but I gather it's another Millennium Committee project they've 
forgotten to cancel.'

    More groans: everyone had become heartily sick of all the events planned to 
celebrate the end of the 2000s. There had been a general sigh of relief when 1 
January 3001 had passed uneventfully, and the human race could resume its normal 
activities.

    'Anyway, it will probably be another false alarm, like the last one. We'll 
get back to work just as quickly as we can. Skipper out.'

    This was the third wild-goose-chase, Chandler thought morosely, he'd been 
involved with during his career. Despite centuries of exploration, the Solar 
System could still produce surprises, and presumably Spaceguard had a good 
reason for its request. He only hoped that some imaginative idiot hadn't once 
again sighted the fabled Golden Asteroid. If it did exist - which Chandler did 
not for a moment believe - it would be no more than a mineralogical curiosity: 
it would be of far less real value than the ice he was nudging sunwards, to 
bring life to barren worlds.

    There was one possibility, however, which he did take quite seriously. 
Already, the human race had scattered its robot probes through a volume of space 
a hundred light-years across - and the Tycho Monolith was sufficient reminder 
that much older civilizations had engaged in similar activities. There might 
well be other alien artefacts in the Solar System, or in transit through it. 
Captain Chandler suspected that Spaceguard had something like this in mind: 
otherwise it would hardly have diverted a Class I space-tug to go chasing after 
an unidentified radar blip.

    Five hours later, the questing Goliath detected the echo at extreme range; 
even allowing for the distance, it seemed disappointingly small. However, as it 
grew clearer and stronger, it began to give the signature of a metallic object, 
perhaps a couple of metres long. It was travelling on an orbit heading out of 
the Solar System, so was almost certainly, Chandler decided, one of the myriad 
pieces of space-junk that Mankind had tossed towards the stars during the last 
millennium and which might one day provide the only evidence that the human race 
had ever existed.

    Then it came close enough for visual inspection, and Captain Chandler 
realized, with awed astonishment, that some patient historian was still checking 
the earliest records of the Space Age. What a pity that the computers had given 
him the answer, just a few years too late for the Mifiermium celebrations!

    'Goliath here,' Chandler radioed Earthwards, his voice tinged with pride as 
well as solemnity. 'We're bringing aboard a thousand-year-old astronaut. And I 
can guess who it is.'

    

2
Awakening

    

    Frank Poole awoke, but he did not remember. He was not even sure of his 
name.

    Obviously, he was in a hospital room: even though his eyes were still 
closed, the most primitive, and evocative, of his senses told him that. Each 
breath brought the faint and not unpleasant tang of antiseptics in the air, and 
it triggered a memory of the time when - of course! - as a reckless teenager he 
had broken a rib in the Arizona Hang-gliding Championship.

    Now it was all beginning to come back. I'm Deputy Commander Frank Poole, 
Executive Officer, USSS Discovery, on a Top Secret mission to Jupiter - It 
seemed as if an icy hand had gripped his heart. He remembered, in slow-motion 
playback, that runaway space-pod jetting towards him, metal claws outstretched. 
Then the silent impact - and the not-so-silent hiss of air rushing out of his 
suit. After that - one last memory, of spinning helplessly in space, trying in 
vain to reconnect his broken air-hose.

    Well, whatever mysterious accident had happened to the space-pod controls, 
he was safe now. Presumably Dave had made a quick EVA and rescued him before 
lack of oxygen could do permanent brain damage.

    Good old Dave! He told himself. I must thank - just a moment! - I'm 
obviously not aboard Discovery now - surely I haven't been unconscious long 
enough to be taken back to Earth!

    His confused train of thought was abruptly broken by the arrival of a Matron 
and two nurses, wearing the immemorial uniform of their profession. They seemed 
a little surprised: Poole wondered if he had awakened ahead of schedule, and the 
idea gave him a childish feeling of satisfaction.

    'Hello!' he said, after several attempts; his vocal cords appeared to be 
very rusty. 'How am I doing?'

    Matron smiled back at him and gave an obvious 'Don't try to talk' command by 
putting a finger to her lips. Then the two nurses fussed swiftly over him with 
practised skill, checking pulse, temperature, reflexes. When one of them lifted 
his right arm and let it drop again, Poole noticed something peculiar It fell 
slowly, and did not seem to weigh as much as normal. Nor, for that matter, did 
his body, when he attempted to move.

    So I must be on a planet, he thought. Or a space-station with artificial 
gravity. Certainly not Earth - I don't weigh enough.

    He was about to ask the obvious question when Matron pressed something 
against the side of his neck; he felt a slight tingling sensation, and sank back 
into a dreamless sleep. Just before he became unconscious, he had time for one 
more puzzled thought.

    How odd - they never spoke a single word - all the time they were with me.

    

3
Rehabilitation

    

    When he woke again, and found Matron and nurses standing round his bed, 
Poole felt strong enough to assert himself.

    'Where am I? Surely you can tell me that!' The three women exchanged 
glances, obviously uncertain what to do next. Then Matron answered, enunciating 
her words very slowly and carefully: 'Everything is fine, Mr Poole. Professor 
Anderson will be here in a minute He will explain.'

    Explain what? thought Poole with some exasperation. But at least she speaks 
English, even though I can't place her accent.

    Anderson must have been already on his way, for the door opened moments 
later - to give Poole a brief glimpse of a small crowd of inquisitive onlookers 
peering in at him. He began to feel like a new exhibit at a zoo.

    Professor Anderson was a small, dapper man whose features seemed to have 
combined key aspects of several races - Chinese, Polynesian, Nordic - in a 
thoroughly confusing fashion. He greeted Poole by holding up his right palm, 
then did an obvious double-take and shook hands, with such a curious hesitation 
that he might have been rehearsing some quite unfamiliar gesture.

    'Glad to see you're looking so well, Mr Poole... We'll have you up in no 
time.'

    Again that odd accent and slow delivery - but the confident bedside manner 
was that of all doctors, in all places and all ages.

    'I'm glad to hear it. Now perhaps you can answer a few questions...'

    'Of course, of course. But just a minute.'

    Anderson spoke so rapidly and quietly to the Matron that Poole could catch 
only a few words, several of which were wholly unfamiliar to him. Then the 
Matron nodded at one of the nurses, who opened a wall-cupboard and produced a 
slim metal band, which she proceeded to wrap around Poole's head.

    'What's that for?' he asked - being one of those difficult patients, so 
annoying to doctors, who always want to know just what's happening to them. 'EEC 
readout?'

    Professor, Matron and nurses looked equally baffled. Then a slow smile 
spread across Anderson's face.

    'Oh - electro... enceph .. alo... gram,' he said slowly, as if dredging the 
word up from the depth of memory, 'You're quite right. We just want to monitor 
your brain functions.'

    My brain would function perfectly well if you'd let me use it, Poole 
grumbled silently. But at least we seem to be getting somewhere - finally.

    'Mr Poole,' said Anderson, still speaking in that curious stilted voice, as 
if venturing in a foreign language, 'you know, of course, that you were - 
disabled - in a serious accident, while you were working outside Discovery.'

    Poole nodded agreement.

    'I'm beginning to suspect,' he said dryly, 'that "disabled" is a slight 
understatement.'

    Anderson relaxed visibly, and a slow smile spread across his face.

    'You're quite correct. Tell me what you think happened.'

    'Well, the best case scenario is that, after I became unconscious, Dave 
Bowman rescued me and brought me back to the ship. How is Dave? No one will tell 
me anything!'

    'All in due course... and the worst case?'

    It seemed to Frank Poole that a chill wind was blowing gently on the back of 
his neck. The suspicion that had been slowly forming in his mind began to 
solidify.

    'That I died, but was brought back here - wherever "here" is - and you've 
been able to revive me. Thank you...'

    'Quite correct. And you're back on Earth. Well, very near it.'

    What did he mean by 'very near it'? There was certainly a gravity field here 
- so he was probably inside the slowly turning wheel of an orbiting space-
station. No matter: there was something much more important to think about.

    Poole did some quick mental calculations. If Dave had put him in the 
hibernaculum, revived the rest of the crew, and completed the mission to Jupiter 
- why, he could have been 'dead' for as much as five years!

    'Just what date is it?' he asked, as calmly as possible.

    Professor and Matron exchanged glances. Again Poole felt that cold wind on 
his neck.

    'I must tell you, Mr Poole, that Bowman did not rescue you. He believed - 
and we cannot blame him - that you were irrevocably dead. Also, he was facing a 
desperately serious crisis that threatened his own survival...'

    'So you drifted on into space, passed through the Jupiter system, and headed 
out towards the stars. Fortunately, you were so far below freezing point that 
there was no metabolism - but it's a near-miracle that you were ever found at 
all. You are one of the luckiest men alive. No - ever to have lived!'

    Am I? Poole asked himself bleakly. Five years, indeed! It could be a century 
- or even more.

    'Let me have it,' he demanded.

    Professor and Matron seemed to be consulting an invisible monitor: when they 
looked at each other and nodded agreement, Poole guessed that they were all 
plugged into the hospital information circuit, linked to the headband he was 
wearing.

    'Frank,' said Professor Anderson, making a smooth switch to the role of 
long-time family physician, 'this will be a great shock to you, but you're 
capable of accepting it - and the sooner you know, the better.'

    'We're near the beginning of the Fourth Millennium. Believe me - you left 
Earth almost a thousand years ago.'

    'I believe you,' Poole answered calmly. Then, to his great annoyance, the 
room started to spin around him, and he knew nothing more.

    

    When he regained consciousness, he found that he was no longer in a bleak 
hospital room but in a luxurious suite with attractive - and steadily changing - 
images on the walls. Some of these were famous and familiar paintings, others 
showed land and sea-scapes that might have been from his own time. There was 
nothing alien or upsetting: that, he guessed, would come later.

    His present surroundings had obviously been carefully programmed: he 
wondered if there was the equivalent of a television screen somewhere (how many 
channels would the Fourth Millennium have?) but could see no sign of any 
controls near his bed. There was so much he would have to learn in this new 
world: he was a savage who had suddenly encountered civilization.

    But first, he must regain his strength - and learn the language; not even 
the advent of sound recording, already more than a century old when Poole was 
born, had prevented major changes in grammar and pronunciation. And there were 
thousands of new words, mostly from science and technology, though often he was 
able to make a shrewd guess at their meaning.

    More frustrating, however, were the myriad of famous and infamous personal 
names that had accumulated over the millennium, and which meant nothing to him. 
For weeks, until he had built up a data bank, most of his conversations had to 
be interrupted with potted biographies. As Poole's strength increased, so did 
the number of his visitors, though always under Professor Anderson's watchful 
eye. They included medical specialists, scholars of several disciplines, and - 
of the greatest interest to him - spacecraft commanders.

    There was little that he could tell the doctors and historians that was not 
recorded somewhere in Mankind's gigantic data banks, but he was often able to 
give them research shortcuts and new insights about the events of his own time. 
Though they all treated him with the utmost respect and listened patiently as he 
tried to answer their questions, they seemed reluctant to answer his. Poole 
began to feel that he was being over-protected from culture shock, and half-
seriously wondered how he could escape from his suite. On the few occasions he 
was alone, he was not surprised to discover that the door was locked.

    Then the arrival of Doctor Indra Wallace changed everything. Despite her 
name, her chief racial component appeared to be Japanese, and there were times 
when with just a little imagination Poole could picture her as a rather mature 
Geisha Girl. It was hardly an appropriate image for a distinguished historian, 
holding a Virtual Chair at a university still boasting real ivy.

    She was the first visitor with a fluent command of Poole's own English, so 
he was delighted to meet her.

    'Mr Poole,' she began, in a very business-like voice, 'I've been appointed 
your official guide and - let's say - mentor. My qualifications - I've 
specialized in your period - my thesis was "The Collapse of the Nation-State, 
2000-50". 1 believe we can help each other in many ways.'

    'I'm sure we can. First I'd like you to get me out of here, so I can see a 
little of your world.'

    'Exactly what we intend to do. But first we must give you an Ident. Until 
then you'll be - what was the term? -a non-person. It would be almost impossible 
for you to go anywhere, or get anything done. No input device would recognize 
your existence.'

    'Just what I expected,' Poole answered, with a wry smile. 'It was starting 
to get that way in my own time - and many people hated the idea.'

    'Some still do. They go off and live in the wilderness - there's a lot more 
on Earth than there was in your century! But they always take their compaks with 
them, so they can call for help as soon as they get into trouble. The median 
time is about five days.'

    'Sorry to hear that. The human race has obviously deteriorated.'

    He was cautiously testing her, trying to find the limits of her tolerance 
and to map out her personality. It was obvious that they were going to spend 
much time together, and that he would have to depend upon her in hundreds of 
ways. Yet he was still not sure if he would even like her: perhaps she regarded 
him merely as a fascinating museum exhibit.

    Rather to Poole's surprise, she agreed with his criticism.

    'That may be true - in some respects. Perhaps we're physically weaker, but 
we're healthier and better adjusted than most humans who have ever lived. The 
Noble Savage was always a myth'.

    She walked over to a small rectangular plate, set at eye-level in the door. 
It was about the size of one of the countless magazines that had proliferated in 
the far-off Age of Print, and Poole had noticed that every room seemed to have 
at least one. Usually they were blank, but sometimes they contained lines of 
slowly scrolling text, completely meaningless to Poole even when most of the 
words were familiar. Once a plate in his suite had emitted urgent beepings, 
which he had ignored on the assumption that someone else would deal with the 
problem, whatever it was. Fortunately the noise stopped as abruptly as it had 
started.

    Dr Wallace laid the palm of her hand upon the plate, then removed it after a 
few seconds. She glanced at Poole, and said smilingly: 'Come and look at this.'

    The inscription that had suddenly appeared made a good deal of sense, when 
he read it slowly:WALLACE, INDRA [F2970.03.11 :31.885 / /HIST.OXFORD] 'I suppose 
it means Female, date of birth 11 March 2970 - and that you're associated with 
the Department of History at Oxford. And I guess that 31.885 is a personal 
identification number. Correct?'

    'Excellent, Mr Poole. I've seen some of your e-mail addresses and credit 
card numbers - hideous strings of alpha-numeric gibberish that no one could 
possibly remember! But we all know our date of birth, and not more than 99,999 
other people will share it. So a five-figure number is all you'll ever need... 
and even if you forget that, it doesn't really matter. As you see, it's a part 
of you.'

    'Implant?'

    'Yes - nanochip at birth, one in each palm for redundancy. You won't even 
feel yours when it goes in. But you've given us a small problem...'

    'What's that?'

    'The readers you'll meet most of the time are too simple-minded to believe 
your date of birth. So, with your permission, we've moved it up a thousand 
years.'

    'Permission granted. And the rest of the Ident?'

    'Optional. You can leave it empty, give your current interests and location 
- or use it for personal messages, global or targeted.'

    Some things, Poole was quite sure, would not have changed over the 
centuries. A high proportion of those 'targeted' messages would be very personal 
indeed.

    He wondered if there were still self or state-appointed censors in this day 
and age - and if their efforts at improving other people's morals had been more 
successful than in his own time.

    He would have to ask Dr Wallace about that, when he got to know her better.

    

4
A Room with a View

    

    'Frank - Professor Anderson thinks you're strong enough to go for a little 
walk.'

    'I'm very pleased to hear it. Do you know the expression "stir crazy"?'

    'No - but I can guess what it means.'

    Poole had so adapted to the low gravity that the long strides he was taking 
seemed perfectly normal. Half a gee, he had estimated - just right to give a 
sense of well-being. They met only a few people on their walk, all of them 
strangers, but every one gave a smile of recognition. By now, Poole told himself 
with a trace of smugness, I must be one of the best-known celebrities in this 
world. That should be a great help - when I decide what to do with the rest of 
my life. At least another century, if I can believe Anderson.

    The corridor along which they were walking was completely featureless apart 
from occasional numbered doors, each bearing one of the universal recog panels. 
Poole had followed Indra for perhaps two hundred metres when he came to a sudden 
halt, shocked because he had not realized something so blindingly obvious.

    'This space-station must be enormous!' he exclaimed. Indra smiled back at 
him.

    'Didn't you have a saying - "You ain't seen anything yet"?'

    '"Nothing",' he corrected, absent-mindedly. He was still trying to estimate 
the scale of this structure when he had another surprise. Who would have 
imagined a space-station large enough to boast a subway - admittedly a miniature 
one, with a single small coach capable of seating only a dozen passengers.

    'Observation Lounge Three,' ordered Indra, and they drew silently and 
swiftly away from the terminal.

    Poole checked the time on the elaborate wrist-band whose functions he was 
still exploring. One minor surprise had been that the whole world was now on 
Universal Time: the confusing patchwork of Time Zones had been swept away by the 
advent of global communications There had been much talk of this, back in the 
twenty-first century, and it had even been suggested that Solar should be 
replaced by Sidereal Time. Then, during the course of the year, the Sun would 
move right round the clock: setting at the time it had risen six months earlier.

    However, nothing had come of this 'Equal time in the Sun' proposal - or of 
even more vociferous attempts to reform the calendar. That particular job, it 
had been cynically suggested, would have to wait for somewhat major advances in 
technology. Some day, surely, one of God's minor mistakes would be corrected, 
and the Earth's orbit would be adjusted, to give every year twelve months of 
thirty exactly equal days.

    As far as Poole could judge by speed and elapsed time, they must have 
travelled at least three kilometres before the vehicle came to a silent stop, 
the doors opened, and a bland autovoice intoned, 'Have a good view. Thirty-five 
per cent cloud-cover today.'

    At last, thought Poole, we're getting near the outer wall. But here was 
another mystery - despite the distance he had gone, neither the strength nor the 
direction of gravity had altered! He could not imagine a spinning space-station 
so huge that the gee-vector would not be changed by such a displacement... could 
he really be on some planet after all? But he would feel lighter - usually much 
lighter - on any other habitable world in the Solar System.

    When the outer door of the terminal opened, and Poole found himself entering 
a small airlock, he realized that he must indeed be in space. But where were the 
spacesuits? He looked around anxiously: it was against all his instincts to be 
so close to vacuum, naked and unprotected. One experience of that was enough...

    'We're nearly there,' said Indra reassuringly.

    The last door opened, and he was looking out into the utter blackness of 
space, through a huge window that was curved both vertically and horizontally. 
He felt like a goldfish in its bowl, and hoped that the designers of this 
audacious piece of engineering knew exactly what they were doing. They certainly 
possessed better structural materials than had existed in his time.

    Though the stars must be shining out there, his light-adapted eyes could see 
nothing but black emptiness beyond the curve of the great window. As he started 
to walk towards it to get a wider view, Indra restrained him and pointed 
straight ahead.

    'Look carefully,' she said 'Don't you see it-'

    Poole blinked, and stared into the night. Surely it must be an illusion - 
even, heaven forbid, a crack in the window...

    He moved his head from side to side. No, it was real. But what could it be? 
He remembered Euclid's definition 'A lie has length, but no thickness'.

    For spanning the whole height of the window, and obviously continuing out of 
sight above and below, was a thread of light quite easy to see when he looked 
for it, yet so one-dimensional that the word 'thin' could not even be applied. 
However, it was not completely featureless; there were barely visible spots of 
greater brilliance at irregular intervals along its length, like drops of water 
on a spider's web.

    Poole continued walking towards the window, and the view expanded until at 
last he could see what lay below him. It was familiar enough: the whole 
continent of Europe, and much of northern Africa, just as he had seen them many 
times from space. So he was in orbit after all - probably an equatorial one, at 
a height of at least a thousand kilometres.

    Indra was looking at him with a quizzical smile.

    'Go closer to the window,' she said, very softly. 'So that you can look 
straight down. I hope you have a good head for heights.'

    What a silly thing to say to an astronaut! Poole told himself as he moved 
forward. If I ever suffered from vertigo, I wouldn't be in this business...

    The thought had barely passed through his mind when he cried 'My God!' and 
involuntarily stepped back from the window, Then, bracing himself, he dared to 
look again.

    He was looking down on the distant Mediterranean from the face of a 
cylindrical tower, whose gently curving wall indicated a diameter of several 
kilometres. But that was nothing compared with its length, for it tapered away 
down, down, down - until it disappeared into the mist somewhere over Africa. He 
assumed that it continued all the way to the surface.

    'How high are we?' he whispered.

    'Two thousand kay. But now look upwards.'

    This time, it was not such a shock: he had expected what he would see. The 
tower dwindled away until it became a glittering thread against the blackness of 
space, and he did not doubt that it continued all the way to the geostationary 
orbit, thirty-six thousand kilometres above the Equator. Such fantasies had been 
well known in Poole's day: he had never dreamed he would see the reality - and 
be living in it.

    He pointed towards the distant thread reaching up from the eastern horizon.

    'That must be another one.'

    'Yes - the Asian Tower. We must look exactly the same to them.'

    'How many are there?'

    'Just four, equally spaced around the Equator. Africa, Asia, America, 
Pacifica. The last one's almost empty - only a few hundred levels completed. 
Nothing to see except water...'

    Poole was still absorbing this stupendous concept when a disturbing thought 
occurred to him.

    'There were already thousands of satellites, at all sorts of altitudes, in 
my time. How do you avoid collisions?'

    Indra looked slightly embarrassed.

    'You know - I never thought about that - it's not my field.' She paused for 
a moment, clearly searching her memory. Then her face brightened.

    'I believe there was a big clean-up operation, centuries ago. There just 
aren't any satellites, below the stationary orbit.'

    That made sense, Poole told himself. They wouldn't be needed - the four 
gigantic towers could provide all the facilities once provided by thousands of 
satellites and space-stations.

    'And there have never been any accidents - any collisions with spaceships 
leaving earth, or re-entering the atmosphere?'

    Indra looked at him with surprise.

    'But they don't, any more,' She pointed to the ceiling. 'All the spaceports 
are where they should be - up there, on the outer ring. I believe it's four 
hundred years since the last rocket lifted off from the surface of the Earth.'

    Poole was still digesting this when a trivial anomaly caught his attention. 
His training as an astronaut had made him alert to anything out of the ordinary: 
in space, that might be a matter of life or death.

    The Sun was out of view, high overhead, but its rays streaming down through 
the great window painted a brilliant band of light on the floor underfoot. 
Cutting across that band at an angle was another, much fainter one, so that the 
frame of the window threw a double shadow.

    Poole had to go almost down on his knees so that he could peer up at the 
sky. He had thought himself beyond surprise, but the spectacle of two suns left 
him momentarily speechless.

    'What's that?' he gasped, when he had recovered his breath.

    'Oh - haven't you been told? That's Lucifer.'

    'Earth has another sun?'

    'Well, it doesn't give us much heat, but it's put the Moon out of 
business... Before the Second Mission went there to look for you, that was the 
planet Jupiter.'

    I knew I would have much to learn in this new world, Poole told himself. But 
just how much, I never dreamed.

    

5
Education

    

    Poole was both astonished and delighted when the television set was wheeled 
into the room and positioned at the end of his bed. Delighted because he was 
suffering from mild information starvation - and astonished because it was a 
model which had been obsolete even in his own time.

    'We've had to promise the Museum we'll give it back,' Matron informed him. 
'And I expect you know how to use this,'

    As he fondled the remote-control, Poole felt a wave of acute nostalgia sweep 
over him. As few other artefacts could, it brought back memories of his 
childhood, and the days when most television sets were too stupid to understand 
spoken commands.

    'Thank you, Matron. What's the best news channel?'

    She seemed puzzled by his question, then brightened.

    'Oh - I see what you mean. But Professor Anderson thinks you're not quite 
ready yet. So Archives has put together a collection that will make you feel at 
home.'

    Poole wondered briefly what the storage medium was in this day and age. He 
could still remember compact disks, and his eccentric old Uncle George had been 
the proud possessor of a collection of vintage videotapes. But surely that 
technological contest must have finished centuries ago - in the usual Darwinian 
way, with the survival of the fittest.

    He had to admit that the selection was well done, by someone (Indra?) 
familiar with the early twenty-first century. There was nothing disturbing - no 
wars or violence, and very little contemporary business or politics, all of 
which would now be utterly irrelevant. There were some light comedies, sporting 
events (how did they know that he had been a keen tennis fan?), classical and 
pop music, and wildlife documentaries.

    And whoever had put this collection together had a sense of humour, or they 
would not have included episodes from each Star Trek series. As a very small 
boy, Poole had met both Patrick Stewart and Leonard Nimoy: he wondered what they 
would have thought if they could have known the destiny of the child who had 
shyly asked for their autographs.

    A depressing thought occurred to him, soon after he had started exploring - 
much of the time in fast-forward - these relics of the past. He had read 
somewhere that by the turn of the century - his century! - there were 
approximately fifty thousand television stations broadcasting simultaneously. If 
that figure had been maintained and it might well have increased - by now 
millions of millions of hours of TV programming must have gone on the air. So 
even the most hardened cynic would admit that there were probably at least a 
billion hours of worthwhile viewing... and millions that would pass the highest 
standards of excellence. How to find these few - well, few million - needles in 
so gigantic a haystack?

    The thought was so overwhelming - indeed, so demoralizing - that after a 
week of increasingly aimless channel-surfing Poole asked for the set to be 
removed.

    Perhaps fortunately, he had less and less time to himself during his waking 
hours, which were steadily growing longer as his strength came back.

    There was no risk of boredom, thanks to the continual parade not only of 
serious researchers but also inquisitive - and presumably influential - citizens 
who had managed to filter past the palace guard established by Matron and 
Professor Anderson. Nevertheless, he was glad when, one day, the television set 
reappeared, he was beginning to suffer from withdrawal symptoms - and this time, 
he resolved to be more selective in his viewing.

    The venerable antique was accompanied by Indra Wallace, smiling broadly.

    'We've found something you must see, Frank. We think it will help you to 
adjust - anyway, we're sure you'll enjoy it.'

    Poole had always found that remark a recipe for guaranteed boredom, and 
prepared for the worst. But the opening had him instantly hooked, taking him 
back to his old life as few other things could have done. At once he recognized 
one of the most famous voices of his age, and remembered that he had seen this 
very programme before. Could it have been at its first transmission? No, he was 
only five then: must have been a repeat...

    'Atlanta, 2000 December 31.'

    'This is CNN International, five minutes from the dawn of the New 
Millennium, with all its unknown perils and promise...'

    'But before we try to explore the future, let's look back a thousand years, 
and ask ourselves: could any persons living in Ad. 1000 even remotely imagine 
our world, or understand it, if they were magically transported across the 
centuries?'

    'Almost the whole of the technology we take for granted was invented near 
the very end of our Millennium - the steam engine, electricity, telephones, 
radio, television, cinema, aviation, electronics. And, during a single lifetime, 
nuclear energy and space travel - what would the greatest minds of the past have 
made of these? How long could an Archimedes or a Leonardo have retained his 
sanity, if suddenly dumped into our world?'

    'It's tempting to think that we would do better, if we were transported a 
thousand years hence. Surely the fundamental scientific discoveries have already 
been made, though there will be major improvements in technology, will there be 
any devices, anything as magical and incomprehensible to us as a pocket 
calculator or a video camera would have been to Isaac Newton?'

    'Perhaps our age is indeed sundered from all those that have gone before. 
Telecommunications, the ability to record images and sounds once irrevocably 
lost, the conquest of the air and space - all these have created a civilization 
beyond the wildest fantasies of the past. And equally important, Copernicus, 
Newton, Darwin and Einstein have so changed our mode of thinking and our outlook 
on the universe that we might seem almost a new species to the most brilliant of 
our predecessors.'

    'And will our successors, a thousand years from now, look back on us with 
the same pity with which we regard our ignorant, superstitious, disease-ridden, 
short-lived ancestors? We believe that we know the answers to questions that 
they could not even ask: but what surprises does the Third Millennium hold for 
us?'

    'Well, here it comes -'

    A great bell began to toll the strokes of midnight. The last vibration 
throbbed into silence...

    'And that's the way it was - good-bye, wonderful and terrible twentieth 
century...'

    Then the picture broke into a myriad fragments, and a new commentator took 
over, speaking with the accent which Poole could now easily understand, and 
which immediately brought him up to the present.

    'Now, in the first minutes of the year three thousand and one, we can answer 
that question from the past...'

    'Certainly, the people of 2001 who you were just watching would not feel as 
utterly overwhelmed in our age as someone from 1001 would have felt in theirs. 
Many of our technological achievements they would have anticipated; indeed, they 
would have expected satellite cities, and colonies on the Moon and planets. They 
might even have been disappointed, because we are not yet immortal, and have 
sent probes only to the nearest stars...'

    Abruptly, Indra switched off the recording.

    'See the rest later, Frank: you're getting tired. But I hope it will help 
you to adjust.'

    'Thank you, Indra. I'll have to sleep on it. But it's certainly proved one 
point.'

    'What's that?'

    'I should be grateful I'm not a thousand-and-oner, dropped into 2001. That 
would be too much of a quantum jump: I don't believe anyone could adjust to it. 
At least I know about electricity, and won't die of fright if a picture starts 
talking at me.'

    I hope, Poole told himself, that confidence is justified. Someone once said 
that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Will 
I meet magic in this new world - and be able to handle it?

    

6
Braincap

    

    'I'm afraid you'll have to make an agonizing decision,' said Professor 
Anderson, with a smile that neutralized the exaggerated gravity of his words.

    'I can take it, Doctor. Just give it to me straight.'

    'Before you can be fitted with your Braincap, you have to be completely 
bald. So here's your choice. At the rate your hair grows, you'd have to be 
shaved at least once a month. Or you could have a permanent.'

    'How's that done?'

    'Laser scalp treatment. Kills the follicles at the root.'

    'Hmm... is it reversible?'

    'Yes, but that's messy and painful, and takes weeks.'

     'Then I'll see how I like being hairless, before committing myself. I can't 
forget what happened to Samson.'

    'Who?'

    'Character in a famous old book. His girl-friend cut off his hair while he 
was sleeping. When he woke up, all his strength had gone.'

    'Now I remember - pretty obvious medical symbolism!'

    'Still, I wouldn't mind losing my beard. I'd be happy to stop shaving, once 
and for all.'

    'I'll make the arrangements. And what kind of wig would you like?'

    Poole laughed.

    'I'm not particularly vain - think it would be a nuisance, and probably 
won't bother. Something else I can decide later.'

    That everyone in this era was artificially bald was a surprising fact that 
Poole had been quite slow to discover; his first revelation had come when both 
his nurses removed their luxuriant tresses, without the slightest sign of 
embarrassment, just before several equally bald specialists arrived to give him 
a series of micro-biological checks. He had never been surrounded by so many 
hairless people, and his initial guess was that this was the latest step in the 
medical profession's endless war against germs.

    Like many of his guesses, it was completely wrong, and when he discovered 
the true reason he amused himself by seeing how often he would have been sure, 
had he not known in advance, that his visitors' hair was not their own. The 
answer was: seldom with men, never with women; this was obviously the great age 
of the wig-maker.

    Professor Anderson wasted no time: that afternoon the nurses smeared some 
evil-smelling cream over Poole's head, and when he looked into the mirror an 
hour later he did not recognize himself. Well, he thought, perhaps a wig would 
be a good idea, after all...

    The Braincap fitting took somewhat longer. First a mould had to be made, 
which required him to sit motionless for a few minutes until the plaster set. He 
fully expected to be told that his head was the wrong shape when his nurses - 
giggling most unprofessionally - had a hard time extricating him. 'Ouch that 
hurt!' he complained.

    Next came the skull-cap itself, a metal helmet that fitted snugly almost 
down to the ears, and triggered a nostalgic thought - wish my Jewish friends 
could see me now! After a few minutes, it was so comfortable that he was unaware 
of its presence.

    Now he was ready for the installation - a process which, he realized with 
something akin to awe, had been the Rite of Passage for almost all the human 
race for more than half a millennium.

    'There's no need to close your eyes,' said the technician, who had been 
introduced by the pretentious title of 'Brain Engineer' - almost always 
shortened to 'Brainman' in popular usage. 'When Setup begins, all your inputs 
will be taken over. Even if your eyes are open, you won't see anything.'

    I wonder if everyone feels as nervous as this, Poole asked himself. Is this 
the last moment I'll be in control of my own mind? Still, I've learned to trust 
the technology of this age; up to now, it hasn't let me down. Of course, as the 
old saying goes, there's always a first time...

    As he had been promised, he had felt nothing except a gentle tickling as the 
myriad of nanowires wormed their way through his scalp. All his senses were 
still perfectly normal; when he scanned his familiar room, everything was 
exactly where it should be.

    The Brainman - wearing his own skull-cap, wired, like Poole's, to a piece of 
equipment that could easily have been mistaken for a twentieth-century laptop 
computer - gave him a reassuring smile.

    'Ready?' he asked.

    There were times when the old cliches were the best ones.

    'Ready as I'll ever be,' Poole answered.

    Slowly, the light faded - or seemed to. A great silence descended, and even 
the gentle gravity of the Tower relinquished its hold upon him. He was an 
embryo, floating in a featureless void, though not in complete darkness. He had 
known such a barely visible, near ultra-violet tenebrosity, on the very edge of 
night, only once in his life when he had descended further than was altogether 
wise down the face of a sheer cliff at the outer edge of the Great Barrier Reef. 
Looking down into hundreds of metres of crystalline emptiness, he had felt such 
a sense of disorientation that he experienced a brief moment of panic, and had 
almost triggered his buoyancy unit before regaining control. Needless to say, he 
had never mentioned the incident to the Space Agency physicians...

    From a great distance a voice spoke out of the immense void that now seemed 
to surround him. But it did not reach him through his ears: it sounded softly in 
the echoing labyrinths of his brain.

    'Calibration starting. From time to time you will be asked questions - you 
can answer mentally, but it may help to vocalize. Do you understand?'

    'Yes,' Poole replied, wondering if his lips were indeed moving. There was no 
way that he could tell.

    Something was appearing in the void - a grid of thin lines, like a huge 
sheet of graph paper. It extended up and down, right and left, to the limits of 
his vision. He tried to move his head, but the image refused to change.

    Numbers started to flicker across the grid, too fast for him to read - but 
presumably some circuit was recording them. Poole could not help smiling (did 
his cheeks move?) at the familiarity of it all. This was just like the computer-
driven eye examination that any oculist of his age would give a client.

    The grid vanished, to be replaced by smooth sheets of colour filling his 
entire field of view. In a few seconds, they flashed from one end of the 
spectrum to the other. 'Could have told you that,' Poole muttered silently. 'My 
colour vision's perfect. Next for hearing, I suppose.'

    He was quite correct. A faint, drumming sound accelerated until it became 
the lowest of audible Cs, then raced up the musical scale until it disappeared 
beyond the range of human hearing, into bat and dolphin territory.

    That was the last of the simple, straightforward tests. He was briefly 
assailed by scents and flavours, most of them pleasant but some quite the 
reverse. Then he became, or so it seemed, a puppet on an invisible strig.

    He presumed that his neuromuscular control was being tested, and hoped that 
there were no external manifestations, if there were, he would probably look 
like someone in the terminal stages of St Vitus's Dance. And for one moment he 
even had a violent erection, but was unable to give it a reality check before he 
fell into a dreamless sleep.

    Or did he only dream that he slept? He had no idea how much time had elapsed 
before he awoke. The helmet had already gone, together with the Brainman and his 
equipment.

    'Everything went fine,' beamed Matron. 'It will take a few hours to check 
that there are no anomalies. If your reading's KO - I mean OK - you'll have your 
Braincap tomorrow.'

    Poole appreciated the efforts of his entourage to learn archaic English, but 
he could not help wishing that Matron had not made that unfortunate slip-of-the-
tongue.

    When the time came for the final filling, Poole felt almost like a boy 
again, about to unwrap some wonderful new toy under the Christmas free.

    'You won't have to go through all that setting-up again,' the Brainman 
assured him. 'Download will start immediately. I'll give you a five-minute demo. 
Just relax and enjoy.'

    Gentle, soothing music washed over him; though it was something very 
familiar, from his own time, he could not identify it. There was a mist before 
his eyes, which parted as he walked towards it...

    Yes, he was walking! The illusion was utterly convincing; he could feel the 
impact of his feet on the ground, and now that the music had stopped he could 
hear a gentle wind blowing through the great trees that appeared to surround 
him. He recognized them as Californian redwoods, and hoped that they still 
existed in reality, somewhere on Earth.

    He was moving at a brisk pace - too fast for comfort, as if time was 
slightly accelerated so he could cover as much ground as possible. Yet he was 
not conscious of any effort; he felt he was a guest in someone else's body. The 
sensation was enhanced by the fact that he had no control over his movements. 
When he attempted to stop, or to change direction, nothing happened. He was 
going along for the ride.

    It did not matter; he was enjoying the novel experience - and could 
appreciate how addictive it could become. The 'dream machines' that many 
scientists of his own century had anticipated - often with alarm - were now part 
of everyday life. Poole wondered how Mankind had managed to survive: he had been 
told that much of it had not. Millions had been brain-burned, and had dropped 
out of life.

     Of course, he would be immune to such temptations! He would use this 
marvellous tool to learn more about the world of the Fourth Millennium, and to 
acquire in minutes new skills that would otherwise take years to master. Well - 
he might, just occasionally, use the Braincap purely for fun...

     He had come to the edge of the forest, and was looking out across a wide 
river. Without hesitation, he walked into it, and felt no alarm as the water 
rose over his head. It did seem a little strange that he could continue 
breathing naturally, but he thought it much more remarkable that he could see 
perfectly in a medium where the unaided human eye could not focus. He could 
count every scale on the magnificent trout that went swimming past, apparently 
oblivious to this strange intruder...

    Then, a mermaid- Well he had always wanted to meet one, but he had assumed 
that they were marine creatures. Perhaps they occasionally came upstream - like 
salmon, to have their babies? She was gone before he could question her, to 
confirm or deny this revolutionary theory.

    The river ended in a translucent wall; he stepped through it on to the face 
of a desert, beneath a blazing sun. Its heat burned him uncomfortably - yet he 
was able to look directly into its noonday fury. He could even see, with 
unnatural clarity, an archipelago of sunspots near one limb. And - this was 
surely impossible - there was the tenuous glory of the corona, quite invisible 
except during total eclipse, reaching out like a swan's wings on either side of 
the Sun.

    Everything faded to black: the haunting music returned, and with it the 
blissful coolness of his familiar room. He opened his eyes (had they ever been 
closed?) and found an expectant audience waiting for his reaction.

    'Wonderful!' he breathed, almost reverently. 'Some of it seemed - well, 
realer than real!'

    Then his engineer's curiosity, never far from the surface, started nagging 
him.

    'Even that short demo must have contained an enormous amount of information. 
How's it stored?'

    'In these tablets - the same your audio-visual system uses, but with much 
greater capacity.'

    The Brainman handed Poole a small square, apparently made of glass, silvered 
on one surface; it was almost the same size as the computer diskettes of his 
youth, but twice the thickness. As Poole tilted it back and forth, trying to see 
into its transparent interior, there were occasional rainbow-hued flashes, but 
that was all.

    He was holding, he realized, the end product of more than a thousand years 
of electro-optical technology - as well as other technologies unborn in his era. 
And it was not surprising that, superficially, it resembled closely the devices 
he had known. There was a convenient shape and size for most of the common 
objects of everyday life -knives and forks, books, hand-tools, furniture... and 
removable memories for computers.

    'What's its capacity?' he asked. 'In my time, we were up to a terabyte in 
something this size. I'm sure you've done a lot better.'

    'Not as much as you might imagine - there's a limit, of course, set by the 
structure of matter. By the way, what was a terabyte? Afraid I've forgotten.'

    'Shame on you! Kilo, mega, giga, tera... that's ten to the twelfth bytes. 
Then the petabyte - ten to the fifteenth - that's as far as I ever got.'

    'That's about where we start. It's enough to record everything any person 
can experience during one lifetime.'

    It was an astonishing thought, yet it should not have been so surprising. 
The kilogram of jelly inside the human skull was not much larger than the tablet 
Poole was holding in his hand, and it could not possibly be as efficient a 
storage device - it had so many other duties to deal with.

    'And that's not all,' the Brainman continued. 'With some data compression, 
it could store not only the memories - but the actual person.'

    'And reproduce them again?'

    'Of course; straightforward job of nanoassembly.'

    So I'd heard, Poole told himself - but I never really believed it.

    Back in his century, it seemed wonderful enough that the entire lifework of 
a great artist could be stored on a single small disk. And now, something no 
larger could hold - the artist as well.

    

7
Debriefing

    

    'I'm delighted,' said Poole, 'to know that the Smithsonian still exists, 
after all these centuries.'

    'You probably wouldn't recognize it,' said the visitor who had introduced 
himself as Dr Alistair Kim, Director of Astronautics. 'Especially as it's now 
scattered over the Solar System - the main off-Earth collections are on Mars and 
the Moon, and many of the exhibits that legally belong to us are still heading 
for the stars. Some day we'll catch up with them and bring them home. We're 
particularly anxious to get our hands on Pioneer 10 - the first manmade object 
to escape from the Solar System.'

    'I believe I was on the verge of doing that, when they located me.'

    'Lucky for you - and for us. You may be able to throw light on many things 
we don't know.'

    'Frankly, I doubt it - but I'll do my best. I don't remember a thing after 
that runaway space-pod charged me. Though I still find it hard to believe, I've 
been told that Hal was responsible.'

    'That's true, but it's a complicated story. Everything we've been able to 
learn is in this recording - about twenty hours, but you can probably Fast most 
of it.'

    'You know, of course, that Dave Bowman went out in the Number 2 Pod to 
rescue you - but was then locked outside the ship because Hal refused to open 
the pod-bay doors.'

    'Why, for God's sake?'

    Dr Kim winced slightly. It was not the first time Poole had noticed such a 
reaction.

    (Must watch my language, he thought. 'God' seems to be a dirty word in this 
culture - must ask Indra about it.)

    'There was a major programming error in Hal's instructions - he'd been given 
control of aspects of the mission you and Bowman didn't know about, it's all in 
the recording...

    'Anyway, he also cut off the life-support systems to the three hybernauts - 
the Alpha Crew - and Bowman had to jettison their bodies as well.'

    (So Dave and I were the Beta Crew - something else I didn't know...)

    'What happened to them?' Poole asked. 'Couldn't they have been rescued, just 
as I was?'

    'I'm afraid not: we've looked into it, of course. Bowman ejected them 
several hours after he'd taken back control from Hal, so their orbits were 
slightly different from yours. Just enough for them to burn up in Jupiter - 
while you skimmed by, and got a gravity boost that would have taken you to the 
Orion Nebula in a few thousand more years...'

    'Doing everything on manual override - really a fantastic performance! - 
Bowman managed to get Discovery into orbit round Jupiter. And there he 
encountered what the Second Expedition called Big Brother - an apparent twin of 
the Tycho Monolith, but hundreds of times larger.'

    'And that's where we lost him. He left Discovery in the remaining space-pod, 
and made a rendezvous with Big Brother. For almost a thousand years, we've been 
haunted by his last message: "By Deus - it's full of stars!"

    (Here we go again! Poole told himself. No way Dave could have said that... 
Must have been 'My God - it's full of stars!')

    'Apparently the pod was drawn into the Monolith by some kind of inertial 
field, because it - and presumably Bowman - survived an acceleration which 
should have crushed them instantly. And that was the last information anyone 
had, for almost ten years, until the joint US-Russian Leonov mission...'

    'Which made a rendezvous with the abandoned Discovery so that Dr Chandra 
could go aboard and reactivate Hal. Yes, I know that.'

    Dr Kim looked slightly embarrassed.

    'Sorry - I wasn't sure how much you'd been told already Anyway, that's when 
even stranger things started to happen.'

    'Apparently the arrival of Leonov triggered something inside Big Brother. If 
we did not have these recordings, no one would have believed what happened. Let 
me show you... here's Dr Heywood Floyd keeping the midnight watch aboard 
Discovery, after power had been restored. Of course you'll recognize 
everything.'

    (Indeed I do: and how strange to see the long-dead Heywood Floyd, sitting in 
my old seat with Hal's unblinking red eye surveying everything in sight. And 
even stranger to think that Hal and I have both shared the same experience of 
resurrection from the dead...)

    A message was coining up on one of the monitors, and Floyd answered lazily, 
'OK, Hal. Who is calling?'

    NO IDENTIFICATION.

    Floyd looked slightly annoyed.

    'Very well. Please give me the message.'

    IT IS DANGEROUS TO REMAIN HERE. YOU MUST LEAVE WITHIN FIFTEEN DAYS.

    'That is absolutely impossible. Our launch window does not open until 
twenty-six days from now. We do not have sufficient propellant for an earlier 
departure.'

    I AM AWARE OF THESE FACTS. NEVERTHELESS YOU MUST LEAVE WITHIN FWFEEN DAYS.

    'I cannot take this warning seriously unless I know its origin... who is 
speaking to me?'

    I WAS DAVID BOWMAN. IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU BELIEVE ME. LOOK BEHIND YOU.

    Heywood Floyd slowly turned in his swivel chair, away from the banked panels 
and switches of the computer display, towards the Velcro-covered catwalk behind.

    ('Watch this carefully,' said Dr Kim.

    As if I needed telling, thought Poole...)

    The zero-gravity environment of Discovery's observation deck was much 
dustier than he remembered it: he guessed that the air-filtration plant had not 
yet been brought on line. The parallel rays of the distant yet still brilliant 
Sun, streaming through the great windows, lit up a myriad of dancing motes in a 
classic display of Brownian movement.

    And now something strange was happening to these particles of dust; some 
force seemed to be marshalling them, herding them away from a central point yet 
bringing others towards it, until they all met on the surface of a hollow 
sphere. That sphere, about a metre across, hovered in the air for a moment like 
a giant soap bubble. Then it elongated into an ellipsoid, whose surface began to 
pucker, to form folds and indentations. Poole was not really surprised when it 
started to assume the shape of a man.

    He had seen such figures, blown out of glass, in museums and science 
exibitions. But this dusty phantom did not even approximate anatomical accuracy; 
it was like a crude clay figurine, or one of the primitive works of art found in 
the recesses of Stone Age caves. Only the head was fashioned with care; and the 
face, beyond all shadow of doubt, was that of Commander David Bowman.

    HELLO, DR FLOYD. NOW DO YOU BELIEVE ME?

    The lips of the figure never moved: Poole realized that the voice - yes, 
certainly Bowman's voice - was actually coming from the speaker grille.

    THIS IS VERY DIFFICULT FOR ME, AND I HAVE LIITLE TIME. I HAVE BEEN ALLOWED 
TO GIVE THIS WARNING. YOU HAVE ONLY FIFFEEN DAYS.

    'Why - and what are you?'

    But the ghostly figure was already fading, its grainy envelope beginning to 
dissolve back into the constituent particles of dust.

    GOOD-BYE, DOCTOR FLOYD. WE CAN HAVE NO FURTHER CONTACT. BUT THERE MAY BE ONE 
MORE MESSAGE, IF ALL GOES WELL.

    As the image dissolved, Poole could not help smiling at that old Space Age 
cliche. 'If all goes well' - how many times he had heard that phrase intoned 
before a mission!

    The phantom vanished: only the motes of dancing dust were left, resuming 
their random patterns in the air. With an effort of will, Poole came back to the 
present.

    'Well, Commander - what do you think of that?' asked Kim.

    Poole was still shaken, and it was several seconds before he could reply.

    'The face and the voice were Bowman's - I'd swear to that. But what was it?'

    'That's what we're still arguing about. Call it a hologram, a projection - 
of course, there are plenty of ways it could be faked if anyone wanted to - but 
not in those circumstances! And then, of course, there's what happened next.'

    'Lucifer?'

    'Yes. Thanks to that warning, the Leonov had just sufficient time to get 
away before Jupiter detonated.'

    'So whatever it was, the Bowman-thing was friendly and trying to help.'

    'Presumably. And it may have been responsible for that "one more message" we 
did receive - it was sent only minutes before the detonation. Another waning.'

    Dr Kim brought the screen to life once more. It showed plain text: ALL THESE 
WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE. The same message was 
repeated about a hundred times, then the letters became garbled.

    'And we never have tried to land there?' asked Poole.

    'Only once, by accident, thirty-six years later - when the USSS Galaxy was 
hijacked and forced down there, and her sister ship Universe had to go to the 
rescue. It's all here -with what little our robot monitors have told us about 
the Europans.'

    'I'm anxious to see them.'

    'They're amphibious, and come in all shapes and sizes. As soon as Lucifer 
started melting the ice that covered theirt whole world, they began to emerge 
from the sea. Since then, they've developed at a speed that seems biologically 
impossible.'

    'From what I remember about Europa, weren't there lots of cracks in the ice? 
Perhaps they'd already started crawling through and having a look round.'

    'That's a widely accepted theory. But there's another, much more 
speculative, one. The Monolith may have been involved, in ways we don't yet 
understand. What triggered that line of thought was the discovery of TMA ZERO, 
right here on Earth, almost five hundred years after your time. I suppose you've 
been told about that?'

    'Only vaguely - there's been so much to catch up with! I did think the name 
was ridiculous - since it wasn't a magnetic anomaly - and it was in Africa, not 
Tycho!'

    'You're quite right, of course, but we're stuck with the name. And the more 
we learn about the Monoliths, the more the puzzle deepens. Especially as they're 
still the only real evidence for advanced technology beyond the Earth.'

    'That's surprised me. I should have thought that by this lime we'd have 
picked up radio signals from somewhere. The astronomers started searching when I 
was a boy!'

    'Well, there is one hint - and it's so terrifying that we don't like to talk 
about it. Have you heard of Nova Scorpio?'

    'I don't believe so.'

    'Stars go nova all the time, of course - and this wasn't a particularly 
impressive one. But before it blew up, N Scorp was known to have several 
planets.'

    'Inhabited?'

    'Absolutely no way of telling; radio searches had picked up nothing. And 
here's the nightmare...'

    'Luckily, the automatic Nova Patrol caught the event at the very beginning. 
And it didn't start at the star. One of the planets detonated first, and then 
triggered its sun.'

    'My Gah... sorry, go on.'

    'You see the point. It's impossible for a planet to go nova - except in one 
way.'

    'I once read a sick joke in a science-fiction novel - "supernovae are 
industrial accidents".'

    'It wasn't a supernova - but that may be no joke. The most widely accepted 
theory is that someone else had been tapping vacuum energy - and had lost 
control.'

    'Or it could have been a war.'

    'Just as bad; we'll probably never know. But as our own civilization depends 
on the same energy source, you can understand why N Scorp sometimes gives us 
nightmares.'

    'And we only had melting nuclear reactors to worry about!'

    'Not any longer, thank Deus. But I really wanted to tell you more about TMA 
ZERO's discovery, because it marked a turning point in human history.'

    'Finding TMA ONE on the Moon was a big enough shock, but five hundred years 
later there was a worse one. And it was much nearer home - in every sense of the 
word. Down there in Africa.'

    

8
Return to Olduvai

    

    The Leakeys, Dr Stephen Del Marco often told himself, would never have 
recognized this place, even though it's barely a dozen kilometres from where 
Louis and Mary, five centuries ago, dug up the bones of our first ancestors. 
Global warming, and the Little Ice Age (truncated by miracles of heroic 
technology) had transformed the landscape, and completely altered its biota. 
Oaks and pine trees were still fighting it out, to see which would survive the 
changes in climatic fortune.

    And it was hard to believe that, by this year 2513, there was anything left 
in Olduvai undug by enthusiastic anthropologists. However, recent flash-floods - 
which were not supposed to happen any more - had resculpted this area, and cut 
away several metres of topsoil. Del Marco had taken advantage of the 
opportunity: and there, at the limit of the deep-scan, was something he could 
not quite believe.

    It had taken more than a year of slow and careful excavation to reach that 
ghostly image, and to learn that the reality was stranger than anything he had 
dared to imagine. Robot digging machines had swiftly removed the first few 
metres, then the traditional slave-crews of graduate students had taken over. 
They had been helped - or hindered - by a team of four kongs, who Del Marco 
considered more trouble than they were worth. However, the students adored the 
genetically-enhanced gorillas, whom they treated like retarded but much-loved 
children. It was rumoured that the relationships were not always completely 
Platonic.

    For the last few metres, however, everything was the work of human hands, 
usually wielding toothbrushes - soft-bristled at that. And now it was finished: 
Howard Carter, seeing the first glint of gold in Tutankhamen's tomb, had never 
uncovered such a treasure as this. From this moment onwards, Del Marco knew, 
human beliefs and philosophies would be irrevocably changed.

    The Monolith appeared to be the exact twin of that discovered on the Moon 
five centuries earlier: even the excavation surrounding it was almost identical 
in size. And like TMA ONE, it was totally non-reflective, absorbing with equal 
indifference the fierce glare of the African Sun and the pale gleam of Lucifer.

    As he led his colleagues - the directors of the world's half-dozen most 
famous museums, three eminent anthropologists, the heads of two media empires - 
down into the pit, Del Marco wondered if such a distinguished group of men and 
women had ever been so silent, for so long. But that was the effect that this 
ebon rectangle had on all visitors, as they realized the implications of the 
thousands of artefacts that surrounded it.

    For here was an archaeologist's treasure-trove - crudely-fashioned flint 
tools, countless bones - some animal, some human - and almost all arranged in 
careful patterns. For centuries - no, millennia - these pitiful gifts had been 
brought here, by creatures with only the first glimmer of intelligence, as 
tribute to a marvel beyond their understanding.

    And beyond ours, Del Marco had often thought. Yet of two things he was 
certain, though he doubted if proof would ever be possible.

    This was where - in time and space - the human species had really begun.

    And this Monolith was the very first of all its multitudinous gods.

    

9
Skyland

    

    'There were mice in my bedroom last night,' Poole complained, only half 
seriously. 'Is there any chance you could find me a cat?'

    Dr Wallace looked puzzled, then started to laugh.

    'You must have heard one of the cleaning microts - I'll get the programming 
checked so they don't disturb you. Try not to step on one if you catch it at 
work; if you do, it will call for help, and all its friends will come to pick up 
the pieces.'

    So much to learn - so little time! No, that wasn't true, Poole reminded 
himself. He might well have a century ahead of him, thanks to the medical 
science of this age. The thought was already beginning to fill him with 
apprehension rather than pleasure.

    At least he was now able to follow most conversations easily, and had 
learned to pronounce words so that Indra was not the only person who could 
understand him. He was very glad that Anglish was now the world language, though 
French, Russian and Mandarin still flourished.

    'I've another problem, Indra - and I guess you're the only person who can 
help. When I say "God", why do people look embarrassed?'

    Indra did not look at all embarrassed; in fact, she laughed.

    'That's a very complicated story. I wish my old friend Dr Khan was here to 
explain it to you - but he's on Ganymede, curing any remaining True Believers he 
can find there. When all the old religions were discredited - let me tell you 
about Pope Pius XX sometime - one of the greatest men in history! - we still 
needed a word for the Prime Cause, or the Creator of the Universe - if there is 
one...'

    'There were lots of suggestions - Deo - Theo - Jove - Brahma - they were all 
tried, and some of them are still around - especially Einstein's favourite, "The 
Old One". But Deus seems to be the fashion nowadays.'

    'I'll try to remember; but it still seems silly to me.'

    'You'll get used to it: I'll teach you some other reasonably polite 
expletives, to use when you want to express your feelings...'

    'You said that all the old religions have been discredited. So what do 
people believe nowadays?'

    'As little as possible. We're all either Deists or Theists.'

    'You've lost me. Definitions, please.'

    'They were slightly different in your time, but here are the latest 
versions. Theists believe there's not more than one God; Deists that there is 
not less than one God.'

    'I'm afraid the distinction's too subtle for me.'

    'Not for everyone; you'd be amazed at the bitter controversies it's aroused. 
Five centuries ago, someone used what's known as surreal mathematics to prove 
there's an infinite number of grades between Theists and Deists. Of course, like 
most dabblers with infinity, he went insane. By the way, the best-known Deists 
were Americans - Washington, Franklin, Jefferson.'

    'A little before my time - though you'd be surprised how many people don't 
realize it.'

    'Now I've some good news. Joe - Prof. Anderson - has finally given his - 
what was the phrase? - OK. You're fit enough to go for a little trip upstairs... 
to the Lunar Level.'

    'Wonderful. How far is that?'

    'Oh, about twelve thousand kilometres.'

    'Twelve thousand! That will take hours!'

    Indra looked surprised at his remark: then she smiled.

    'Not as long as you think. No - we don't have a Star Trek Transporter yet - 
though I believe they're still working on it! But you'll need new clothes, and 
someone to show you how to wear them. And to help you with the hundreds of 
little everyday jobs that can waste so much time. So we've taken the liberty of 
arranging a human personal assistant for you Come in, Danil.'

    Danil was a small, light-brown man in his mid-thirties, who surprised Poole 
by not giving him the usual palm-top salute, with its automatic exchange of 
information.

    Indeed, it soon appeared that Danil did not possess an Ident: whenever it 
was needed, he produced a small rectangle of plastic that apparently served the 
same purpose as the twenty-first century's 'smart cards'.

    'Danil will also be your guide and what was that word? - I can never 
remember - rhymes with "ballet". He's been specially trained for the job. I'm 
sure you'll find him completely satisfactory.'

    Though Poole appreciated this gesture, it made him feel a little 
uncomfortable. A valet, indeed! He could not recall ever meeting one; in his 
time, they were already a rare and endangered species. He began to feel like a 
character from an early-twentieth-century English novel.

    'You have a choice,' said Indra, 'though I know which one you'll take. We 
can go up on an external elevator, and admire the view - or an interior one, and 
enjoy a meal and some light entertainment.'

    'I can't imagine anyone wanting to stay inside.'

    'You'd be surprised. It's too vertiginous for some people - especially 
visitors from down below. Even mountain climbers who say they've got a head for 
heights may start to turn green - when the heights are measured in thousands of 
kilometres, instead of metres.'

    'I'll risk it,' Poole answered with a smile. 'I've been higher.'

    When they had passed through a double set of airlocks in the exterior wall 
of the Tower (was it imagination, or did he feel a curious sense of 
disorientation then?) they entered what might have been the auditorium of a very 
small theatre. Rows of ten seats were banked up in five tiers: they all faced 
towards one of the huge picture windows which Poole still found disconcerting, 
as he could never quite forget the hundreds of tons of air pressure, striving to 
blast it out into space.

    The dozen or so other passengers, who had probably never given the matter 
any thought, seemed perfectly at ease. They all smiled as they recognized him, 
nodded politely, then turned away to admire the view.

    'Welcome to Skylounge,' said the inevitable autovoice. 'Ascent begins in 
five minutes. You will find refreshments and toilets on the lower floor.'

    Just how long will this trip last? Poole wondered. We're going to travel 
over twenty thousand klicks, there and back: this will be like no elevator ride 
I've ever known on Earth...

    While he was waiting for the ascent to begin, he enjoyed the stunning 
panorama laid out two thousand kilometres below. It was winter in the northern 
hemisphere, but the climate had indeed changed drastically, for there was little 
snow south of the Arctic Circle.

    Europe was almost cloud-free, and there was so much detail that the eye was 
overwhelmed. One by one he identified the great cities whose names had echoed 
down the centuries; they had been shrinking even in his time, as the 
communications revolution changed the face of the world, and had now dwindled 
still further. There were also some bodies of water in improbable places - the 
northern Sahara's Lake Saladin was almost a small sea.

    Poole was so engrossed by the view that he had forgotten the passage of 
time. Suddenly he realized that much more than five minutes had passed - yet the 
elevator was still stationary. Had something gone wrong - or were they waiting 
for late arrivals?

    And then he noticed something so extraordinary that at first he refused to 
believe the evidence of his eyes. The panorama had expanded, as if he had 
already risen hundreds of kilometres! Even as he watched, he noticed new 
features of the planet below creeping into the frame of the window.

    Then Poole laughed, as the obvious explanation occurred to him.

    'You could have fooled me, Indra! I thought this was real - not a video 
projection!'

    Indra looked back at him with a quizzical smile.

    'Think again, Frank. We started to move about ten minutes ago. By now we 
must be climbing at, oh - at least a thousand kilometres an hour. Though I'm 
told these elevators can reach a hundred gee at maximum acceleration, we won't 
touch more than ten, on this short run.'

    'That's impossible! Six is the maximum they ever gave me in the centrifuge, 
and I didn't enjoy weighing half a ton. I know we haven't moved since we stepped 
inside.'

    Poole had raised his voice slightly, and suddenly became aware that the 
other passengers were pretending not to notice.

    'I don't understand how it's done, Frank, but it's called an inertial field. 
Or sometimes a Sharp one - the "S" stands for a famous Russian scientist, 
Sakharov - I don't know who the others were.'

    Slowly, understanding dawned in Poole's mind - and also a sense of awe-
struck wonder. Here indeed was a 'technology indistinguishable from magic'.

    'Some of my friends used to dream of "space drives" - energy fields that 
could replace rockets, and allow movement without any feeling of acceleration, 
Most of us thought they were crazy - but it seems they were right! I can still 
hardly believe it... and unless I'm mistaken, we're starting to lose weight.'

    'Yes - it's adjusting to the lunar value. When we step out, you'll feel 
we're on the Moon. But for goodness' sake, Frank - forget you're an engineer, 
and simply enjoy the view.'

    It was good advice, but even as he watched the whole of Africa, Europe and 
much of Asia flow into his field of vision, Poole could not tear his mind away 
from this astonishing revelation. Yet he should not have been wholly surprised: 
he knew that there had been major breakthroughs in space propulsion systems 
since his time, but had not realized that they would have such dramatic 
applications to everyday life - if that term could be applied to existence in a 
thirty-six-thousand-kilometre-high skyscraper.

    And the age of the rocket must have been over, centuries ago. All his 
knowledge of propellant systems and combustion chambers, ion thrusters and 
fusion reactors, was totally obsolete. Of course, that no longer mattered - but 
he understood the sadness that the skipper of a windjammer must have felt, when 
sail gave way to steam.

    His mood changed abruptly, and he could not help smiling, when the robovoice 
announced, 'Arriving in two minutes. Please make sure that you do not leave any 
of your personal belongings behind.'

    How often he had heard that announcement, on some commercial flight? He 
looked at his watch, and was surprised to see that they had been ascending for 
less than half an hour So that meant an average speed of at least twenty 
thousand kilometres an hour, yet they might never have moved. What was even 
stranger - for the last ten minutes or more they must actually have been 
decelerating so rapidly that by rights they should all have been standing on the 
roof, heads pointing towards Earth!

    The doors opened silently, and as Poole stepped out he again felt the slight 
disorientation he had noticed on entering the elevator lounge. This time, 
however, he knew what it meant: he was moving through the transition zone where 
the inertial field overlapped with gravity - at this level, equal to the Moon's.

    Indra and Danil followed him, walking carefully now at a third of their 
customary weight, as they went forward to meet the next of the day's wonders.

    Though the view of the receding Earth had been awesome, even for an 
astronaut, there was nothing unexpected or surprising about it. But who would 
have imagined a gigantic chamber, apparently occupying the entire width of the 
Tower, so that the far wall was more than five kilometres away? Perhaps by this 
time there were larger enclosed volumes on the Moon and Mars, but this must 
surely be one of the largest in space itself.

    They were standing on a viewing platform, fifty metres up on the outer wall, 
looking across an astonishingly varied panorama. Obviously, an attempt had been 
made to reproduce a whole range of terrestrial biomes. Immediately beneath them 
was a group of slender trees which Poole could not at first identify: then he 
realized that they were oaks, adapted to one-sixth of their normal gravity. 
What, he wondered, would palm frees look like here? Giant reeds, probably...

    In the middle-distance there was a small lake, fed by a river that meandered 
across a grassy plain, then disappeared into something that looked like a single 
gigantic banyan tree. What was the source of the water? Poole had become aware 
of a faint drumming sound, and as he swept his gaze along the gently curving 
wall, he discovered a miniature Niagara, with a perfect rainbow hovering in the 
spray above it.

    He could have stood here for hours, admiring the view and still not 
exhausting all the wonders of this complex and brilliantly contrived simulation 
of the planet below. As it spread out into new and hostile environments, perhaps 
the human race felt an ever-increasing need to remember its origins. Of course, 
even in his own time every city had its parks as - usually feeble - reminders of 
Nature. The same impulse must be acting here, on a much grander scale. Central 
Park, Africa Tower!

    'Let's go down,' said Indra. 'There's so much to see, and I don't come here 
as often as I'd like.'

    Followed by the silent but ever-present Danil, who always seemed to know 
when he was needed but otherwise kept out of the way, they began a leisurely 
exploration of this oasis in space. Though walking was almost effortless in this 
low gravity, from time to time they took advantage of a small monorail, and 
stopped once for refreshments at a cafe, cunningly concealed in the trunk of a 
redwood that must have been at least a quarter of a kilometre tall.

    There were very few other people about - their fellow passengers had long 
since disappeared into the landscape - so it was as if they had all this 
wonderland to themselves.

    Everything was so beautifully maintained, presumably by armies of robots, 
that from time to time Poole was reminded of a visit he had made to Disney World 
as a small boy. But this was even better: there were no crowds, and indeed very 
little reminder of the human race and its artefacts.

    They were admiring a superb collection of orchids, some of enormous size, 
when Poole had one of the biggest shocks of his life. As they walked past a 
typical small gardener's shed, the door opened - and the gardener emerged.

    Frank Poole had always prided himself on his self-control, and never 
imagined that as a full-grown adult he would give a cry of pure fright. But like 
every boy of his generation, he had seen all the 'Jurassic' movies - and he knew 
a raptor when he met one eye to eye.

    'I'm terribly sorry,' said Indra, with obvious concern. 'I never thought of 
warning you.'

    Poole's jangling nerves returned to normal. Of course, there could be no 
danger, in this perhaps too-well-ordered world: but still...!

    The dinosaur returned his stare with apparent total disinterest, then 
doubled back into the shed and emerged again with a rake and a pair of garden 
shears, which it dropped into a bag hanging over one shoulder. It walked away 
from them with a bird-like gait, never looking back as it disappeared behind 
some ten-metre-high sunflowers.

    'I should explain,' said Indra contritely. 'We like to use bio-organisms 
when we can, rather than robots - I suppose it's carbon chauvinism! Now, there 
are only a few animals that have any manual dexterity, and we've used them all 
at one time or another.'

    'And here's a mystery that no one's been able to solve. You'd think that 
enhanced herbivores like orangutans and gorillas would be good at this sort of 
work. Well, they're not; they don't have the patience for it.'

    'Yet carnivores like our friend here are excellent, and easily trained. 
What's more - here's another paradox! -after they've been modified they're 
docile and good-natured. Of course, there's almost a thousand years of genetic 
engineering behind them, and look what primitive man did to the wolf, merely by 
trial and error!'

    Indra laughed and continued: 'You may not believe this, Frank, but they also 
make good baby-sitters - children love them! There's a five-hundred-year-old 
joke: "Would you trust your kids to a dinosaur?" "What - and risk injuring it?"'

    Poole joined in the laughter, partly in shame-faced reaction to his own 
fright. To change the subject, he asked Indra the question that was still 
worrying him.

    'All this,' he said, 'it's wonderful - but why go to so much trouble, when 
anyone in the Tower can reach the real thing, just as quickly?'

    Indra looked at him thoughtfully, weighing her words. 'That's not quite 
true. It's uncomfortable - even dangerous - for anyone who lives above the half-
gee level to go down to Earth, even in a hoverchair. So it has to be this -or, 
as you used to say, Virtual Reality.'

    (Now I begin to understand, Poole told himself bleakly. That explains 
Anderson's evasiveness, and all the tests he's been doing to see if I've 
regained my strength. I've come all the way back from Jupiter, to within two 
thousand kilometres of Earth - but I may never again walk on the surface of my 
home planet. I'm not sure how I will be able to handle this...)

    

10
Homage to Icarus

    

    His depression quickly passed: there was so much to do and see. A thousand 
lifetimes would not have been enough, and the problem was to choose which of the 
myriad distractions this age could offer. He tried, not always successfully, to 
avoid the trivia, and to concentrate on the things that mattered - notably his 
education.

    The Braincap - and the book-sized player that went with it, inevitably 
called the Brainbox - was of enormous value here. He soon had a small library of 
'instant knowledge' tablets, each containing all the material needed for a 
college degree. When he slipped one of these into the Brainbox, and gave it the 
speed and intensity adjustments that most suited him, there would be a flash of 
light, followed by a period of unconsciousness that might last as long as an 
hour. When he awoke, it seemed that new areas of his mind had been opened up, 
though he only knew they were there when he searched for them. It was almost as 
if he was the owner of a library who had suddenly discovered shelves of books he 
did not know he possessed.

    To a large extent, he was the master of his own time. Out of a sense of duty 
- and gratitude - he acceded to as many requests as he could from scientists, 
historians, writers and artists working in media that were often 
incomprehensible to him. He also had countless invitations from other citizens 
of the four Towers, virtually all of which he was compelled to turn down.

    Most tempting - and most hard to resist - were those that came from the 
beautiful planet spread out below. 'Of course,' Professor Anderson had told him, 
'you'd survive if you went down for short time with the right life-support 
system, but you wouldn't enjoy it. And it might weaken your neuromuscular system 
even further. It's never really recovered from that thousand-year sleep.'

    His other guardian, Indra Wallace, protected him from unnecessary 
intrusions, and advised him which requests he should accept - and which he 
should politely refuse. By himself, he would never understand the socio-
political structure of this incredibly complex culture, but he soon gathered 
that, although in theory all class distinctions had vanished, there were a few 
thousand super-citizens. George Orwell had been right; some would always be more 
equal than others.

    There had been times when, conditioned by his twentyfirst-century 
experience, Poole had wondered who was paying for all this hospitality - would 
he one day be presented with the equivalent of an enormous hotel bill? But Indra 
had quickly reassured him: he was a unique and priceless museum exhibit, so 
would never have to worry about such mundane considerations. Anything he wanted 
- within reason - would be made available to him: Poole wondered what the limits 
were, never imagining that one day he would attempt to discover them.

    

    All the most important things in life happen by accident, and he had set his 
wall display browser on random scan, silent, when a striking image caught his 
attention.

    'Stop scan! Sound up!' he shouted, with quite unnecessary loudness.

    He recognized the music, but it was a few minutes before he identified it; 
the fact that his wall was filled with winged humans circling gracefully round 
each other undoubtedly helped. But Tchaikovsky would have been utterly 
astonished to see this performance of Swan Lake - with the dancers actually 
flying...

    Poole watched, entranced, for several minutes, until he was fairly confident 
that this was reality, and not a simulation: even in his own day, one could 
never be quite certain. Presumably the ballet was being performed in one of the 
many low-gravity environments - a very large one, judging by some of the images. 
It might even be here in Africa Tower.

    I want to try that, Poole decided. He had never quite forgiven the Space 
Agency for banning one of his greatest pleasures - delayed parachute formation 
jumping - even though he could see the Agency's point in not wanting to risk a 
valuable investment. The doctors had been quite unhappy about his earlier hang-
gliding accident; fortunately his teenage bones had healed completely.

    'Well,' he thought, 'there's no one to stop me now unless it's Prof. 
Anderson...'

    To Poole's relief, the physician thought it an excellent idea, and he was 
also pleased to find that every one of the Towers had its own Aviary, up at the 
one-tenth-gee level.

    Within a few days he was being measured for his wings, not in the least like 
the elegant versions worn by the performers of Swan Lake. Instead of feathers 
there was a flexible membrane, and when he grasped the hand-holds attached to 
the supporting ribs, Poole realized that he must look much more like a bat than 
a bird. However his 'Move over, Dracula!' was completely wasted on his 
instructor, who was apparently unacquainted with vampires.

    For his first lessons he was restrained by a light harness, so that he did 
not move anywhere while he was taught the basic strokes - and, most important of 
all, learned control and stability. Like many acquired skills, it was not quite 
as easy as it looked.

    He felt ridiculous in this safety-harness - how could anyone injure 
themselves at a tenth of a gravity! - and was glad that he needed only a few 
lessons; doubtless his astronaut training helped. He was, the Wingmaster told 
him, the best pupil he had ever taught: but perhaps he said that to all of them.

    After a dozen free-flights in a chamber forty metres on a side, criss-
crossed with various obstacles which he easily avoided, Poole was given the all-
clear for his first solo - and felt nineteen years old again, about to take off 
in the Flagstaff Aero Club's antique Cessna.

    The unexciting name 'The Aviary' had not prepared him for the venue of this 
maiden flight. Though it seemed even more enormous than the space holding the 
forests and gardens down at the lunar-gee level, it was almost the same size, 
since it too occupied an entire floor of the gently tapering Tower. A circular 
void, half a kilometre high and over four kilometres wide, it appeared truly 
enormous, as there were no features on which the eye could rest. Because the 
walls were a uniform pale blue, they contributed to the impression of infinite 
space.

    Poole had not really believed the Wingmaster's boast, 'You can have any 
scenery you like', and intended to throw him what he was sure was an impossible 
challenge. But on this first flight, at the dizzy altitude of fifty metres, 
there were no visual distractions, Of course, a fall from the equivalent 
altitude of five metres in the ten-fold greater Earth gravity could break one's 
neck; however, even minor bruises were unlikely here, as the entire floor was 
covered with a network of flexible cables The whole chamber was a giant 
trampoline; one could, thought Poole, have a lot of fun here - even without 
wings.

    With firm, downward strokes, Poole lifted himself into the air. In almost no 
time, it seemed that he was a hundred metres in the air, and still rising.

    'Slow down' said the Wingmaster, 'I can't keep up with you,'

    Poole straightened out, then attempted a slow roll. He felt light-headed as 
well as light-bodied (less than ten kilograms!) and wondered if the 
concentration of oxygen had been increased.

    This was wonderful - quite different from zero gravity, as it posed more of 
a physical challenge. The nearest thing to it was scuba diving: he wished there 
were birds here, to emulate the equally colourful coral fish who had so often 
accompanied him over tropical reefs.

    One by one, the Wingmaster put him through a series of manoeuvres - rolls, 
loops, upside-down flying, hovering.

    Finally he said: 'Nothing more I can teach you. Now let's enjoy the view.'

    Just for a moment, Poole almost lost control - as he was probably expected 
to do. For, without the slightest warning, he was surrounded by snow-capped 
mountains, and was flying down a narrow pass, only metres from some unpleasantly 
jagged rocks.

    Of course, this could not be real: those mountains were as insubstantial as 
clouds, and he could fly right through them if he wished. Nevertheless, he 
veered away from the cliff-face (there was an eagle's nest on one of its ledges, 
holding two eggs which he felt he could touch if he came closer) and headed for 
more open space.

    The mountains vanished; suddenly, it was night. And then the stars came out 
- not the miserable few thousand in the impoverished skies of Earth, but legions 
beyond counting. And not only stars, but the spiral whirlpools of distant 
galaxies, the teeming, close-packed sun-swarms of globular clusters.

    There was no possible way this could be real, even if he had been magically 
transported to some world where such skies existed. For those galaxies were 
receding even as he watched; stars were fading, exploding, being born in stellar 
nurseries of glowing fire-mist. Every second, a million years must be passing...

    The overwhelming spectacle disappeared as quickly as it had come: he was 
back in the empty sky, alone except for his instructor, in the featureless blue 
cylinder of the Aviary.

    'I think that's enough for one day,' said the Wingmaster, hovering a few 
metres above Poole. 'What scenery would you like, the next time you come here?'

    Poole did not hesitate. With a smile, he answered the question.

    

11
Here be Dragons

    

    He would never have believed it possible, even with the technology of this 
day and age. How many terabytes - petabytes - was there a large enough word? - 
of information must have been accumulated over the centuries, and in what sort 
of storage medium? Better not think about it, and follow Indra's advice: 'Forget 
you're an engineer - and enjoy yourself.'

    He was certainly enjoying himself now, though his pleasure was mixed with an 
almost overwhelming sense of nostalgia. For he was flying, or so it seemed, at 
an altitude of about two kilometres, above the spectacular and unforgotten 
landscape of his youth. Of course, the perspective was false, since the Aviary 
was only half a kilometre high, but the illusion was perfect.

    He circled Meteor Crater, remembering how he had scrambled up its sides 
during his earlier astronaut training. How incredible that anyone could ever 
have doubted its origin, and the accuracy of its name! Yet well into the 
twentieth century, distinguished geologists had argued that it was volcanic: not 
until the coming of the Space Age was it - reluctantly - accepted that all 
planets were still under continual bombardment.

    Poole was quite sure that his comfortable cruising speed was nearer twenty 
than two hundred kilometres an hour, yet he had been allowed to reach Flagstaff 
in less than fifteen minutes. And there were the whitely-gleaming domes of the 
Lowell Observatory, which he had visited so  often as a boy, and whose friendly 
staff had undoubtedly been responsible for his choice of career. He had 
sometimes wondered what his profession might have been, had he not been born in 
Arizona, near the very spot where the most long-enduring and influential of 
Martian fantasies had been created. Perhaps it was imagination, but Poole 
thought he could just see Lowell's unique tomb, close to the great telescope, 
which had fuelled his dreams.

    From what year, and what season, had this image been captured? He guessed it 
had come from the spy satellites which had watched over the world of the early 
twenty-first century. It could not be much later than his own time, for the 
layout of the city was just as he remembered. Perhaps if he went low enough he 
would even see himself...

    But he knew that was absurd; he had already discovered that this was the 
nearest he could get. If he flew any closer, the image would start to breakup, 
revealing its basic pixels. It was better to keep his distance, and not destroy 
the beautiful illusion.

    And there - it was incredible! - was the little park where he had played 
with his junior and high-school friends. The City Fathers were always arguing 
about its maintenance, as the water supply became more and more critical. Well, 
at least it had survived to this time - whenever that might be.

    And then another memory brought tears to his eyes. Along those narrow paths, 
whenever he could get home from Houston or the Moon, he had walked with his 
beloved Rhodesian Ridgeback, throwing sticks for him to retrieve, as man and dog 
had done from time immemorial.

    Poole had hoped, with all his heart, that Rikki would still be there to 
greet him when he returned from Jupiter, and had left him in the care of his 
younger brother Martin. He almost lost control, and sank several metres before 
regaining stability, as he once more faced the bitter truth that both Rikki and 
Martin had been dust for centuries.

    When he could see properly again, he noticed that the dark band of the Grand 
Canyon was just visible on the far horizon. He was debating whether to head for 
it - he was growing a little tired - when he became aware that he was not alone 
in the sky. Something else was approaching, and it was certainly not a human 
flyer. Although it was difficult to judge distances here, it seemed much too 
large for that.

    Well, he thought, I'm not particularly surprised to meet a pterodactyl here 
- indeed, it's just the sort of thing I'd expect. I hope it's friendly - or that 
I can outfly it if it isn't. Oh, no!

    A pterodactyl was not a bad guess: maybe eight points out of ten. What was 
approaching him now, with slow flaps of its great leathery wings, was a dragon 
straight out of Fairyland. And, to complete the picture, there was a beautiful 
lady riding on its back. At least, Poole assumed she was beautiful. The 
traditional image was rather spoiled by one trifling detail: much of her face 
was concealed by a large pair of aviator's goggles that might have come straight 
from the open cockpit of a World War I biplane.

    Poole hovered in mid-air, like a swimmer treading water, until the oncoming 
monster came close enough for him to hear the flapping of its great wings. Even 
when it was less than twenty metres away, he could not decide whether it was a 
machine or a bio-construct: probably both.

    And then he forgot about the dragon, for the rider removed her goggles.

    The trouble with cliches, some philosopher remarked, probably with a yawn, 
is that they are so boringly true.

    But 'love at first sight' is never boring.

    

    Danil could provide no information, but then Poole had not expected any from 
him. His ubiquitous escort - he certainly would not pass muster as a classic 
valet - seemed so limited in his functions that Poole sometimes wondered if he 
was mentally handicapped, unlikely though that seemed. He understood the 
functioning of all the household appliances, carried out simple orders with 
speed and efficiency, and knew his way about the Tower. But that was all; it was 
impossible to have an intelligent conversation with him, and any polite queries 
about his family were met with a look of blank incomprehension. Poole had even 
wondered if he too was a bio-robot.

    Indra, however, gave him the answer he needed right away.

    'Oh, you've met the Dragon Lady!'

    'Is that what you call her? What's her real name - and can you get me her 
Ident? We were hardly in a position to touch palms.'

    'Of course - no problemo.'

    'Where did you pick up that?'

    Indra looked uncharacteristically confused.

    'I've no idea - some old book or movie. Is it a good figure of speech?'

    'Not if you're over fifteen.'

    'I'll try to remember. Now tell me what happened - unless you want to make 
me jealous.'

    They were now such good friends that they could discuss any subject with 
perfect frankness. Indeed, they had laughingly lamented their total lack of 
romantic interest in each other - though Indra had once commented, 'I guess that 
if we were both marooned on a desert asteroid, with no hope of rescue, we could 
come to some arrangement.'

    'First, you tell me who she is.'

    'Her name's Aurora McAuley; among many other things, she's President of the 
Society for Creative Anachronisms. And if you thought Draco was impressive, wait 
until you see some of their other - ah - creations. Like Moby Dick - and a whole 
zooful of dinosaurs Mother Nature never thought of.'

    This is too good to be true, thought Poole.

    I am the biggest anachronism on Planet Earth.

    

12
Frustration

    

    Until now, he had almost forgotten that conversation with the Space Agency 
psychologist.

    'You may be gone from Earth for at least three years. If you like, I can 
give you a harmless anaphrodisiac implant that will last out the mission. I 
promise we'll more than make it up, when you get home.'

    'No thanks,' Poole had answered, trying to keep his face straight when he 
continued, 'I think I can handle it.'

    Nevertheless, he had become suspicious after the third or fourth week - and 
so had Dave Bowman.

    'I've noticed it too,' Dave said 'I bet those damn doctors put something in 
our diet...'

    Whatever that something was - if indeed it had ever existed - it was 
certainly long past its shelf-life. Until now, Poole had been too busy to get 
involved in any emotional entanglements, and had politely turned down generous 
offers from several young (and not so young) ladies. He was not sure whether it 
was his physique or his fame that appealed to them: perhaps it was nothing more 
than simple curiosity about a man who, for all they knew, might be an ancestor 
from twenty or thirty generations in the past.

    To Poole's delight, Mistress McAuley's Ident conveyed the information that 
she was currently between lovers, and he wasted no further time in contacting 
her. Within twenty-four hours he was pillion-riding, with his arms enjoyably 
around her waist. He had also learned why aviator's goggles were a good idea, 
for Draco was entirely robotic, and could easily cruise at a hundred klicks. 
Poole doubted if any real dragons had ever attained such speeds.

    He was not surprised that the ever-changing landscapes below them were 
straight out of legend. Ali Baba had waved angrily at them, as they overtook his 
flying carpet, shouting 'Can't you see where you're going!' Yet he must be a 
long way from Baghdad, because the dreaming spires over which they now circled 
could only be Oxford.

    Aurora confirmed his guess as she pointed down: 'That's the pub - the inn - 
where Lewis and Tolkien used to meet their friends, the Inklings. And look at 
the river - that boat just coming out from the bridge - do you see the two 
little girls and the clergyman in it?'

    'Yes,' he shouted back against the gentle sussuration of Draco's slipstream. 
'And I suppose one of them is Alice.'

    Aurora turned and smiled at him over her shoulder: she seemed genuinely 
delighted.

    'Quite correct: she's an accurate replica, based on the Reverend's photos. I 
was afraid you wouldn't know. So many people stopped reading soon after your 
time.'

    Poole felt a glow of satisfaction.

    I believe I've passed another test, he told himself smugly. Riding on Draco 
must have been the first. How many more, I wonder? Fighting with broadswords?

    But there were no more, and the answer to the immemorial 'Your place or 
mine?' was - Poole's.

    

    The next morning, shaken and mortified, he contacted Professor Anderson.

    'Everything was going splendidly,' he lamented, 'when she suddenly became 
hysterical and pushed me away. I was afraid I'd hurt her somehow -'Then she 
called the roomlight - we'd been in darkness - and jumped out of bed. I guess I 
was just staring like a fool...' He laughed ruefully. 'She was certainly worth 
staring at.'

    'I'm sure of it. Go on.'

    'After a few minutes she relaxed and said something I'll never be able to 
forget.'

    Anderson waited patiently for Poole to compose himself. 'She said: "I'm 
really sorry, Frank. We could have had a good time. But I didn't know that you'd 
been - mutilated."

    The professor looked baffled, but only for a moment. 'Oh - I understand. I'm 
sorry too, Frank - perhaps I should have warned you. In my thirty years of 
practice, I've only seen half a dozen cases - all for valid medical reasons, 
which certainly didn't apply to you...'

    'Circumcision made a lot of sense in primitive times - and even in your 
century - as a defence against some unpleasant - even fatal - diseases in 
backward countries with poor hygiene. But otherwise there was absolutely no 
excuse for it - and several arguments against, as you've just discovered!'

    'I checked the records after I'd examined you the first time, and found that 
by mid-twenty-first century there had been so many malpractice suits that the 
American Medical Association had been forced to ban it. The arguments among the 
contemporary doctors are very entertaining.'

    'I'm sure they are,' said Poole morosely.

    'In some countries it continued for another century: then some unknown 
genius coined a slogan - please excuse the vulgarity - "God designed us: 
circumcision is blasphemy". That more or less ended the practice. But if you 
want, it would be easy to arrange a transplant - you wouldn't be making medical 
history, by any means.'

    'I don't think it would work. Afraid I'd start laughing every time.'

    'That's the spirit - you're already getting over it.'

    Somewhat to his surprise, Poole realized that Anderson's prognosis was 
correct. He even found himself already laughing.

    'Now what, Frank?'

    'Aurora's "Society for Creative Anachronisms". I'd hoped it would improve my 
chances. Just my luck to have found one anachronism she doesn't appreciate.'

    

13
Stranger in a Strange Time

    

    Indra was not quite as sympathetic as he had hoped: perhaps, after all, 
there was some sexual jealousy in their relationship. And - much more serious - 
what they wryly labelled the Dragon Debacle led to their first real argument.

    It began innocently enough, when Indra complained:

    'People are always asking me why I've devoted my life to such a horrible 
period of history, and it's not much of an answer to say that there were even 
worse ones.'

    'Then why are you interested in my century?'

    'Because it marks the transition between barbarism and civilization.'

    'Thank you. Just call me Conan.'

    'Conan? The only one I know is the man who invented Sherlock Holmes.'

    'Never mind - sorry I interrupted. Of course, we in the so-called developed 
countries thought we were civilized. At least war wasn't respectable any more, 
and the United Nations was always doing its best to stop the wars that did break 
out.'

    'Not very successfully: I'd give it about three out of ten. But what we find 
incredible is the way that people - right up to the early 2000s! - calmly 
accepted behaviour we would consider atrocious. And believed in the most mind-
boggled -'

    'Boggling.'

    '- nonsense, which surely any rational person would dismiss out of hand.'

    'Examples, please.'

    'Well, your really trivial loss started me doing some research, and I was 
appalled by what I found. Did you know that every year in some countries 
thousands of little girls were hideously mutilated to preserve their virginity? 
Many of them died - but the authorities turned a blind eye.'

    'I agree that was terrible - but what could my government do about it?'

    'A great deal - if it wished. But that would have offended the people who 
supplied it with oil and bought its weapons, like the landmines that killed and 
maimed civilians by the thousand.'

    'You don't understand, Indra. Often we had no choice: we couldn't reform the 
whole world. And didn't somebody once say "Politics is the art of the 
possible"?'

    'Quite true - which is why only second-rate minds go into it. Genius likes 
to challenge the impossible.'

    'Well, I'm glad you have a good supply of genius, so you can put things 
right.'

    'Do I detect a hint of sarcasm? Thanks to our computers, we can run 
political experiments in cyberspace before trying them out in practice. Lenin 
was unlucky; he was born a hundred years too soon. Russian communism might have 
worked - at least for a while - if it had had microchips. And had managed to 
avoid Stalin.'

    Poole was constantly amazed by Indra's knowledge of his age - as well as by 
her ignorance of so much that he took for granted. In a way, he had the reverse 
problem. Even if he lived the hundred years that had been confidently promised 
him, he could never learn enough to feel at home. In any conversation, there 
would always be references he did not understand, and jokes that would go over 
his head. Worse still, he would always feel on the verge of some "faux pas" - 
about to create some social disaster that would embarrass even the best of his 
new friends...

    Such as the occasion when he was lunching, fortunately in his own quarters, 
with Indra and Professor Anderson. The meals that emerged from the autochef were 
always perfectly acceptable, having been designed to match his physiological 
requirements. But they were certainly nothing to get excited about, and would 
have been the despair of a twenty-first-century gourmet.

    Then, one day, an unusually tasty dish appeared, which brought back vivid 
memories of the deer-hunts and barbecues of his youth. However, there was 
something unfamiliar about both flavour and texture, so Poole asked the obvious 
question.

    Anderson merely smiled, but for a few seconds Indra looked as if she was 
about to be sick. Then she recovered and said: 'You tell him - after we've 
finished eating.'

    Now what have I done wrong? Poole asked himself. Half an hour later, with 
Indra rather pointedly absorbed in a video display at the other end of the room, 
his knowledge of the Third Millennium made another major advance.

    'Corpse-food was on the way out even in your time,' Anderson explained. 
'Raising animals to - ugh - eat them became economically impossible. I don't 
know how many acres of land it took to feed one cow, but at least ten humans 
could survive on the plants it produced. And probably a hundred, with hydroponic 
techniques.

    'But what finished the whole horrible business was not economics - but 
disease. It started first with cattle, then spread to other food animals - a 
kind of virus, I believe, that affected the brain, and caused a particularly 
nasty death. Although a cure was eventually found, it was too late to turn back 
the clock - and anyway, synthetic foods were now far cheaper, and you could get 
them in any flavour you liked.'

    Remembering weeks of satisfying but unexciting meals, Poole had strong 
reservations about this. For why, he wondered, did he still have wistful dreams 
of spare-ribs and cordon bleu steaks?

    Other dreams were far more disturbing, and he was afraid that before long he 
would have to ask Anderson for medical assistance. Despite everything that was 
being done to make him feel at home, the strangeness and sheer complexity of 
this new world were beginning to overwhelm him. During sleep, as if in an 
unconscious effort to escape, he often reverted to his earlier life: but when he 
awoke, that only made matters worse.

    He had travelled across to America Tower and looked down, in reality and not 
in simulation, on the landscape of his youth - and it had not been a good idea. 
With optical aid, when the atmosphere was clear, he'd got so close that he could 
see individual human beings as they went about their affairs, sometimes along 
streets that he remembered...

    And always, at the back of his mind, was the knowledge that down there had 
once lived everyone he had ever loved, Mother, Father (before he had gone off 
with that Other Woman), dear Uncle George and Aunt Lil, brother Martin - and, 
not least, a succession of dogs, beginning with the warm puppies of his earliest 
childhood and culminating in Rikki.

    Above all, there was the memory - and mystery - of Helena...

    It had begun as a casual affair, in the early days of his astrotraining, but 
had become more and more serious as the years went by. Just before he had left 
for Jupiter, they had planned to make it permanent when he returned.

    And if he did not, Helena wished to have his child. He still recalled the 
blend of solemnity and hilarity with which they had made the necessary 
arrangements...

    Now, a thousand years later, despite all his efforts, he had been unable to 
find if Helena had kept her promise. Just as there were now gaps in his own 
memory, so there were also in the collective records of Mankind. The worst was 
that created by the devastating electromagnetic pulse from the 2304 asteroid 
impact, which had wiped out several per cent of the world's information banks, 
despite all backups and safety systems. Poole could not help wondering if, among 
all the exabytes that were irretrievably lost, were the records of his own 
children: even now, his descendants of the thirtieth generation might be walking 
the Earth; but he would never know.

    It helped a little to have discovered that - unlike Aurora -some ladies of 
this era did not consider him to be damaged goods. On the contrary: they often 
found his alteration quite exciting, but this slightly bizarre reaction made it 
impossible for Poole to establish any close relationship. Nor was he anxious to 
do so; all that he really needed was the occasional healthy, mindless exercise.

    Mindless - that was the trouble. He no longer had arty purpose in life. And 
the weight of too many memories was upon him; echoing the title of a famous book 
he had read in his youth, he often said to himself, 'I am a Stranger in a 
Strange Time.'

    There were even occasions when he looked down at the beautiful planet on 
which - if he obeyed doctor's orders - he could never walk again, and wondered 
what it would be like to make a second acquaintance with the vacuum of space. 
Though it was not easy to get through the airlocks without triggering some 
alarm, it had been done: every few years, some determined suicide made a brief 
meteoric display in the Earth's atmosphere.

    Perhaps it was just as well that deliverance was on its way, from a 
completely unexpected direction.

     

    * * *

    'Nice to meet you, Commander Poole - for the second time.'

    'I'm sorry - don't recall - but then I see so many people.'

    'No need to apologize. First time was out round Neptune.'

    'Captain Chandler - delighted to see you! Can I get something from the 
autochef?'

    'Anything with over twenty per cent alcohol will be fine.'

    'And what are you doing back on Earth? They told me you never come inside 
Mars orbit.'

    'Almost true - though I was born here, I think it's a dirty, smelly place - 
too many people - creeping up to a billion again!'

    'More than ten billion in my time. By the way, did you get my "Thank you" 
message?'

    'Yes - and I know I should have contacted you. But I waited until I headed 
sunwards again. So here I am. Your good health!'

    As the Captain disposed of his drink with impressive speed, Poole tried to 
analyse his visitor. Beards - even small goatees like Chandler's - were very 
rare in this society, and he had never known an astronaut who wore one: they did 
not co-exist comfortably with space-helmets. Of course, a Captain might go for 
years between EVs, and in any case most outside jobs were done by robots; but 
there was always the risk of the unexpected, when one might have to get suited 
in a hurry. It was obvious that Chandler was something of an eccentric, and 
Poole's heart warmed to him.

    'You've not answered my question. If you don't like Earth, what are you 
doing here?'

    'Oh, mostly contacting old friends - it's wonderful to forget hour-long 
delays, and to have real-time conversations! But of course that's not the 
reason. My old rust-bucket is having a refit, up at the Rim shipyard. And the 
armour has to be replaced; when it gets down to a few centimetres thick, I don't 
sleep too well.'

    'Armour?'

    'Dust shield. Not such a problem in your time, was it? But it's a dirty 
environment out round Jupiter, and our normal cruise speed is several thousand 
klicks - a second! So there's a continuous gentle pattering, like raindrops on 
the roof.'

    'You're joking!'

    'Course I am. If we really could hear anything, we'd be dead. Luckily, this 
sort of unpleasantness is very rare - last serious accident was twenty years 
ago. We know all the main comet streams, where most of the junk is, and are 
careful to avoid them - except when we're matching velocity to round up ice.

    'But why don't you come aboard and have a look around, before we take off 
for Jupiter?'

    'I'd be delighted... did you say Jupiter?'

    'Well, Ganymede, of course - Anubis City. We've a lot of business there, and 
several of us have families we haven't seen for months.'

    Poole scarcely heard him.

    Suddenly - unexpectedly - and perhaps none too soon, he had found a reason 
for living.

    Commander Frank Poole was the sort of man who hated to leave a job undone - 
and a few specks of cosmic dust, even moving at a thousand kilometres a second, 
were not likely to discourage him.

    He had unfinished business at the world once known as Jupiter.

    

II
GOLIATH

    

14
A Farewell to Earth

    

    'Anything you want within reason,' he had been told. Frank Poole was not 
sure if his hosts would consider that returning to Jupiter was a reasonable 
request; indeed, he was not quite sure himself, and was beginning to have second 
thoughts.

    He had already committed himself to scores of engagements, weeks in advance. 
Most of them he would be happy to miss, but there were some he would be sorry to 
forgo. In particular, he hated to disappoint the senior class from his old high 
school - how astonishing that it still existed! - when they planned to visit him 
next month.

    However, he was relieved - and a little surprised - when both Indra and 
Professor Anderson agreed that it was an excellent idea. For the first time, he 
realized that they had been concerned with his mental health; perhaps a holiday 
from Earth would be the best possible cure.

    And, most important of all, Captain Chandler was delighted. 'You can have my 
cabin,' he promised. 'I'll kick the First Mate out of hers.' There were times 
when Poole wondered if Chandler, with his beard and swagger, was not another 
anachronism. He could easily picture him on the bridge of a battered three-
master, with Skull and Crossbones flying overhead.

    Once his decision had been made, events moved with surprising speed. He had 
accumulated very few possessions, and fewer still that he needed to take with 
him. The most important was Miss Pringle, his electronic alter ego and 
secretary, now the storehouse of both his lives, and the small stack of terabyte 
memories that went with her.

    Miss Pringle was not much larger than the hand-held personal assistants of 
his own age, and usually lived, like the Old West's Colt 45, in a quick-draw 
holster at his waist. She could communicate with him by audio or Braincap, and 
her prime duty was to act as an information filter and a buffer to the outside 
world. Like any good secretary, she knew when to reply, in the appropriate 
format: 'I'll put you through now' or - much more frequently: 'I'm sorry - Mr 
Poole is engaged. Please record your message and he will get back to you as soon 
as possible.' Usually, this was never.

    There were very few farewells to be made: though realtime conversations 
would be impossible owing to the sluggish velocity of radio waves, he would be 
in constant touch with Indra and Joseph - the only genuine friends he had made.

    Somewhat to his surprise, Poole realized that he would miss his enigmatic 
but useful 'valet', because he would now have to handle all the small chores of 
everyday life by himself. Danil bowed slightly when they parted, but otherwise 
showed no sign of emotion, as they took the long ride up to the outer curve of 
the world-circling wheel, thirty-six thousand kilometres above central Africa.

    

    'I'm not sure, Dim, that you'll appreciate the comparison. But do you know 
what Goliath reminds me of?'

    They were now such good friends that Poole could use the Captain's nickname 
- but only when no one else was around.

    'Something unflattering, I assume.'

    'Not really. But when I was a boy, I came across a whole pile of old 
science-fiction magazines that my Uncle George had abandoned - "pulps", they 
were called, after the cheap paper they were printed on... most of them were 
already falling to bits. They had wonderful garish covers, showing strange 
planets and monsters - and, of course, spaceships!

    'As I grew older, I realized how ridiculous those spaceships were. They were 
usually rocket-driven - but there was never any sign of propellant tanks! Some 
of them had rows of windows from stem to stem, just like ocean liners. There was 
one favourite of mine with a huge glass dome - a space-going conservatory...

    'Well, those old artists had the last laugh: too bad they could never know. 
Goliath looks more like their dreams than the flying fuel-tanks we used to 
launch from the Cape.

    Your Inertial Drive still seems too good to be true - no visible means of 
support, unlimited range and speed - sometimes I think I'm the one who's 
dreaming!'

    Chandler laughed and pointed to the view outside.

    'Does that look like a dream?'

    It was the first time that Poole had seen a genuine horizon since he had 
come to Star City, and it was not quite as far away as he had expected. After 
all, he was on the outer rim of a wheel seven times the diameter of Earth, so 
surely the view across the roof of this artificial world should extend for 
several hundred kilometres...

    He used to be good at mental arithmetic - a rare achievement even in his 
time, and probably much rarer now. The formula to give the horizon distance was 
a simple one: the square root of twice your height times the radius - the sort 
of thing you never forgot, even if you wanted to...

    Let's see - we're about 8 metres up - so root 16 - this is easy! - say big R 
is 40,000 - knock off those three zeros to make it all klicks - 4 times root 40 
- hmm - just over 25...

    Well, twenty-five kilometres was a fair distance, and certainly no spaceport 
on Earth had ever seemed this huge. Even knowing perfectly well what to expect, 
it was uncanny to watch vessels many times the size of his long-lost Discovery 
lifting off, not only with no sound, but with no apparent means of propulsion. 
Though Poole missed the flame and fury of the old-time countdowns, he had to 
admit that this was cleaner, more efficient - and far safer.

    Strangest of all, though, was to sit up here on the Rim, in the 
Geostationary Orbit itself - and to feel weight! Just metres away, outside the 
window of the tiny observation lounge, servicing robots and a few spacesuited 
humans were gliding gently about their business; yet here inside Goliath the 
inertial field was maintaining standard Mars-gee.

    'Sure you don't want to change your mind, Frank?' Captain Chandler had asked 
jokingly, as he left for the bridge. 'Still ten minutes before lift-off.'

    'Wouldn't be very popular if I did, would I? No - as they used to say back 
in the old days - we have commit. Ready or not, here I come.'

    Poole felt the need to be alone when the drive went on, and the tiny crew - 
only four men and three women - respected his wish. Perhaps they guessed how he 
must be feeling, to leave Earth for the second time in a thousand years - and, 
once again, to face an unknown destiny.

    Jupiter-Lucifer was on the other side of the Sun, and the almost straight 
line of Goliath's orbit would take them close to Venus. Poole looked forward to 
seeing, with his own unaided eyes, if Earth's sister planet was now beginning to 
live up to that description, after centuries of terraforming.

    From a thousand kilometres up, Star City looked like a gigantic metal band 
around Earth's Equator, dotted with gantries, pressure domes, scaffolding 
holding half-completed ships, antennas, and other more enigmatic structures. It 
was diminishing swiftly as Goliath headed sunwards, and presently Poole could 
see how incomplete it was: there were huge gaps spanned only by a spider's web 
of scaffolding, which would probably never be completely enclosed.

    And now they were falling below the plane of the ring; it was midwinter in 
the northern hemisphere, so the slim halo of Star City was inclined at over 
twenty degrees to the Sun. Already Poole could see the American and Asian 
towers, as shining threads stretching outwards and away, beyond the blue haze of 
the atmosphere.

    He was barely conscious of time as Goliath gained speed, moving more swiftly 
than any comet that had ever fallen sunwards from interstellar space. The Earth, 
almost full, still spanned his field of view, and he could now see the full 
length of the Africa Tower which had been his home in the life he was now 
leaving - perhaps, he could not help thinking, leaving for ever.

    When they were fifty thousand kilometres out, he was able to view the whole 
of Star City, as a narrow ellipse enclosing the Earth. Though the far side was 
barely visible, as a hair-line of light against the stars, it was awe-inspiring 
to think that the human race had now set this sign upon the heavens.

    Then Poole remembered the rings of Saturn, infinitely more glorious. The 
astronautical engineers still had a long, long way to go, before they could 
match the achievements of Nature.

    Or, if that was the right word, Deus.

    

15
Transit of Venus

    

    When he woke the next morning, they were already at Venus. But the huge, 
dazzling crescent of the still cloud-wrapped planet was not the most striking 
object in the sky:

    Goliath was floating above an endless expanse of crinkled silver foil, 
flashing in the sunlight with ever-changing patterns as the ship drifted across 
it.

    Poole remembered that in his own age there had been an artist who had 
wrapped whole buildings in plastic sheets: how he would have loved this 
opportunity to package billions of tons of ice in a glittering envelope... Only 
in this way could the core of a comet be protected from evaporation on its 
decades-long journey sunwards.

    'You're in luck, Frank,' Chandler had told him. 'This is something I've 
never seen myself. It should be spectacular. Impact due in just over an hour. 
We've given it a little nudge, to make sure it comes down in the right place. 
Don't want anyone to get hurt.'

    Poole looked at him in astonishment.

    'You mean - there are already people on Venus?'

    'About fifty mad scientists, near the South Pole. Of course, they're well 
dug in, but we should shake them up a bit - even though Ground Zero is on the 
other side of the planet. Or I should say "Atmosphere Zero" - it will be days 
before anything except the shockwave gets down to the surface.'

    As the cosmic iceberg, sparkling and flashing in its protective envelope, 
dwindled away towards Venus, Poole was struck with a sudden, poignant memory. 
The Christmas trees of his childhood had been adorned with just such ornaments, 
delicate bubbles of coloured glass. And the comparison was not completely 
ludicrous: for many families on Earth, this was still the right season for 
gifts, and Goliath was bringing a present beyond price to another world.

    The radar image of the tortured Venusian landscape - its weird volcanoes, 
pancake domes, and narrow, sinuous canyons - dominated the main screen of 
Goliath's control centre, but Poole preferred the evidence of his own eyes. 
Although the unbroken sea of clouds that covered the planet revealed nothing of 
the inferno beneath, he wanted to see what would happen when the stolen comet 
struck. In a matter of seconds, the myriad of tons of frozen hydrates that had 
been gathering speed for decades on the downhill run from Neptune would deliver 
all their energy...

    The initial flash was even brighter than he had expected. How strange that a 
missile made of ice could generate temperatures that must be in the tens of 
thousands of degrees! Though the filters of the view-port would have absorbed 
all the dangerous shorter wave-lengths, the fierce blue of the fireball 
proclaimed that it was hotter than the Sun.

    It was cooling rapidly as it expanded - through yellow, orange, red... The 
shockwave would now be spreading outwards at the velocity of sound - and what a 
sound that must be! - so in a few minutes there should be some visible 
indication of its passage across the face of Venus.

    And there it was! Only a tiny black ring - like an insignificant puff of 
smoke, giving no hint of the cyclonic fury that must be blasting its way 
outwards from the point of impact. As Poole watched, it slowly expanded, though 
owing to its scale there was no sense of visible movement: he had to wait for a 
full minute before he could be quite sure that it had grown larger.

    After a quarter of an hour, however, it was the most prominent marking on 
the planet. Though much fainter - a dirty grey, rather than black - the 
shockwave was now a ragged circle more than a thousand kilometres across. Poole 
guessed that it had lost its original symmetry while sweeping over the great 
mountain ranges that lay beneath it.

    Captain Chandler's voice sounded briskly over the ship's address system.

    'Putting you through to Aphrodite Base. Glad to say they're not shouting for 
help -'

    '- shook us up a bit, but just what we expected. Monitors indicate some rain 
already over the Nokomis Mountains - it will soon evaporate, but that's a 
beginning. And there seems to have been a flash-flood in Hecate Chasm - too good 
to be true, but we're checking. There was a temporary lake of boiling water 
there after the last delivery -'

    I don't envy them, Poole told himself - but I certainly admire them. They 
prove that the spirit of adventure still exists in this perhaps too-comfortable 
and too-well-adjusted society.

    '- and thanks again for bringing this little load down in the right place. 
With any luck - and if we can get that sun-screen up into sync orbit - we'll 
have some permanent seas before long. And then we can plant coral reefs, to make 
lime and pull the excess CO2 out of the atmosphere - hope I live to see it!'

    I hope you do, thought Poole in silent admiration. He had often dived in the 
tropical seas of Earth, admiring weird and colourful creatures so bizarre that 
it was hard to believe anything stranger would be found, even on the planets of 
other suns.

    'Package delivered on time, and receipt acknowledged,' said Captain Chandler 
with obvious satisfaction. 'Goodbye Venus - Ganymede, here we come.'

    

    MISS PRINGLE

    FILE WALLACE

    Hello, Indra. Yes, you were quite right. I do miss our little arguments. 
Chandler and I get along fine, and at first the crew treated me - this will 
amuse you - rather like a holy relic. But they're beginning to accept me, and 
have even started to pull my leg (do you know that idiom?).

    It's annoying not to be able to have a real conversation - we've crossed the 
orbit of Mars, so radio round-trip is already over an hour. But there's one 
advantage - you won't be able to interrupt me...

    Even though it will take us only a week to reach Jupiter, I thought I'd have 
time to relax. Not a bit of it: my fingers started to itch, and I couldn't 
resist going back to school. So I've begun basic training, all over again, in 
one of Goliath's minishuttles. Maybe Dim will actually let me solo...

    It's not much bigger than Discovery's pods - but what a difference! First of 
all, of course, it doesn't use rockets: I can't get used to the luxury of the 
inertial drive, and unlimited range. Could fly back to Earth if I had to - 
though I'd probably get - remember the phrase I used once, and you guessed its 
meaning? - 'stir crazy'.

    The biggest difference, though, is the control system. It's been a big 
challenge for me to get used to hands-off operation - and the computer has had 
to learn to recognize my voice commands. At first it was asking every five 
minutes 'Do you really mean that?' I know it would be better to use the Braincap 
- but I'm still not completely confident with that gadget. Not sure if I'll ever 
get used to something reading my mind.

    By the way, the shuttle's called Falcon. It's a nice name - and I was 
disappointed to find that no one aboard knew that it goes all the way back to 
the Apollo missions, when we first landed on the Moon...

    Uh-huh - there was a lot more I wanted to say, but the skipper is calling. 
Back to the classroom - love and out.

    STORE

    TRANSMIT

    

    Hello Frank - Indra calling - if that's right word! - on my new 
Thoughtwriter - old one had nervous breakdown ha ha - so be lots of mistakes - 
no time to edit before I send. Hope you can make sense.

    COMSET! Channel one oh three - record from twelve thirty - correction - 
thirteen thirty. Sorry...

    Hope I can get old unit fixed - knew all my short-cuts and abbrieves - maybe 
should get psychoanalysed like in your time - never understood how that Fraudian 
- mean Freudian ha ha - nonsense lasted as long as it did - Reminds me - came 
across late Twentieth defin other day - may amuse you - something like this - 
quote -Psychoanalysis - contagious disease originating Vienna circa 1900 - now 
extinct in Europe but occasional outbreaks among rich Americans. Unquote. Funny?

    Sorry again - trouble with Thoughtwriters - hard to stick to point -xz 12 w 
888 5***** js98l2yebdc DAMN... STOP BACKUP

    Did I do something wrong then? Will try again. You mentioned Danil... sorry 
we always evaded your questions about him - knew you were curious, but we had 
very good reason - remember you once called him a non-person?... not bad 
guess...!

    Once you asked me about crime nowadays - I said any such interest 
pathological - maybe prompted by the endless sickening television programmes of 
your time - never able to watch more than few minutes myself... disgusting!

    DOOR ACKNOWLEDGE! OH, HELLO MELINDA EXCUSE SIT DOWN NEARLY FINISHED...

    Yes - crime. Always some... Society's irreducible noise level. What to do?

    Your solution - prisons. State-sponsored perversion factories - costing ten 
times average family income to hold one inmate! Utterly crazy... Obviously 
something very wrong with people who shouted loudest for more prisons - They 
should be psychoanalysed! But let's be fair - really no alternative before 
electronic monitoring and control perfected - you should see the joyful crowds 
smashing the prison walls then - nothing like it since Berlin fifty years 
earlier!

    Yes - Danil. I don't know what his crime was - wouldn't tell you if I did - 
but presume his psych profile suggested he'd make a good - what was the word? - 
ballet - no, valet. Very hard to get people for some jobs - don't know how we'd 
manage if crime level zero! Anyway hope he's soon decontrolled and back in 
normal society

    SORRY MELINDA NEARLY FINISHED

    That's it, Frank - regards to Dimitrj - you must be halfway to Ganymede now 
- wonder if they'll ever repeal Einstein so we can talk across space in real-
time!

    Hope this machine soon gets used to me. Otherwise be looking round for 
genuine antique twentieth century word processor... Would you believe - once 
even mastered that QWERTYIYUIOP nonsense, which you took a couple of hundred 
years to get rid of?

    Love and good-bye.

    

     * * *

    

    Hello Frank - here I am again. Still waiting acknowledgement of my last...

    Strange you should be heading towards Ganymede, and my old friend Ted Khan. 
But perhaps it's not such a coincidence: he was drawn by the same enigma that 
you were...

    First I must tell you something about him. His parents played a dirty trick, 
giving him the name Theodore. That shortens - don't ever call him that! - to 
Theo. See what I mean?

    Can't help wondering if that's what drives him. Don't know anyone else who's 
developed such an interest in religion - no, obsession. Better warn you; he can 
be quite a bore.

    By the way, how am I doing? I miss my old Thinkwriter, but seem to be 
getting this machine under control. Haven't made any bad - what did you call 
them? - bloopers - glitches - fluffs - so far at least - Not sure I should tell 
you this, in case you accidentally blurt it out, but my private nickname for Ted 
is 'The Last Jesuit'. You must know something about them - the Order was still 
very active in your time.

    Amazing people - often great scientists - superb scholars - did a tremendous 
amount of good as well as much harm. One of history's supreme ironies - sincere 
and brilliant seekers of knowledge and truth, yet their whole philosophy 
hopelessly distorted by superstition...

    Xuedn2k3jn deer 2leidj dwpp

    Damn. Got emotional and lost control. One, two, three, four... now is the 
time for all good men to come to the aid of the party... that's better.

    Anyway, Ted has that same brand of high-minded determination; don't get into 
any arguments with him - he'll go over you like a steam-roller.

    By the way what were steam-rollers? Used for pressing clothes? Can see how 
that could be very uncomfortable...

    Trouble with Thinkwriters... too easy to go off in all directions, no matter 
how hard you try to discipline yourself... something to be said for keyboards 
after all... sure I've said that before...

    Ted Khan... Ted Khan... Ted Khan

    He's still famous back on Earth for at least two of his sayings: 
'Civilization and Religion are incompatible' and 'Faith is believing what you 
know isn't true'. Actually, I don't think the last one is original; if it is, 
that's the nearest he ever got to a joke. He never cracked a smile when I tried 
one of my favourites on him - hope you haven't heard it before. It obviously 
dates from your time.

    The Dean's complaining to his Faculty. 'Why do you scientists need such 
expensive equipment? Why can't you be like the Maths Department, which only 
needs a blackboard and a waste-paper basket? Better still, like the Department 
of Philosophy. That doesn't even need a wastepaper basket...' Well, perhaps Ted 
had heard it before... I expect most philosophers have...

    Anyway, give him my regards - and don't, repeat don't, get into any 
arguments with him!

    

    Love and best wishes from Africa Tower.

    TRANSCRIBE STORE

    TRANSMIT POOLE

    

16
The Captain's Table

    

    The arrival of such a distinguished passenger had caused a certain 
disruption in the tight little world of Goliath, but the crew had adapted to it 
with good humour. Every day, at 18.00 hours, all personnel gathered for dinner 
in the wardroom, which in zero-gee could hold at least thirty people in comfort, 
if spread uniformly around the walls. However, most of the time the ship's 
working areas were held at lunar gravity, so there was an undeniable floor - and 
more than eight bodies made a crowd.

    The semi-circular table that unfolded around the auto-chef at mealtimes 
could just seat the entire seven-person crew, with the Captain at the place of 
honour. One extra created such insuperable problems that somebody now had to eat 
alone for every meal. After much good-natured debate, it was decided to make the 
choice in alphabetical order - not of proper names, which were hardly ever used, 
but of nicknames. It had taken Poole some time to get used to them: 'Bolts' 
(structural engineering); 'Chips' (computers and communications); 'First' (First 
Mate); 'Life' (medical and life-support systems); 'Props' (propulsion and 
power); and 'Stars' (orbits and navigation).

    During the ten-day voyage, as he listened to the stories, jokes and 
complaints of his temporary shipmates, Poole learned more about the solar system 
than during his months on Earth. All aboard were obviously delighted to have a 
new and perhaps nave listener as an attentive one-man audience, but Poole was 
seldom taken in by their more imaginative stories.

    Yet sometimes it was hard to know where to draw the line. No one really 
believed in the Golden Asteroid, which was usually regarded as a twenty-fourth-
century hoax. But what about the Mercurian plasmoids, which had been reported by 
at least a dozen reliable witnesses during the last five hundred years?

    The simplest explanation was that they were related to ball-lightning, 
responsible for so many 'Unidentified Flying Object' reports on Earth and Mars. 
But some observers swore that they had shown purposefulness - even 
inquisitiveness - when they were encountered at close quarters. Nonsense, 
answered the sceptics - merely electrostatic attraction!

    Inevitably, this led to discussions about life in the Universe, and Poole 
found himself - not for the first time -defending his own era against its 
extremes of credulity and scepticism. Although the 'Aliens are among us' mania 
had already subsided when he was a boy, even as late as the 2020s the Space 
Agency was still plagued by lunatics who claimed to have been contacted - or 
abducted - by visitors from other worlds. Their delusions had been reinforced by 
sensational media exploitation, and the whole syndrome was later enshrined in 
the medical literature as 'Adamski's Disease'.

    The discovery of TMA ONE had, paradoxically, put an end to this sorry 
nonsense, by demonstrating that though there was indeed intelligence elsewhere, 
it had apparently not concerned itself with Mankind for several million years. 
TMA ONE had also convincingly refuted the handful of scientists who argued that 
life above the bacterial level was such an improbable phenomenon that the human 
race was alone in this Galaxy - if not the Cosmos.

    Goliath's crew was more interested in the technology than the politics and 
economics of Poole's era, and were particularly fascinated by the revolution 
that had taken place in his own lifetime - the end of the fossil-fuel age, 
triggered by the harnessing of vacuum energy. They found it hard to imagine the 
smog-choked cities of the twentieth century, and the waste, greed and appalling 
environmental disasters of the Oil Age.

    'Don't blame me,' said Poole, fighting back gamely after one round of 
criticism. 'Anyway, see what a mess the twenty-first century made.'

    There was a chorus of 'What do you mean?'s around the table.

    'Well, as soon as the so-called Age of Infinite Power got under way, and 
everyone had thousands of kilowatts of cheap, clean energy to play with - you 
know what happened!'

    'Oh, you mean the Thermal Crisis. But that was fixed.'

    'Eventually - after you'd covered half the Earth with reflectors to bounce 
the Sun's heat back into space. Otherwise it would have been as parboiled as 
Venus by now.'

    The crew's knowledge of Third Millennium history was so surprisingly limited 
that Poole - thanks to the intensive education he had received in Star City - 
could often amaze them with details of events centuries after his own time. 
However, he was flattered to discover how well-acquainted they were with 
Discovery's log, it had become one of the classic records of the Space Age. They 
looked on it as he might have regarded a Viking saga; often he had to remind 
himself that he was midway in time between Goliath and the first ships to cross 
the western ocean...

    'On your Day 86,' Stars reminded him, at dinner on the fifth evening, 'you 
passed within two thousand kay of asteroid 7794 - and shot a probe into it. Do 
you remember?"

    'Of course I do,' Poole answered rather brusquely 'To me, it happened less 
than a year ago'

    'Um, sorry. Well, tomorrow we'll be even closer to 13,445. Like to have a 
look?' With autoguidance and freeze-frame, we should have a window all of ten 
milliseconds wide.'

    A hundredth of a second! That few minutes in Discovery had seemed hectic 
enough, but now everything would happen fifty times faster.

    'How large is it?' Poole asked.

    'Thirty by twenty by fifteen metres,' Stars replied. 'Looks like a battered 
brick.'

    'Sorry we don't have a slug to fire at it,' said Props. 'Did you ever wonder 
if 7794 would hit back?'

    'Never occurred to us. But it did give the astronomers a lot of useful 
information, so it was worth the risk... Anyway, a hundredth of a second hardly 
seems worth the bother. Thanks all the same.'

    'I understand. When you've seen one asteroid, you've seen them -'

    'Not true, Chips. When I was on Eros -'

    'As you've told us at least a dozen times -, Poole's mind tuned out the 
discussion, so that it was a background of meaningless noise. He was a thousand 
years in the past, recalling the only excitement of Discovery's mission before 
the final disaster. Though he and Bowman were perfectly aware that 7794 was 
merely a lifeless, airless chunk of rock, that knowledge scarcely affected their 
feelings. It was the only solid matter they would meet this side of Jupiter, and 
they had stared at it with the emotions of sailors on a long sea voyage, 
skirting a coast on which they could not land.

    It was turning slowly end over end, and there were mottled patches of light 
and shade distributed at random over its surface. Sometimes it sparkled like a 
distant window, as planes or outcroppings of crystalline material flashed in the 
Sun...

    He remembered, also, the mounting tension as they waited to see if their aim 
had been accurate. It was not easy to hit such a small target, two thousand 
kilometres away, moving at a relative velocity of twenty kilometres a second.

    Then, against the darkened portion of the asteroid, there had been a sudden, 
dazzling explosion of light. The tiny slug - pure Uranium 238 - had impacted at 
meteoric speed: in a fraction of a second, all its kinetic energy had been 
transformed into heat. A puff of incandescent gas had erupted briefly into 
space, and Discovery's cameras were recording the rapidly fading spectral lines, 
looking for the tell-tale signatures of glowing atoms. A few hours later, back 
on Earth, the astronomers learned for the first time the composition of an 
asteroid's crust. There were no major surprises, but several bottles of 
champagne changed hands.

    Captain Chandler himself took little part in the very democratic discussions 
around his semi-circular table: he seemed content to let his crew relax and 
express their feelings in this informal atmosphere. There was only one unspoken 
rule: no serious business at mealtimes. If there were any technical or 
operational problems, they had to be dealt with elsewhere.

    Poole had been surprised - and a little shocked - to discover that the 
crew's knowledge of Goliath's systems was very superficial. Often he had asked 
questions which should have been easily answered, only to be referred to the 
ship's own memory banks. After a while, however, he realized that the sort of 
in-depth training he had received in his days was no longer possible: far too 
many complex systems were involved for any man or woman's mind to master. The 
various specialists merely had to know what their equipment did, not how. 
Reliability depended on redundancy and automatic checking, and human 
intervention was much more likely to do harm than good.

    Fortunately none was required on this voyage: it had been as uneventful as 
any skipper could have hoped, when the new sun of Lucifer dominated the sky 
ahead.

    

III
THE WORLDS OF GALILEO

    

    (Extract, text only, Tourist's Guide to Outer Solar System, v 219.3)

    

    Even today, the giant satellites of what was once Jupiter present us with 
major mysteries. Why are four worlds, orbiting the same primary and very similar 
in size, so different in most other respects?

    Only in the case of Io, the innermost satellite, is there a convincing 
explanation. It is so close to Jupiter that the gravitational tides constantly 
kneading its interior generate colossal quantities of heat - so much, indeed, 
that Io's surface is semi-molten. It is the most volcanically active world in 
the Solar System; maps of Io have a half-life of only a few decades.

    Though no permanent human bases have ever been established in such an 
unstable environment, there have been numerous landings and there is continuous 
robot monitoring. (For the tragic fate of the 2571 Expedition, see Beagle 5.)

    Europa, second in distance from Jupiter, was originally entirely covered in 
ice, and showed few surface features except a complicated network of cracks. The 
tidal forces which dominate Io were much less powerful here, but produced enough 
heat to give Europa a global ocean of liquid water, in which many strange life-
forms have evolved.

    In 2010 the Chinese ship Tsien touched down on Europa on one of the few 
outcrops of solid rock protruding through the crust of ice. In doing so it 
disturbed a creature of the Europan abyss and was destroyed (see Spacecraft 
Tsien, Galaxy, Universe).

    Since the conversion of Jupiter into the mini-sun Lucifer in 2061, virtually 
all of Europa's ice-cover has melted, and extensive vulcanism has created 
several small islands.

    As is well-known, there have been no landings on Europa for almost a 
thousand years, but the satellite is under continuous surveillance.

    Ganymede, largest moon in the Solar System (diameter 5260 kilometres), has 
also been affected by the creation of a new sun, and its equatorial regions are 
warm enough to sustain terrestrial life-forms, though it does not yet have a 
breathable atmosphere. Most of its population is actively engaged in 
terraforming and scientific research; the main settlement is Anubis (pop 
41,000), near the South Pole.

    Callisto is again wholly different. Its entire surface is covered by impact 
craters of all sizes, so numerous that they overlap. The bombardment must have 
continued for millions of years, for the newer craters have completely 
obliterated the earlier ones. There is no permanent base on Callisto, but 
several automatic stations have been established there.

    

17
Ganymede

    

    It was unusual for Frank Poole to oversleep, but he had been kept awake by 
strange dreams. Past and present were inextricably mixed; sometimes he was on 
Discovery, sometimes in the Africa Tower - and sometimes he was a boy again, 
among friends he had thought long-forgotten.

    Where am I? he asked himself as he struggled up to consciousness, like a 
swimmer trying to get back to the surface. There was a small window just above 
his bed, covered by a curtain not thick enough to completely block the light 
from outside. There had been a time, around the mid-twentieth century, when 
aircraft had been slow enough to feature First Class sleeping accommodation: 
Poole had never sampled this nostalgic luxury, which some tourist organizations 
had still advertised in his own day, but he could easily imagine that he was 
doing so now.

    He drew the curtain and looked out. No, he had not awakened in the skies of 
Earth, though the landscape unrolling below was not unlike the Antarctic. But 
the South Pole had never boasted two suns, both rising at once as Goliath swept 
towards them.

    The ship was orbiting less than a hundred kilometres above what appeared to 
be an immense ploughed field, lightly dusted with snow. But the ploughman must 
have been drunk - or the guidance system must have gone crazy - for the furrows 
meandered in every direction, sometimes cutting across each other or turning 
back on themselves. Here and there the terrain was dotted with faint circles -
ghost craters from meteor impacts aeons ago.

    So this is Ganymede, Poole wondered drowsily. Mankind's furthest outpost 
from home! Why should any sensible person want to live here? Well, I've often 
thought that when I've flown over Greenland or Iceland in winter-time...

    There was a knock on the door, a 'Mind if I come in?', and Captain Chandler 
did so without waiting for a reply.

    'Thought we'd let you sleep until we landed - that end-of-trip party did 
last longer than I'd intended, but I couldn't risk a mutiny by cutting it 
short.'

    Poole laughed.

    'Has there ever been a mutiny in space?'

    'Oh, quite a few but not in my time. Now we've mentioned the subject, you 
might say that Hal started the tradition... sorry - perhaps I shouldn't - look - 
there's Ganymede City!'

    Coming up over the horizon was what appeared to be a criss-cross pattern of 
streets and avenues, intersecting almost at right-angles but with the slight 
irregularity typical of any settlement that had grown by accretion, without 
central planning. It was bisected by a broad river - Poole recalled that the 
equatorial regions of Ganymede were now warm enough for liquid water to exist - 
and it reminded him of an old wood-cut he had seen of medieval London.

    Then he noticed that Chandler was looking at him with an expression of 
amusement... and the illusion vanished as he realized the scale of the 'city'.

    'The Ganymedeans,' he said dryly, 'must have been rather large, to have made 
roads five or ten kilometres wide.'

    'Twenty in some places. Impressive, isn't it? And all the result of ice 
stretching and contracting. Mother Nature is ingenious... I could show you some 
patterns that look even more artificial, though they're not as large as this 
one.'

    'When I was a boy, there was a big fuss about a face on Mars. Of course, it 
turned out to be a hill that had been carved by sand-storms... lots of similar 
ones in Earth's deserts.'

    'Didn't someone say that history always repeats itself? Same sort of 
nonsense happened with Ganymede City - some nuts claimed it had been built by 
aliens. But I'm afraid it won't be around much longer.'

    'Why?' asked Poole in surprise.

    'It's already started to collapse, as Lucifer melts the permafrost. You 
won't recognize Ganymede in another hundred years... there's the edge of Lake 
Gilgamesh - if you look carefully - over on the right-'

    'I see what you mean. What's happening - surely the water's not boiling, 
even at this low pressure?'

    'Electrolysis plant. Don't know how many skillions of kilograms of oxygen a 
day. Of course, the hydrogen goes up and gets lost - we hope.'

    Chandler's voice trailed off into silence. Then he resumed, in an unusually 
diffident tone: 'All that beautiful water down there - Ganymede doesn't need 
half of it! Don't tell anyone, but I've been working out ways of getting some to 
Venus.'

    'Easier than nudging comets?'

    'As far as energy is concerned, yes - Ganymede's escape velocity is only 
three klicks per second. And much, much quicker - years instead of decades. But 
there are a few practical difficulties..

    'I can appreciate that. Would you shoot it off by a mass-launcher?'

    'Oh no - I'd use towers reaching up through the atmosphere, like the ones on 
Earth, but much smaller. We'd pump the water up to the top, freeze it down to 
near absolute zero, and let Ganymede sling it off in the right direction as it 
rotated. There would be some evaporation loss in transit, but most of it would 
arrive - what's so funny?'

    'Sorry - I'm not laughing at the idea - it makes good sense. But you've 
brought back such a vivid memory. We used to have a garden sprinkler - driven 
round and round by its water jets. What you're planning is the same thing - on a 
slightly bigger scale... using a whole world...'

    Suddenly, another image from his past obliterated all else. Poole remembered 
how, in those hot Arizona days, he and Rikki had loved to chase each other 
through the clouds of moving mist, from the slowly revolving spray of the garden 
sprinkler.

    Captain Chandler was a much more sensitive man than he pretended to be: he 
knew when it was time to leave.

    'Gotta get back to the bridge,' he said gruffly. 'See you when we land at 
Anubis.'

    

18
Grand Hotel

    

    The Grand Ganymede Hotel - inevitably known throughout the Solar System as 
'Hotel Grannymede' was certainly not grand, and would be lucky to get a rating 
of one-and-a-half stars on Earth. As the nearest competition was several hundred 
million kilometres away, the management felt little need to exert itself unduly.

    Yet Poole had no complaints, though he often wished that Danil was still 
around, to help him with the mechanics of life and to communicate more 
efficiently with the semi-intelligent devices with which he was surrounded. He 
had known a brief moment of panic when the door had closed behind the (human) 
bellboy, who had apparently been too awed by his guest to explain how any of the 
room's services functioned. After five minutes of fruitless talking to the 
unresponsive walls, Poole had finally made contact with a system that understood 
his accent and his commands. What an 'All Worlds' news item it would have made - 
'Historic astronaut starves to death, trapped in Ganymede hotel room'!

    And there would have been a double irony. Perhaps the naming of the 
Grannymede's only luxury suite was inevitable, but it had been a real shock to 
meet an ancient life-size holo of his old shipmate, in full-dress uniform, as he 
was led into - the Bowman Suite. Poole even recognized the image: his own 
official portrait had been made at the same time, a few days before the mission 
began.

    He soon discovered that most of his Goliath crewmates had domestic 
arrangements in Anubis, and were anxious for him to meet their Significant 
Others during the ship's planned twenty-day stop. Almost immediately he was 
caught up in the social and professional life of this frontier settlement, and 
it was Africa Tower that now seemed a distant dream.

    Like many Americans, in their secret hearts, Poole had a nostalgic affection 
for small communities where everyone knew everyone else - in the real world, and 
not the virtual one of cyberspace. Anubis, with a resident population less than 
that of his remembered Flagstaff, was not a bad approximation to this ideal.

    The three main pressure domes, each two kilometres in diameter, stood on a 
plateau overlooking an ice-field which stretched unbroken to the horizon. 
Ganymede's second sun

    - once known as Jupiter - would never give sufficient heat to melt the polar 
caps. This was the principal reason for establishing Anubis in such an 
inhospitable spot: the city's foundations were not likely to collapse for at 
least several centuries.

    And inside the domes, it was easy to be completely indifferent to the 
outside world. Poole, when he had mastered the mechanisms of the Bowman Suite, 
discovered that he had a limited but impressive choice of environments. He could 
sit beneath palm trees on a Pacific beach, listening to the gentle murmur of the 
waves - or, if he preferred, the roar of a tropical hurricane. He could fly 
slowly along the peaks of the Himalayas, or down the immense canyons of Mariner 
Valley. He could walk through the gardens of Versailles or down the streets of 
half a dozen great cities, at several widely spaced times in their history. Even 
if the Hotel Grannymede was not one of the Solar System's most highly acclaimed 
resorts, it boasted facilities which would have astounded all its more famous 
predecessors on Earth.

    But it was ridiculous to indulge in terrestrial nostalgia, when he had come 
half-way across the Solar System to visit a strange new world. After some 
experimenting, Poole arranged a compromise, for enjoyment - and inspiration -
during his steadily fewer moments of leisure.

    To his great regret, he had never been to Egypt, so it was delightful to 
relax beneath the gaze of the Sphinx - as it was before its controversial 
'restoration' - and to watch tourists scrambling up the massive blocks of the 
Great Pyramid. The illusion was perfect, apart from the no-man's-land where the 
desert clashed with the (slightly worn) carpet of the Bowman Suite.

    The sky, however, was one that no human eyes had seen until five thousand 
years after the last stone was laid at Giza. But it was not an illusion; it was 
the complex and ever-changing reality of Ganymede.

    Because this world - like its companions - had been robbed of its spin aeons 
ago by the tidal drag of Jupiter, the new sun born from the giant planet hung 
motionless in its sky. One side of Ganymede was in perpetual Lucifer-light - and 
although the other hemisphere was often referred to as the 'Night Land', that 
designation was as misleading as the much earlier phrase 'The dark side of the 
Moon'. Like the lunar Farside, Ganymede's 'Night Land' had the brilliant light 
of old Sol for half of its long day.

    By a coincidence more confusing than useful, Ganymede took almost exactly 
one week - seven days, three hours -to orbit its primary. Attempts to create a 
'One Mede day = one Earth week' calendar had generated so much chaos that they 
had been abandoned centuries ago. Like all the other residents of the Solar 
System, the locals employed Universal Time, identifying their twenty-four-hour 
standard days by numbers rather than names.

    Since Ganymede's newborn atmosphere was still extremely thin and almost 
cloudless, the parade of heavenly bodies provided a never-ending spectacle. At 
their closest, Io and Callisto each appeared about half the size of the Moon as 
seen from Earth - but that was the only thing they had in common. Io was so 
close to Lucifer that it took less than two days to race around its orbit, and 
showed visible movement even in a matter of minutes. Callisto, at over four 
times Io's distance, required two Mede days - or sixteen Earth ones - to 
complete its leisurely circuit.

    The physical contrast between the two worlds was even more remarkable. Deep-
frozen Callisto had been almost unchanged by Jupiter's conversion into a mini-
sun: it was still a wasteland of shallow ice craters, so closely packed that 
there was not a single spot on the entire satellite that had escaped from 
multiple impacts, in the days when Jupiter's enormous gravity field was 
competing with Saturn's to gather up the debris of the outer Solar System. Since 
then, apart from a few stray shots, nothing had happened for several billion 
years.

    On Io, something was happening every week. As a local wit had remarked, 
before the creation of Lucifer it had been Hell - now it was Hell warmed up.

    Often, Poole would zoom into that burning landscape and look into the 
sulphurous throats of volcanoes that were continually reshaping an area larger 
than Africa. Sometimes incandescent fountains would soar briefly hundreds of 
kilometres into space, like gigantic trees of fire growing on a lifeless world.

    As the floods of molten sulphur spread out from volcanoes and vents, the 
versatile element changed through a narrow spectrum of reds and oranges and 
yellows when, chameleon-like, it was transformed into its vari-coloured 
allotropes. Before the dawn of the Space Age, no one had ever imagined that such 
a world existed. Fascinating though it was to observe it from his comfortable 
vantage point, Poole found it hard to believe that men had ever risked landing 
there, where even robots feared to tread... His main interest, however, was 
Europa, which at its closest appeared almost exactly the same size as Earth's 
solitary Moon, but raced through its phases in only four days. Though Poole had 
been quite unconscious of the symbolism when he chose his private landscape, it 
now seemed wholly appropriate that Europa should hang in the sky above another 
great enigma - the Sphinx.

    Even with no magnification, when he requested the naked-eye view, Poole 
could see how greatly Europa had changed in the thousand years since Discovery 
had set out for Jupiter. The spider's web of narrow bands and lines that had 
once completely enveloped the smallest of the four Galilean satellites had 
vanished, except around the poles. Here the global crust of kilometre-thick ice 
remained unmelted by the warmth of Europa's new sun: elsewhere, virgin oceans 
seethed and boiled in the thin atmosphere, at what would have been comfortable 
room temperature on Earth.

    It was also a comfortable temperature to the creatures who had emerged, 
after the melting of the unbroken ice shield that had both trapped and protected 
them. Orbiting spysats, showing details only centimetres across, had watched one 
Europan species starting to evolve into an amphibious stage: though they still 
spent much of their time underwater, the 'Europs' had even begun the 
construction of simple buildings.

    That this could happen in a mere thousand years was astonishing, but no one 
doubted that the explanation lay in the last and greatest of the Monoliths - the 
many-kilometre-long 'Great Wall' standing on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

    And no one doubted that, in its own mysterious way, it was watching over the 
experiment it had started on this world - as it had done on Earth four million 
years before.

    

19
The Madness of Mankind

    

    MISS PRINGLE

    FILE INDRA

    My dear Indra - sorry I've not even voice-mailed you before - usual excuse, 
of course, so I won't bother to give it.

    To answer your question - yes, I'm now feeling quite at home at the 
Grannymede, but am spending less and less time there, though I've been enjoying 
the sky display I've had piped into my suite. Last night the Io flux-tube put on 
a fine performance - that's a kind of lightning discharge between Io and Jupiter 
- I mean Lucifer. Rather like Earth's aurora, but much more spectacular. 
Discovered by the radio astronomers even before I was born.

    And talking about ancient times - did you know that Anubis has a Sheriff? I 
think that's overdoing the frontier spirit. Reminds me of the stories my 
grandfather used to tell me about Arizona... Must try some of them on the 
Medes...

    This may sound silly - I'm still not used to being in the Bowman Suite. I 
keep looking over my shoulder...

    How do I spend my time? Much the same as in Africa Tower. I'm meeting the 
local intelligentsia, though as you might expect they're rather thin on the 
ground (hope no one is bugging this). And I've interacted - real and virtual - 
with the educational system - very good, it seems, though more technically 
oriented than you'd approve. That's inevitable, of course, in this hostile 
environment...

    But it's helped me to understand why people live here. There's a challenge - 
a sense of purpose, if you like - that I seldom found on Earth.

    It's true that most of the Medes were born here, so don't know any other 
home. Though they're - usually - too polite to say so, they think that the Home 
Planet is becoming decadent. Are you? And if so, what are you Terries -  as the 
locals call you - going to do about it? One of the teenage classes I've met 
hopes to wake you up. They're drawing up elaborate Top Secret plans for the 
Invasion of Earth. Don't say I didn't warn you...

    I've made one trip outside Anubis, into the so-called Night Land, where they 
never see Lucifer. Ten of us -Chandler, two of Goliath's crew, six Medes - went 
into Farside, and chased the Sun down to the horizon so it really was night. 
Awesome - much like polar winters on Earth, but with the sky completely black... 
almost felt I was in space.

    We could see all the Galileans beautifully, and watched Europa eclipse - 
sorry, occult - Io. Of course, the trip had been timed so we could observe 
this...

    Several of the smaller satellites were just also visible, but the double 
star Earth-Moon was much more conspicuous. Did I feel homesick? Frankly, no - 
though I miss my new friends back there...

    And I'm sorry - I still haven't met Dr Khan, though he's left several 
messages for me. I promise to do it in the next few days - Earth days, not Mede 
ones!

    Best wishes to Joe - regards to Danil, if you know what's happened to him - 
is he a real person again? - and my love to yourself.

    STORE TRANSMIT

    

    Back in Poole's century, a person's name often gave a clue to his/her 
appearance, but that was no longer true thirty generations later. Dr Theodore 
Khan turned out to be a Nordic blond who might have looked more at home in a 
Viking longboat than ravaging the steppes of Central Asia: however, he would not 
have been too impressive in either role, being less than a hundred and fifty 
centimetres tall. Poole could not resist a little amateur psychoanalysis: small 
people were often aggressive over-achievers - which, from Indra Wallace's hints, 
appeared to be a good description of Ganymede's sole resident philosopher. Khan 
probably needed these qualifications, to survive in such a practically-minded 
society.

    Anubis City was far too small to boast a university campus - a luxury which 
still existed on the other worlds, though many believed that the 
telecommunications revolution had made it obsolete. Instead, it had something 
much more appropriate, as well as centuries older - an Academy, complete with a 
grove of olive trees that would have fooled Plato himself, until he had 
attempted to walk through it. Indra's joke about departments of philosophy 
requiring no more equipment than blackboards clearly did not apply in this 
sophisticated environment.

    'It's built to hold seven people,' said Dr Khan proudly, when they had 
settled down on chairs obviously designed to be not-too-comfortable, 'because 
that's the maximum one can efficiently interact with. And, if you count the 
ghost of Socrates, it was the number present when Phaedo delivered his famous 
address...'

    'The one on the immortality of the soul?'

    Khan was so obviously surprised that Poole could not help laughing.

    'I took a crash course in philosophy just before I graduated - when the 
syllabus was planned, someone decided that we hairy-knuckled engineers should be 
exposed to a little culture.'

    'I'm delighted to hear it. That makes things so much easier. You know - I 
still can't credit my luck. Your arrival here almost tempts me to believe in 
miracles! I'd even thought of going to Earth to meet you - has dear Indra told 
you about my - ah - obsession?'

    'No,' Poole answered, not altogether truthfully.

    Dr Khan looked very pleased; he was clearly delighted to find a new 
audience.

    'You may have heard me called an atheist, but that's not quite true. Atheism 
is unprovable, so uninteresting. Equally, however unlikely it is, we can never 
be certain that God once existed - and has now shot off to infinity, where no 
one can ever find him... Like Gautama Buddha, I take no position on this 
subject. My field of interest is the psychopathology known as Religion.'

    'Psychopathology? That's a harsh judgement.'

    'Amply justified by history. Imagine that you're an intelligent 
extraterrestrial, concerned only with verifiable truths. You discover a species 
which has divided itself into thousands - no by now millions - of tribal groups 
holding an incredible variety of beliefs about the origin of the universe and 
the way to behave in it. Although many of them have ideas in common, even when 
there's a ninety-nine per cent overlap, the remaining one per cent is enough to 
set them killing and torturing each other, over trivial points of doctrine, 
utterly meaningless to outsiders.'

    'How to account for such irrational behaviour? Lucretius hit it on the nail 
when he said that religion was the by-product of fear - a reaction to a 
mysterious and often hostile universe. For much of human prehistory, it may have 
been a necessary evil - but why was it so much more evil than necessary - and 
why did it survive when it was no longer necessary?

    'I said evil - and I mean it, because fear leads to cruelty. The slightest 
knowledge of the Inquisition makes one ashamed to belong to the human species... 
One of the most revolting books ever published was the Hammer of Witches, 
written by a couple of sadistic perverts and describing the tortures the Church 
authorized - encouraged! - to extract "confessions" from thousands of harmless 
old women, before it burned them alive... The Pope himself wrote an approving 
foreword!'

    'But most of the other religions, with a few honourable exceptions, were 
just as bad as Christianity... Even in your century, little boys were kept 
chained and whipped until they'd memorized whole volumes of pious gibberish, and 
robbed of their childhood and manhood to become monks...'

    'Perhaps the most baffling aspect of the whole affair is how obvious madmen, 
century after century, would proclaim that they - and they alone! - had received 
messages from God. If all the messages had agreed, that would have settled the 
matter. But of course they were wildly discordant - which never prevented self-
styled messiahs from gathering hundreds - sometimes millions - of adherents, who 
would fight to the death against equally deluded believers of a microscopically 
differing faith.'

    Poole thought it was about time he got a word in edgeways.

    'You've reminded me of something that happened in my home-town when I was a 
kid. A holy man - quote, unquote - set up shop, claimed he could work miracles - 
and collected a crowd of devotees in next to no time. And they weren't ignorant 
or illiterate; often they came from the best families. Every Sunday I used to 
see expensive cars parked round his - ah - temple.'

    'The "Rasputin Syndrome", it's been called: there are millions of such 
cases, all through history, in every country. And about one time in a thousand 
the cult survives for a couple of generations. What happened in this case?'

    'Well, the competition was very unhappy, and did its best to discredit him. 
Wish I could remember his name - he used a long Indian one - Swami something-or-
other - but it turned out he came from Alabama. One of his tricks was to produce 
holy objects out of thin air, and hand them to his worshippers. As it happened, 
our local rabbi was an amateur conjuror, and gave public demonstrations showing 
exactly how it was done. Didn't make the slightest difference - the faithful 
said that their man's magic was real, and the rabbi was just jealous.'

    'At one time, I'm sorry to say, Mother took the rascal seriously - it was 
soon after Dad had run off, which may have had something to do with it - and 
dragged me to one of his sessions. I was only about ten, but I thought I'd never 
seen anyone so unpleasant-looking. He had a beard that could have held several 
birds' nests, and probably did.'

    'He sounds like the standard model. How long did he flourish?'

    'Three or four years. And then he had to leave town in a hurry: he was 
caught running teenage orgies. Of course, he claimed he was using mystical soul-
saving techniques. And you won't believe this -,

    'Try me.'

    'Even then, lots of his dupes still had faith in him. Their god could do no 
wrong, so he must have been framed.'

    'Framed?'

    'Sorry - convicted by faked evidence - sometimes used by the police to catch 
criminals, when all else fails.'

    'Hmm. Well, your swami was perfectly typical: I'm rather disappointed. But 
he does help to prove my case -that most of humanity has always been insane, at 
least some of the time.'

    'Rather an unrepresentative sample - one small Flagstaff suburb.'

    'True, but I could multiply it by thousands - not only in your century, but 
all down the ages. There's never been anything, however absurd, that countless 
people weren't prepared to believe, often so passionately that they'd fight to 
the death rather than abandon their illusions. To me, that's a good operational 
definition of insanity.'

    'Would you argue that anyone with strong religious beliefs was insane?'

    'In a strictly technical sense, yes - if they really were sincere, and not 
hypocrites. As I suspect ninety per cent were.'

    'I'm certain that Rabbi Berenstein was sincere - and he was one of the 
sanest men I ever knew, as well as one of the finest. And how do you account for 
this? The only real genius I ever met was Dr Chandra, who led the HAL project. I 
once had to go into his office - there was no reply when I knocked, and I 
thought it was unoccupied.'

    'He was praying to a group of fantastic little bronze statues, draped with 
flowers. One of them looked like an elephant... another had more than the 
regular number of arms... I was quite embarrassed, but luckily he didn't hear me 
and I tiptoed out. Would you say he was insane?'

    'You've chosen a bad example: genius often is! So let's say: not insane, but 
mentally impaired, owing to childhood conditioning. The Jesuits claimed: "Give 
me a boy for six years, and he is mine for life." If they'd got hold of little 
Chandra in time, he'd have been a devout Catholic - not a Hindu.'

    'Possibly. But I'm puzzled - why were you so anxious to meet me? I'm afraid 
I've never been a devout anything. What have I got to do with all this?'

    Slowly, and with the obvious enjoyment of a man unburdening himself of a 
heavy, long-hoarded secret, Dr Khan told him.

    

20
Apostate

    

    RECORD POOLE

    Hello, Frank... So you've finally met Ted. Yes, you could call him a crank - 
if you define that as an enthusiast with no sense of humour. But cranks often 
get that way because they know a Big Truth - can, you hear my capitals?

    - and no one will listen... I'm glad you did - and I suggest you take him 
quite seriously.

    You said you were surprised to see a Pope's portrait prominently displayed 
in Ted's apartment. That would have been his hero, Pius XX - I'm sure I 
mentioned him to you. Look him up - he's usually called the Impius! It's a 
fascinating story, and exactly parallels something that happened just before you 
were born. You must know how Mikhail Gorbachev, the President of the Soviet 
Empire, brought about its dissolution at the end of the twentieth century, by 
exposing its crimes and excesses.

    He didn't intend to go that far - he'd hoped to reform it, but that was no 
longer possible. We'll never know if Pius XX had the same idea, because he was 
assassinated by a demented cardinal soon after he'd horrified the world by 
releasing the secret files of the Inquisition...

    The religious were still shaken by the discovery of TMA ZERO only a few 
decades earlier - that had a great impact on Pius XX, and certainly influenced 
his actions...

    But you still haven't told me how Ted, that old cryptoDeist, thinks you can 
help him in his search for God. I believe he's still mad at him for hiding so 
successfully. Better not say I told you that.

    On second thoughts, why not?

    Love - Indra.

    STORE

    TRANSMIT

    

    MISS PRINGLE

    RECORD

    Hello - Indra - I've had another session with Dr Ted, though I've still not 
told him just why you think he's angry with God!

    But I've had some very interesting arguments - no, dialogues - with him, 
though he does most of the talking. Never thought I'd get into philosophy again 
after all these years of engineering. Perhaps I had to go through them first, to 
appreciate it. Wonder how he'd grade me as a student?

    Yesterday I tried this line of approach, to see his reaction. Perhaps it's 
original, though I doubt it. Thought you'd like to hear it - will be interested 
in your comments. Here's our discussion -MISS PRINGLE COPY AUDIO 94.

    'Surely, Ted, you can't deny that most of the greatest works of human art 
have been inspired by religious devotion. Doesn't that prove something?'

    'Yes - but not in a way that will give much comfort to any believers! From 
time to time, people amuse themselves making lists of the Biggests and Greatests 
and Bests - I'm sure that was a popular entertainment in your day.'

    'It certainly was.'

    'Well, there have been some famous attempts to do this with the arts. Of 
course such lists can't establish absolute - eternal - values, but they're 
interesting and show how tastes change from age to age.'

    'The last list I saw - it was on the Earth Artnet only a few years ago - was 
divided into Architecture, Music, Visual Arts... I remember a few of the 
examples... the Parthenon, the Taj Mahal... Bach's Toccata and Fugue was first 
in music, followed by Verdi's Requiem Mass. In art - the Mona Lisa, of course. 
Then - not sure of the order - a group of Buddha statues somewhere in Ceylon, 
and the golden death-mask of young King Tut.

    'Even if I could remember all the others - which of course I can't - it 
doesn't matter: the important thing is their cultural and religious backgrounds. 
Overall, no single religion dominated - except in music. And that could be due 
to a purely technological accident: the organ and the other pre-electronic 
musical instruments were perfected in the Christianized West. It could have 
worked out quite differently... if, for example, the Greeks or the Chinese had 
regarded machines as something more than toys.

    'But what really settles the argument, as far as I'm concerned, is the 
general consensus about the single greatest work of human art. Over and over 
again, in almost every listing - it's Angkor Wat. Yet the religion that inspired 
that has been extinct for centuries - no one even knows precisely what it was, 
except that it involved hundreds of gods, not merely one!'

    'Wish I could have thrown that at dear old Rabbi Berenstein - I'm sure he'd 
have had a good answer.'

    'I don't doubt it. I wish I could have met him myself. And I'm glad he never 
lived to see what happened to Israel.'

    END AUDIO.

    There you have it, Indra. Wish the Grannymede had Angkor Wat on its menu - 
I've never seen it - but you can't have everything...

    Now, the question you really wanted answered... why is Dr Ted so delighted 
that I'm here?

    As you know, he's convinced that the key to many mysteries lies on Europa - 
where no one has been allowed to land for a thousand years.

    He thinks I may be an exception. He believes I have a friend there. Yes - 
Dave Bowman, or whatever he's now become...

    We know that he survived being drawn into the Big Brother Monolith - and 
somehow revisited Earth afterwards. But there's more, that I didn't know. Very 
few people do, because the Medes are embarrassed to talk about it...

    Ted Khan has spent years collecting the evidence, and is now quite certain 
of the facts - even though he can't explain them. On at least six occasions, 
about a century apart, reliable observers here in Anubis have reported seeing an 
- apparition - just like the one that Heywood Floyd met aboard Discovery. Though 
not one of them knew about that incident, they were all able to identify Dave 
when they were shown his hologram. And there was another sighting aboard a 
survey ship that made a close approach to Europa, six hundred years ago...

    Individually, no one would take these cases seriously - but altogether they 
make a pattern. Ted's quite sure that Dave Bowman survives in some form, 
presumably associated with the Monolith we call the Great Wall. And he still has 
some interest in our affairs.

    Though he's made no attempt at communication, Ted hopes we can make contact. 
He believes that I'm the only human who can do it...

    I'm still trying to make up my mind. Tomorrow, I'll talk it over with 
Captain Chandler. Will let you know what we decide. Love, Frank.

    STORE

    TRANSMIT INDRA

    

21
Quarantine

    

    'Do you believe in ghosts, Dim?'

    'Certainly not: but like every sensible man, I'm afraid of them. Why do you 
ask?'

    'If it wasn't a ghost, it was the most vivid dream I've ever had. Last night 
I had a conversation with Dave Bowman.'

    Poole knew that Captain Chandler would take him seriously, when the occasion 
required; nor was he disappointed.

    'Interesting - but there's an obvious explanation. You've been living here 
in the Bowman Suite, for Deus's sake! You told me yourself it feels haunted.'

    'I'm sure - well, ninety-nine per cent sure - that you're right, and the 
whole thing was prompted by the discussions I've been having with Prof. Ted. 
Have you heard the reports that Dave Bowman occasionally appears in Anubis? 
About once every hundred years? Just as he did to Dr Floyd aboard Discovery, 
after she'd been reactivated.'

    'What happened there? I've heard vague stories, but never taken them 
seriously.'

    'Dr Khan does - and so do I - I've seen the original recordings. Floyd's 
sitting in my old chair when a kind of dust-cloud forms behind him, and shapes 
itself into Dave - though only the head has detail. Then it gives that famous 
message, warning him to leave.'

    'Who wouldn't have? But that was a thousand years ago. Plenty of time to 
fake it.'

    'What would be the point? Khan and I were looking at it yesterday. I'd bet 
my life it's authentic.'

    'As a matter of fact, I agree with you. And I have heard those reports...'

    Chandler's voice trailed away, and he looked slightly embarrassed.

    'Long time ago, I had a girl-friend here in Anubis. She told me that her 
grandfather had seen Bowman. I laughed.'

    'I wonder if Ted has that sighting on his list. Could you put him in touch 
with your friend?'

    'Er - rather not. We haven't spoken for years. For all I know, she may be on 
the Moon, or Mars... Anyway, why is Professor Ted interested?'

    'That's what I really wanted to discuss with you.'

    'Sounds ominous. Go ahead,'

    'Ted thinks that Dave Bowman - or whatever he's become - may still exist - 
up there on Europa.'

    'After a thousand years?'

    'Well - look at me.'

    'One sample is poor statistics, my maths prof. used to say. But go on.'

    'It's a complicated story - or maybe a jigsaw, with most of the pieces 
missing. But it's generally agreed that something crucial happened to our 
ancestors when that Monolith appeared in Africa, four million years ago. It 
marks a turning point in prehistory - the first appearance of tools - and 
weapons - and religion... That can't be pure coincidence. The Monolith must have 
done something to us - surely it couldn't have just stood there, passively 
accepting worship...'

    'Ted's fond of quoting a famous palaeontologist who said "TMA ZERO gave us 
an evolutionary kick in the pants". He argues that the kick wasn't in a wholly 
desirable direction. Did we have to become so mean and nasty to survive? Maybe 
we did... As I understand him, Ted believes that there's something fundamentally 
wrong with the wiring of our brains, which makes us incapable of consistent 
logical thinking. To make matters worse, though all creatures need a certain 
amount of aggressiveness to survive, we seem to have far more than is absolutely 
necessary. And no other animal tortures its fellows as we do. Is this an 
evolutionary accident - a piece of genetic bad luck?

    'It's also widely agreed that TMA ONE was planted on the Moon to keep track 
of the project - experiment - whatever it was - and to report to Jupiter - the 
obvious place for Solar System Mission Control. That's why another Monolith - 
Big Brother - was waiting there. Had been waiting four million years, when 
Discovery arrived. Agreed so far?'

    'Yes; I've always thought that was the most plausible theory.'

    'Now for the more speculative stuff. Bowman was apparently swallowed up by 
Big Brother, yet something of his personality seems to have survived. Twenty 
years after that encounter with Heywood Floyd in the second Jupiter expedition, 
they had another contact aboard Universe, when Floyd joined it for the 2061 
rendezvous with Halley's Comet. At least, so he tells us in his memoirs - though 
he was well over a hundred when he dictated them.'

    'Could have been senile.'

    'Not according to all the contemporary accounts! Also - perhaps even more 
significant - his grandson Chris had some equally weird experiences when Galaxy 
made its forced landing on Europa. And, of course, that's where the Monolith - 
or a Monolith - is, right now! Surrounded by Europans...'

    'I'm beginning to see what Dr Ted's driving at. This is where we came in - 
the whole cycle's starting over again. The Europs are being groomed for 
stardom.'

    'Exactly - everything fits. Jupiter ignited to give them a sun, to thaw out 
their frozen world. The warning to us to keep our distance - presumably so that 
we wouldn't interfere with their development...'

    'Where have I heard that idea before? Of course, Frank - it goes back a 
thousand years - to your own time! "The Prime Directive"! We still get lots of 
laughs from those old Star Trek programmes.'

    'Did I ever tell you I once met some of the actors? They would have been 
surprised to see me now... And I've always had two thoughts about that non-
interference policy. The Monolith certainly violated it with us, back there in 
Africa. One might argue that did have disastrous results...'

    'So better luck next time - on Europa!' Poole laughed, without much humour. 
'Khan used those exact words.'

    'And what does he think we should do about it? Above all - where do you come 
into the picture?'

    'First of all, we must find what's really happening on Europa - and why. 
Merely observing it from space is not enough.'

    'What else can we do? All the probes the Medes have sent there were blown 
up, just before landing.'

    'And ever since the mission to rescue Galaxy, crew-carrying ships have been 
diverted by some field of force, which no one can figure out. Very interesting: 
it proves that whatever is down there is protective, but not malevolent. And - 
this is the important point - it must have some way of scanning what's on the 
way. It can distinguish between robots and humans.'

    'More than I can do, sometimes. Go on.'

    'Well, Ted thinks there's one human being who might make it down to the 
surface of Europa - because his old friend is there, and may have some influence 
with the 'powers-that-be.'

    Captain Dimitri Chandler gave a long, low whistle.

    'And you're willing to risk it?'

    'Yes: what have I got to lose?'

    'One valuable shuttle craft, if I know what you have in mind. Is that why 
you've been learning to fly Falcon?'

    'Well, now that you mention it... the idea had occurred to me.'

    'I'll have to think it over - I'll admit I'm intrigued, but there are lots 
of problems.'

    'Knowing you, I'm sure they won't stand in the way - once you've decided to 
help me.'

    

22
Venture

    

    MISS PRINGLE LIST PRIORITY MESSAGES FROM EARTH

    RECORD

    Dear Indra - I'm not trying to be dramatic, but this may be my last message 
from Ganymede. By the time you receive it, I will be on my way to Europa.

    Though it's a sudden decision - and no one is more surprised than I am - 
I've thought it over very carefully. As you'll have guessed, Ted Khan is largely 
responsible... let him do the explaining, if I don't come back. Please don't 
misunderstand me - in no way do I regard this as a suicide mission! But I'm 
ninety per cent convinced by Ted's arguments, and he's aroused my curiosity so 
much that I'd never forgive myself if I turned down this once-in-a-lifetime 
opportunity. Maybe I should say once in two lifetimes...

    I'm flying Goliath's little one-person shuttle Falcon - how I'd have loved 
to demonstrate her to my old colleagues back at the Space Administration! 
Judging by past records, the most likely outcome is that I'll be diverted away 
from Europa before I can land. Even this will teach me something...

    And if it - presumably the local Monolith, the Great Wall - decides to treat 
me like the robot probes it's zapped in the past, I'll never know. That's a risk 
I'm prepared to take.

    Thank you for everything, and my very best to Joe. Love from Ganymede - and 
soon, I hope, from Europa.

    STORE

    TRANSMIT

    

IV
THE KINGDOM OF SULPHUR

    

23
Falcon

    

    'Europa's about four hundred thousand kay from Ganymede at the moment,' 
Captain Chandler informed Poole.

    'If you stepped on the gas - thanks for teaching me that phrase! - Falcon 
could get you there in an hour. But I wouldn't recommend it: our mysterious 
friend might be alarmed by anyone coming in that fast.'

    'Agreed and I want time to think. I'm going to take several hours, at least. 
And I'm still hoping...' Poole's voice trailed off into silence.

    'Hoping what?'

    'That I can make some sort of contact with Dave, or whatever it is, before I 
attempt to land.'

    'Yes, it's always rude to drop in uninvited - even with people you know, let 
alone perfect strangers like the Europs. Perhaps you should take some gifts - 
what did the old-time explorers use? I believe mirrors and beads were once 
popular.'

    Chandler's facetious tone did not disguise his real concern, both for Poole 
and for the valuable piece of equipment he proposed to borrow - and for which 
the skipper of Goliath was ultimately responsible.

    'I'm still trying to decide how we work this. If you come back a hero, I 
want to bask in your reflected glory. But if you lose Falcon as well as 
yourself, what shall I say? That you stole the shuttle while we weren't looking? 
I'm afraid no one would buy that story. Ganymede Traffic Control's very 
efficient - has to be! If you left without advance notice, they'd be on to you 
in a microsec - well, a millisecond. No way you could leave unless I file your 
flight-plan ahead of time.'

    'So this is what I propose to do, unless I think of something better.'

    'You're taking Falcon out for a final qualification test - everyone knows 
you've already soloed. You'll go into a two-thousand-kilometre-high orbit above 
Europa - nothing unusual about that - people do it all the time, and the local 
authorities don't seem to object.'

    'Estimated total flight time five hours plus or minus ten minutes. If you 
suddenly change your mind about coming home, no one can do anything about it - 
at least, no one on Ganymede. Of course, I'll make some indignant noises, and 
say how astonished I am by such gross navigational errors, etc., etc. Whatever 
will look best in the subsequent Court of Enquiry.'

    'Would it come to that? I don't want to do anything that will get you into 
trouble.'

    'Don't worry - it's time there was a little excitement round here. But only 
you and I know about this plot; try not to mention it to the crew - I want them 
to have - what was that other useful expression you taught me? - "plausible 
deniability".'

    'Thanks, Dim - I really appreciate what you're doing. And I hope you'll 
never have to regret hauling me aboard Goliath, out round Neptune.'

    

    Poole found it hard to avoid arousing suspicion, by the way he behaved 
towards his new crewmates as they prepared Falcon for what was supposed to be a 
short, routine flight. Only he and Chandler knew that it might be nothing of the 
kind.

    Yet he was not heading into the totally unknown, as he and Dave Bowman had 
done a thousand years ago. Stored in the shuttle's memory were high-resolution 
maps of Europa showing details down to a few metres across. He knew exactly 
where he wished to go; it only remained to see if he would be allowed to break 
the centuries-long quarantine.

    

24
Escape

    

    'Manual control, please.'

    'Are you sure, Frank?'

    'Quite sure, Falcon... Thank you.'

    Illogical though it seemed, most of the human race had found it impossible 
not to be polite to its artificial children, however simple-minded they might 
be. Whole volumes of psychology, as well as popular guides (How Not to Hurt Your 
Computer's Feelings; Artificial Intelligence - Real irritation were two of the 
best-known titles) had been written on the subject of Man-Machine etiquette. 
Long ago it had been decided that, however inconsequential rudeness to robots 
might appear to be, it should be discouraged. All too easily, it could spread to 
human relationships as well.

    Falcon was now in orbit, just as her flight-plan had promised, at a safe two 
thousand kilometres above Europa. The giant moon's crescent dominated the sky 
ahead, and even the area not illuminated by Lucifer was so brilliantly lit by 
the much more distant Sun that every detail was clearly visible. Poole needed no 
optical aid to see his planned destination, on the still-icy shore of the Sea of 
Galilee, not far from the skeleton of the first spacecraft to land on this 
world. Though the Europans had long ago removed all its metal components, the 
ill-fated Chinese ship still served as a memorial to its crew; and it was 
appropriate that the only 'town' - even if an alien one - on this whole world 
should have been named 'Tsienville'.

    Poole had decided to come down over the Sea, and then fly very slowly 
towards Tsienville - hoping that this approach would appear friendly, or at 
least non-aggressive. Though he admitted to himself that this was very nave, he 
could think of no better alternative.

    Then, suddenly, just as he was dropping below the thousand-kilometre level, 
there was an interruption - not of the kind he had hoped for, but one which he 
had been expecting.

    'This is Ganymede Control calling Falcon. You have departed from your 
flight-plan. Please advise immediately what is happening.'

    It was hard to ignore such an urgent request, but in the circumstances it 
seemed the best thing to do.

    Exactly thirty seconds later, and a hundred kilometres closer to Europa, 
Ganymede repeated its message. Once again Poole ignored it - but Falcon did not.

    'Are you quite sure you want to do this, Frank?' asked the shuttle. Though 
Poole knew perfectly well that he was imagining it, he would have sworn there 
was a note of anxiety in its voice.

    'Quite sure, Falcon. I know exactly what I'm doing.'

    That was certainly untrue, and any moment now further lying might be 
necessary, to a more sophisticated audience.

    Seldom-activated indicator lights started to flash near the edge of the 
control board. Poole smiled with satisfaction: everything was going according to 
plan.

    'This is Ganymede Control! Do you receive me, Falcon? You are operating on 
manual override, so I am unable to assist you. What is happening? You are still 
descending towards Europa. Please acknowledge immediately.'

    Poole began to experience mild twinges of conscience. He thought he 
recognized the Controller's voice, and was almost certain that it was a charming 
lady he had met at a reception given by the Mayor, soon after his arrival at 
Anubis. She sounded genuinely alarmed.

    Suddenly, he knew how to relieve her anxiety - as well as to attempt 
something which he had previously dismissed as altogether too absurd. Perhaps, 
after all, it was worth a try: it certainly wouldn't do any harm - and it might 
even work.

    'This is Frank Poole, calling from Falcon. I am perfectly OK - but something 
seems to have taken over the controls, and is bringing the shuttle down towards 
Europa. I hope you are receiving this - I will continue to report as long as 
possible.'

    Well, he hadn't actually lied to the worried Controller, and one day he 
hoped he would be able to face her with a clear conscience.

    He continued to talk, trying to sound as if he was completely sincere, 
instead of skirting the edge of truth.

    'This is Frank Poole aboard the shuttle Falcon, descending towards Europa. I 
assume that some outside force has taken charge of my spacecraft, and will be 
landing it safely.'

    'Dave - this is your old shipmate Frank. Are you the entity that is 
controlling me? I have reason to think that you are on Europa.

    'If so - I look forward to meeting you - wherever or whatever you are.'

    Not for a moment did he imagine there would be any reply: even Ganymede 
Control appeared to be shocked into silence.

    And yet, in a way, he had an answer. Falcon was still being permitted to 
descend towards the Sea of Galilee.

    Europa was only fifty kilometres below; with his naked eyes Poole could now 
see the narrow black bar where the greatest of the Monoliths stood guard - if 
indeed it was doing that - on the outskirts of Tsienville.

    No human being had been allowed to come so close for a thousand years.

    

25
Fire in the Deep

    

    For millions of years it had been an ocean world, its hidden waters 
protected from the vacuum of space by a crust of ice. In most places the ice was 
kilometres thick, but there were lines of weakness where it had cracked open and 
torn apart. Then there had been a brief battle between two implacably hostile 
elements that came into direct contact on no other world in the Solar System, 
The war between Sea and Space always ended in the same stalemate; the exposed 
water simultaneously boiled and froze, repairing the armour of ice.

    The seas of Europa would have frozen completely solid long ago without the 
influence of nearby Jupiter. Its gravity continually kneaded the core of the 
little world; the forces that convulsed Io were also working there, though with 
much less ferocity. Everywhere in the deep was evidence of that tug-of-war 
between planet and satellite, in the continual roar and thunder of submarine 
earthquakes, the shriek of gases escaping from the interior, the infrasonic 
pressure waves of avalanches sweeping over the abyssal plains. By comparison 
with the tumultuous ocean that covered Europa, even the noisy seas of Earth were 
muted.

    Here and there, scattered over the deserts of the deep, were oases that 
would have amazed and delighted any terrestrial biologist. They extended for 
several kilometres around tangled masses of pipes and chimneys deposited by 
mineral brines gushing from the interior. Often they created natural parodies of 
Gothic castles, from which black, scalding liquids pulsed in a slow rhythm, as 
if driven by the beating of some mighty heart. And like blood, they were the 
authentic sign of life itself.

    The boiling fluids drove back the deadly cold leaking down from above, and 
formed islands of warmth on the sea-bed. Equally important, they brought from 
Europa's interior all the chemicals of life. Such fertile oases, offering food 
and energy in abundance, had been discovered by the twentieth-century explorers 
of Earth's oceans. Here they were present on an immensely larger scale, and in 
far greater variety.

    Delicate, spidery structures that seemed to be the analogue of plants 
flourished in the 'tropical' zones closest to the sources of heat. Crawling 
among these were bizarre slugs and worms, some feeding on the plants, others 
obtaining their food directly from the mineral-laden waters around them. At 
greater distances from the submarine fires around which all these creatures 
warmed themselves lived sturdier, more robust organisms, not unlike crabs or 
spiders.

    Armies of biologists could have spent lifetimes studying one small oasis. 
Unlike the Palaeozoic terrestrial seas, the Europan abyss was not a stable 
environment, so evolution had progressed with astonishing speed, producing 
multitudes of fantastic forms. And all were under the same indefinite stay of 
execution; sooner or later, each fountain of life would weaken and die, as the 
forces that powered it moved their focus elsewhere. All across the Europan sea-
bed was evidence of such tragedies; countless circular areas were littered with 
the skeletons and mineral-encrusted remains of dead creatures, where entire 
chapters of evolution had been deleted from the book of life. Some had left as 
their only memorial huge, empty shells like convoluted trumpets, larger than a 
man. And there were clams of many shapes - bivalves, and even trivalves, as well 
as spiral stone patterns, many metres across - exactly like the beautiful 
ammonites that disappeared so mysteriously from Earth's oceans at the end of the 
Cretaceous Period.

    Among the greatest wonders of the Europan abyss were rivers of incandescent 
lava, pouring from the calderas of submarine volcanoes. The pressure at these 
depths was so great that the water in contact with the red-hot magma could not 
flash into steam, so the two liquids co-existed in an uneasy truce.

    There, on another world and with alien actors, something like the story of 
Egypt had been played out long before the coming of Man. As the Nile had brought 
life to a narrow ribbon of desert, so this river of warmth had vivified the 
Europan deep. Along its banks, in a band never more than a few kilometres wide, 
species after species had evolved and flourished and passed away. And some had 
left permanent monuments.

    Often, they were not easy to distinguish from the natural formations around 
the thermal vents, and even when they were clearly not due to pure chemistry, 
one would be hard put to decide whether they were the product of instinct or 
intelligence. On Earth, the termites reared condominiums almost as impressive as 
any found in the single vast ocean that enveloped this frozen world.

    Along the narrow band of fertility in the deserts of the deep, whole 
cultures and even civilizations might have risen and fallen, armies might have 
marched - or swum - under the command of Europan Tamberlanes or Napoleons. And 
the rest of their world would never have known, for all their oases were as 
isolated from one another as the planets themselves, The creatures who basked in 
the glow of the lava rivers, and fed around the hot vents, could not cross the 
hostile wilderness between their lonely islands. If they had ever produced 
historians and philosophers, each culture would have been convinced that it was 
alone in the Universe.

    Yet even the space between the oases was not altogether empty of life; there 
were hardier creatures who had dared its rigours. Some were the Europan 
analogues of fish - streamlined torpedoes, propelled by vertical tails, steered 
by fins along their bodies. The resemblance to the most successful dwellers in 
Earth's oceans was inevitable; given the same engineering problems, evolution 
must produce very similar answers. Witness the dolphin and the shark - 
superficially almost identical, yet from far distant branches of the tree of 
life.

    There was, however, one very obvious difference between the fish of the 
Europan seas and those in terrestrial oceans; they had no gills, for there was 
hardly a trace of oxygen to be extracted from the waters in which they swam. 
Like the creatures around Earth's own geothermal vents, their metabolism was 
based on sulphur compounds, present in abundance in this volcanic environment.

    And very few had eyes. Apart from the flickering glow of lava outpourings, 
and occasional bursts of bioluminescence from creatures seeking mates, or 
hunters questing prey, it was a lightless world.

    It was also a doomed one. Not only were its energy sources sporadic and 
constantly shifting, but the tidal forces that drove them were steadily 
weakening. Even if they developed true intelligence, the Europans were trapped 
between fire and ice.

    Barring a miracle, they would perish with the final freezing of their little 
world.

    Lucifer had wrought that miracle.

    

26
Tsienville

    

    In the final moments, as he came in over the coast at a sedate hundred 
kilometres an hour, Poole wondered if there might be some last-minute 
intervention. But nothing untoward happened, even when he moved slowly along the 
black, forbidding face of the Great Wall.

    It was the inevitable name for the Europa Monolith as, unlike its little 
brothers on Earth and Moon, it was lying horizontally, and was more than twenty 
kilometres long. Although it was literally billions of times greater in volume 
than TMA ZERO and TMA ONE, its proportions were exactly the same - that 
intriguing ratio 1:4:9, inspirer of so much numerological nonsense over the 
centuries.

    As the vertical face was almost ten kilometres high, one plausible theory 
maintained that among its other functions the Great Wall served as a wind-break, 
protecting Tsienville from the ferocious gales that occasionally roared in from 
the Sea of Galilee. They were much less frequent now that the climate had 
stabilized, but a thousand years earlier they would have been a severe 
discouragement to any life-forms emerging from the ocean.

    Though he had fully intended to do so, Poole had never found time to visit 
the Tycho Monolith - still Top Secret when he had left for Jupiter - and Earth's 
gravity made its twin at Olduvai inaccessible to him. But he had seen their 
images so often that they were much more familiar than the proverbial back of 
the hand (and how many people, he had often wondered, would recognize the backs 
of their hands?). Apart from the enormous difference in scale, there was 
absolutely no way of distinguishing the Great Wall from TMA ONE and TMA ZERO - 
or, for that matter, the 'Big Brother' Monolith that Discovery and the Leonov 
had encountered orbiting Jupiter.

    According to some theories, perhaps crazy enough to be true, there was only 
one archetypal Monolith, and all the others - whatever their size - were merely 
projections or images of it. Poole recalled these ideas when he noticed the 
spotless, unsullied smoothness of the Great Wall's towering ebon face. Surely, 
after so many centuries in such a hostile environment, it should have collected 
a few patches of grime! Yet it looked as immaculate as if an army of window-
cleaners had just polished every square centimetre.

    Then he recalled that although everyone who had ever come to view TMA ONE 
and TMA ZERO felt an irresistible urge to touch their apparently pristine 
surfaces, no one had ever succeeded. Fingers - diamond drills - laser knives - 
all skittered across the Monoliths as if they were coated by an impenetrable 
film. Or as if - and this was another popular theory - they were not quite in 
this universe, but somehow separated from it by an utterly impassable fraction 
of a millimetre.

    He made one complete, leisurely circuit of the Great Wall, which remained 
totally indifferent to his progress. Then he brought the shuttle - still on 
manual, in case Ganymede Control made any further attempts to 'rescue' him - to 
the outer limits of Tsienville, and hovered there looking for the best place to 
land.

    The scene through Falcon's small panoramic window was wholly familiar to 
him; he had examined it so often in Ganymede recordings, never imagining that 
one day he would be observing it in reality. The Europs, it seemed, had no idea 
of town planning; hundreds of hemispherical structures were scattered apparently 
at random over an area about a kilometre across. Some were so small that even 
human children would feel cramped in them; though others were big enough to hold 
a large family, none was more than five metres high.

    And they were all made from the same material, which gleamed a ghostly white 
in the double daylight. On Earth, the Esquimaux had found the identical answer 
to the challenge of their own frigid, materials-poor environment; Tsienville's 
igloos were also made of ice.

    In lieu of streets, there were canals - as best suited creatures who were 
still amphibious, and apparently returned to the water to sleep. Also, it was 
believed, to feed and to mate, though neither hypothesis had been proved.

    Tsienville had been called 'Venice, made of ice', and Poole had to agree 
that it was an apt description. However, there were no Venetians in sight; the 
place looked as if it had been deserted for years.

    And here was another mystery; despite the fact that Lucifer was fifty times 
brighter than the distant Sun, and was a permanent fixture in the sky, the 
Europs still seemed locked to an ancient rhythm of night and day. They returned 
to the ocean at sunset, and emerged with the rising of the Sun - despite the 
fact that the level of illumination had changed by only a few per cent. Perhaps 
there was a parallel on Earth, where the life cycles of many creatures were 
controlled as much by the feeble Moon as the far more brilliant Sun.

    It would be sunrise in another hour, and then the inhabitants of Tsienville 
would return to land and go about their leisurely affairs - as by human 
standards, they certainly were. The sulphur-based biochemistry that powered the 
Europs was not as efficient as the oxygen-driven one that energized the vast 
majority of terrestrial animals. Even a sloth could outrun a Europ, so it was 
difficult to regard them as potentially dangerous. That was the Good News; the 
Bad News was that even with the best intentions on both sides, attempts at 
communication would be extremely slow - perhaps intolerably tedious.

    It was about time, Poole decided, that he reported back to Ganymede Control. 
They must be getting very anxious, and he wondered how his co-conspirator, 
Captain Chandler, was dealing with the situation.

    'Falcon calling Ganymede. As you can doubtless see, I have - er - been 
brought to rest just above Tsienville. There is no sign of hostility, and as 
it's still solar night here all the Europs are underwater. Will call you again 
as soon as I'm on the ground.'

    Dim would have been proud of him, Poole thought, as he brought Falcon down 
gently as a snowflake on a smooth patch of ice. He was taking no chances with 
its stability, and set the inertial drive to cancel all but a fraction of the 
shuttle's weight - just enough, he hoped, to prevent it being blown away by any 
wind.

    He was on Europa - the first human in a thousand years. Had Armstrong and 
Aldrin felt this sense of elation, when Eagle touched down on the Moon? Probably 
they were too busy checking their Lunar Module's primitive and totally 
unintelligent systems. Falcon, of course, was doing all this automatically. The 
little cabin was now very quiet, apart from the inevitable - and reassuring - 
murmur of well-tempered electronics. It gave Poole a considerable shock when 
Chandler's voice, obviously pre-recorded, interrupted his thoughts.

    'So you made it! Congratulations! As you know, we're scheduled to return to 
the Belt week after next, but that should give you plenty of time.'

    'After five days, Falcon knows what to do. She'll find her way home, with or 
without you. So good luck!'

    

    MISS PRINGLE

    ACTIVATE CRYPTO PROGRAM

    STORE

    Hello, Dim - thanks for that cheerful message! I feel rather silly using 
this program - as if I'm a secret agent in one of the spy melodramas that used 
to be so popular before I was born. Still, it will allow some privacy, which may 
be useful. Hope Miss Pringle has downloaded it properly... of course, Miss P, 
I'm only joking!

    By the way, I'm getting a barrage of requests from all the news media in the 
Solar System. Please try to hold them off - or divert them to Dr Ted. He'll 
enjoy handling them...

    Since Ganymede has me on camera all the time, I won't waste breath telling 
you what I'm seeing. If all goes well, we should have some action in a few 
minutes - and we'll know if it really was a good idea to let the Europs find me 
already sitting here peacefully, waiting to greet them when they come to the 
surface...

    Whatever happens, it won't be as big a surprise to me as it was to Dr Chang 
and his colleagues, when they landed here a thousand years ago! I played his 
famous last message again, just before leaving Ganymede. I must confess it gave 
me an eerie feeling - couldn't help wondering if something like that could 
possibly happen again... wouldn't like to immortalize myself the way poor Chang 
did...

    Of course, I can always lift off if something starts going wrong... and 
here's an interesting thought that's just occurred to me... I wonder if the 
Europs have any history - any kind of records... any memory of what happened 
just a few kilometres from here, a thousand years ago?

    

27
Ice and Vacuum

    

    ...This is Dr Chang, calling from Europa. I hope you cart hear me, 
especially Dr Floyd - I know you're aboard Leonov... I may not have much time... 
aiming my suit antenna where I think you are... please relay this information to 
Earth.

    Tsien was destroyed three hours ago. I'm the only survivor. Using my suit 
radio - no idea if it has enough range, but it's the only chance. Please listen 
carefully...

    THERE IS LIFE ON EUROPA. I repeat: THERE IS LIFE ON EUROPA...

    We landed safely, checked all the systems, and ran out the hoses so we could 
start pumping water into our propellant tanks immediately... just in case we had 
to leave in a hurry.

    Everything was going according to plan... it seemed almost too good to be 
true. The tanks were half full when Dr Lee and I went out to check the pipe 
insulation. Tsien stands - stood - about thirty metres from the edge of the 
Grand Canal. Pipes went directly from it and down through the ice. Very thin - 
not safe to walk on.

    Jupiter was quarter full, and we had five kilowatts of lighting strung up on 
the ship. She looked like a Christmas tree - beautiful, reflected on the ice...

    Lee saw it first - a huge dark mass rising up from the depths. At first we 
thought it was a school of fish - too large for a single organism - then it 
started to break through the ice, and began moving towards us.

    It looked rather like huge strands of wet seaweed, crawling along the 
ground. Lee ran back to the ship to get a camera - I stayed to watch, reporting 
over the radio. The thing moved so slowly I could easily outrun it. I was much 
more excited than alarmed. Thought I knew what kind of creature it was - I've 
seen pictures of the kelp forests off California - but I was quite wrong.

    I could tell it was in trouble. It couldn't possibly survive at a 
temperature a hundred and fifty below its normal environment. It was freezing 
solid as it moved forward -bits were breaking off like glass - but it was still 
advancing towards the ship, a black tidal wave, slowing down all the time.

    I was still so surprised that I couldn't think straight and I couldn't 
imagine what it was trying to do. Even though it was heading towards Tsien it 
still seemed completely harmless, like - well, a small forest on the move. I 
remember smiling - it reminded me of Macbeth's Birnam Wood...

    Then I suddenly realized the danger. Even if it was completely inoffensive - 
it was heavy - with all the ice it was carrying, it must have weighed several 
tons, even in this low gravity.

    And it was slowly, painfully climbing up our landing gear... the legs were 
beginning to buckle, all in slow motion, like something in a dream - or a 
nightmare...

    Not until the ship started to topple did I realize what the thing was trying 
to do - and then it was far too late. We could have saved ourselves - if we'd 
only switched off our lights!

    Perhaps it's a phototrope, its biological cycle triggered by the sunlight 
that filters down through the ice. Or it could have been attracted like a moth 
to a candle. Our floodlights must have been more brilliant than anything that 
Europa has ever known, even the Sun itself...

    Then the ship crashed. I saw the hull split, a cloud of snowflakes form as 
moisture condensed. All the lights went out, except for one, swinging back and 
forth on a cable a couple of metres above the ground.

    I don't know what happened immediately after that. The next thing I 
remember, I was standing under the light, beside the wreck of the ship, with a 
fine powdering of fresh snow all around me. I could see my footsteps in it very 
clearly. I must have run there; perhaps only a minute or two had elapsed...

    The plant - I still thought of it as a plant - was motionless. I wondered if 
it had been damaged by the impact; large sections - as thick as a man's arms - 
had splintered off, like broken twigs.

    Then the main trunk started to move again. It pulled away from the hull, and 
began to crawl towards me. That was when I knew for certain that the thing was 
light-sensitive: I was standing immediately under the thousand-watt lamp, which 
had stopped swinging now.

    Imagine an oak tree - better still, a banyan with its multiple trunks and 
roots - flattened out by gravity and trying to creep along the ground. It got to 
within five metres of the light, then started to spread out until it had made a 
perfect circle around me. Presumably that was the limit of its tolerance - the 
point at which photo-attraction turned to repulsion.

    After that, nothing happened for several minutes, I wondered if it was dead 
- frozen solid at last.

    Then I saw that large buds were forming on many of the branches. It was like 
watching a time-lapse film of flowers opening. In fact I thought they were 
flowers - each about as big as a man's head.

    Delicate, beautifully coloured membranes started to unfold. Even then, it 
occurred to me that no one - no thing - could ever have seen these colours 
properly, until we brought our lights - our fatal lights - to this world.

    Tendrils, stamens, waving feebly... I walked over to the living wall that 
surrounded me, so that I could see exactly what was happening. Neither then, or 
at any other time, had I felt the slightest fear of the creature. I was certain 
that it was not malevolent - if indeed it was conscious at all.

    There were scores of the big flowers, in various stages of unfolding. Now 
they reminded me of butterflies, just emerging from the chrysalis - wings 
crumpled, still feeble - I was getting closer and closer to the truth.

    But they were freezing - dying as quickly as they formed. Then, one after 
another, they dropped off from the parent buds. For a few moments they flopped 
around like fish stranded on dry land - and at last I realized exactly what they 
were. Those membranes weren't petals - they were fins, or their equivalent. This 
was the free-swimming larval stage of the creature. Probably it spends much of 
its life rooted on the sea-bed, then sends these mobile offspring in search of 
new territory. Just like the corals of Earth's oceans.

    I knelt down to get a closer look at one of the little creatures. The 
beautiful colours were fading now, to a drab brown. Some of the petal-fins had 
snapped off, becoming brittle shards as they froze. But it was still moving 
feebly, and as I approached it tried to avoid me. I wondered how it sensed my 
presence.

    Then I noticed that the stamens - as I'd called them -all carried bright 
blue dots at their tips. They looked like tiny star sapphires - or the blue eyes 
along the mantle of a scallop - aware of light, but unable to form true images. 
As I watched, the vivid blue faded, the gems became dull, ordinary stones...

    Dr Floyd - or anyone else who is listening - I haven't much more time; my 
life-support system alarm has just sounded. But I've almost finished.

    I knew then what I had to do. The cable to that thousand-watt lamp was 
hanging almost to the ground. I gave it a few tugs, and the light went out in a 
shower of sparks.

    I wondered whether it was too late. For a few minutes nothing happened. So I 
walked over to the wall of tangled branches around me - and kicked it.

    Slowly, the creature started to unweave itself, and to retreat back to the 
Canal. I followed it all the way back to the water, encouraging it with more 
kicks when it slowed down, feeling the fragments of ice crunching all the time 
beneath my boots... As it neared the Canal, it seemed to gain strength and 
energy, as if it knew it was approaching its natural home. I wondered if it 
would survive, to bud again.

    It disappeared through the surface, leaving a few last dead larvae on the 
alien land. The exposed free water bubbled for a few minutes until a scab of 
protective ice sealed it from the vacuum above. Then I walked back to the ship 
to see if there was anything to salvage - I don't want to talk about that.

    I've only two requests to make, Doctor. When the taxonomists classify this 
creature , I hope they'll name it after me.

    And - when the next ship comes home - ask them to take our bones back to 
China.

    I'll lose power in a few minutes - wish I knew whether anyone was receiving 
me. Anyway, I'll repeat this message as long as I can...

    This is Professor Chang on Europa, reporting the destruction of the 
spaceship Tsien. We landed beside the Grand Canal and set up our pumps at the 
edge of the ice -

    

28
The Little Dawn

    

    MISS PRINGLE RECORD

    Here comes the Sun! Strange - how quickly it seems to rise, on this slowly 
turning world! Of course, of course - the disc's so small that the whole of it 
pops above the horizon in no time... Not that it makes much difference to the 
light - if you weren't looking in that direction, you'd never notice that there 
was another sun in the sky.

    But I hope the Europs have noticed. Usually it takes them less than five 
minutes to start coming ashore after the Little Dawn. Wonder if they already 
know I'm here, and are scared...

    No - could be the other way round. Perhaps they're inquisitive - even 
anxious to see what strange visitor has come to Tsienville... I rather hope 
so...

    Here they come! Hope your spysats are watching - Falcon's cameras 
recording...

    How slowly they move! I'm afraid it's going to be very boring trying to 
communicate with them... even if they want to talk to me...

    Rather like the thing that overturned Tsien, but much smaller... They remind 
me of little trees, walking on half a dozen slender trunks. And with hundreds of 
branches, dividing into twigs, which divide again... and again. Just like many 
of our general-purpose robots... what a long time it took us to realize that 
imitation humanoids were ridiculously clumsy, and the proper way to go was with 
myriad of small manipulators! Whenever we invent something clever, we find that 
Mother Nature's already thought of it...

    Aren't the little ones cute - like tiny bushes on the move. Wonder how they 
reproduce - budding? I hadn't realized how beautiful they are. Almost as 
colourful as coral reef fish - maybe for the same reasons... to attract mates, 
or fool predators by pretending to be something else...

    Did I say they looked like bushes? Make that rose-bushes - they've actually 
got thorns! Must have a good reason for them...

    I'm disappointed. They don't seem to have noticed me. They'll all heading 
into town, as if a visiting spacecraft was an everyday occurrence... only a few 
left... maybe this will work...

    I suppose they can detect sound vibrations - most marine creatures can - 
though this atmosphere may be too thin to carry my voice very far...

    

    FALCON - EXTERNAL SPEAKER...

    HELLO, CAN YOU HEAR ME? MY NAME IS FRANK POOLE... AHEM... I COME IN PEACE 
FOR ALL MANKIND...

    Makes me feel rather stupid, but can you suggest anything better? And it 
will be good for the record...

    Nobody's taking the slightest notice. Big ones and little ones, they re all 
creeping towards their igloos Wonder what they actually do when they get there - 
perhaps I should follow. I'm sure it would be perfectly safe - I can move so 
much faster - I've just had an amusing flashback. All these creatures going in 
the same direction - they look like the commuters who used to surge back and 
forth twice a day between home and office, before electronics made it 
unnecessary. Let's try again, before they all disappear.

    

    HELLO THERE THIS IS FRANK POOLE, A VISITOR FROM PLANET EARTH. CAN YOU HEAR 
ME?

    I HEAR YOU, FRANK. THIS IS DAVE.

    

29
The Ghosts in the Machine

    

    Frank Poole's immediate reaction was one of utter astonishment, followed by 
overwhelming joy. He had never really believed that he would make any kind of 
contact, either with the Europs or the Monolith. Indeed, he had even had 
fantasies of kicking in frustration against that towering ebon wall and shouting 
angrily, 'Is there anybody home?'

    Yet he should not have been so amazed: some intelligence must have monitored 
his approach from Ganymede, and permitted him to land. He should have taken Ted 
Khan more seriously.

    'Dave,' he said slowly, 'is that really you?'

    Who else could it be? a part of his mind asked. Yet it was not a foolish 
question. There was something curiously mechanical - impersonal about the voice 
that came from the small speaker on Falcon's control board.

    YES, FRANK. I AM DAVE.

    There was a very brief pause: then the same voice continued, without any 
change of intonation:

    HELLO FRANK. THIS IS HAL.

    

    MISS PRINGLE

    RECORD

    Well - Indra, Dim - I'm glad I recorded all that, otherwise you'd never 
believe me...

    I guess I'm still in a state of shock. First of all, how should I feel about 
someone who tried to - who did - kill me - even if it was a thousand years ago! 
But I understand now that Hal wasn't to blame; nobody was. There's a very good 
piece of advice I've often found useful 'Never attribute to malevolence what is 
merely due to incompetence' I can't feel any anger towards a bunch of 
programmers I never knew, who've been dead for centuries.

    I'm glad this is encrypted, as I don't know how it should be handled, and a 
lot that I tell you may turn out to be complete nonsense. I'm already suffering 
from information overload, and had to ask Dave to leave me for a while - after 
all the trouble I've gone through to meet him! But I don't think I hurt his 
feelings: I m not sure yet if he has any feelings...

    What is he - good question! Well, he really is Dave Bowman, but with most of 
the humanity stripped away - like - ah - like the synopsis of a book or a 
technical paper. You know how an abstract can give all the basic information  
but no hint of the author's personality? Yet there were moments when I felt that 
something of the old Dave was still there. I wouldn't go so far as to say he's 
pleased to meet me again - moderately satisfied might be more like it... For 
myself, I'm still very confused. Like meeting an old friend after a long 
separation, and finding that they're now a different person. Well, it has been a 
thousand years - and I can't imagine what experiences he's known, though as I'll 
show you presently, he's tried to share some of them with me.

    And Hal - he's here too, without question. Most of the time, there's no way 
I can tell which of them is speaking to me. Aren't there examples of multiple 
personalities in the medical records? Maybe it's something like that.

    I asked him how this had happened to them both, and he - they - dammit, 
Halman! - tried to explain. Let me repeat - I may have got it partly wrong, but 
it's the only working hypothesis I have.

    Of course, the Monolith - in its various manifestations - is the key - no, 
that's the wrong word - didn't someone once say it was a kind of cosmic Swiss 
Army knife? You still have them, I've noticed, though both Switzerland and its 
army disappeared centuries ago. It's a general-purpose device that can do 
anything it wants to. Or was programmed to do...

    Back in Africa, four million years ago, it gave us that evolutionary kick in 
the pants, for better or for worse. Then its sibling on the Moon waited for us 
to climb out of the cradle. That we've already guessed, and Dave's confirmed it.

    I said that he doesn't have many human feelings, but he still has curiosity 
- he wants to learn. And what an opportunity he's had!

    When the Jupiter Monolith absorbed him - can't think of a better word - it 
got more than it bargained for. Though it used him - apparently as a captured 
specimen, and a probe to investigate Earth - he's also been using it. With Hal's 
assistance - and who should understand a super-computer better than another one? 
- he's been exploring its memory, and trying to find its purpose.

    Now, this is something that's very hard to believe. The Monolith is a 
fantastically powerful machine - look what it did to Jupiter! - but it's no more 
than that. It's running on automatic - it has no consciousness. I remember once 
thinking that I might have to kick the Great Wall and shout 'Is there anyone 
there?' And the correct answer would have to be - no one, except Dave and Hal...

    Worse still, some of its systems may have started to fail; Dave even 
suggests that, in a fundamental way, it's become stupid! Perhaps it's been left 
on its own for too long - it's time for a service check.

    And he believes the Monolith has made at least one misjudgement. Perhaps 
that's not the right word - it may have been deliberate, carefully considered...

    In any event, it's - well, truly awesome, and terrifying in its 
implications. Luckily, I can show it to you, so you can decide for yourselves. 
Yes, even though it happened a thousand years ago, when Leonov flew the second 
mission to Jupiter! And all this time, no one has ever guessed...

    I'm certainly glad you got me fitted with the Braincap. Of course it's been 
invaluable - I can't imagine life without it - but now it's doing a job it was 
never designed for. And doing it remarkably well.

    It took Halman about ten minutes to find how it worked, and to set up an 
interface. Now we have mind-to-mind contact - which is quite a strain on me, I 
can tell you. I have to keep asking them to slow down, and use baby-talk. Or 
should I say baby-think...

    I'm not sure how well this will come through. It's a thousand-year-old 
recording of Dave's own experience, somehow stored in the Monolith's enormous 
memory, then retrieved by Dave and injected into my Braincap - don't ask me 
exactly how - and finally transferred and beamed to you by Ganymede Central. 
Phew. Hope you don't get a headache downloading it.

    Over to Dave Bowman at Jupiter, early twenty-first century...

    

30
Foamscape

    

    The million-kilometre-long tendrils of magnetic force, the sudden explosion 
of radio waves, the geysers of electrified plasma wider than the planet Earth - 
they were as real and clearly visible to him as the clouds banding the planet in 
multi-hued glory. He could understand the complex pattern of their interactions, 
and realized that Jupiter was much more wonderful than anyone had ever guessed.

    Even as he fell through the roaring heart of the Great Red Spot, with the 
lightning of its continent-wide thunderstorms detonating under him, he knew why 
it had persisted for centuries though it was made of gases far less substantial 
than those that formed the hurricanes of Earth. The thin scream of hydrogen wind 
faded as he sank into the calmer depths, and a sheet of waxen snowflakes - some 
already coalescing into barely palpable mountains of hydrocarbon foam - 
descended from the heights above. It was already warm enough for liquid water to 
exist, but there were no oceans there; this purely gaseous environment was too 
tenuous to support them.

    He descended through layer after layer of cloud, until he entered a region 
of such clarity that even human vision could have scanned an area more than a 
thousand kilometres across. It was only a minor eddy in the vaster gyre of the 
Great Red Spot; and it held a secret that men had long guessed, but never 
proved. Skirting the foothills of the drifting foam mountains were myriad of 
small, sharply defined clouds, all about the same size and patterned with 
similar red and brown mottling. They were small only as compared with the 
inhuman scale of their surroundings; the very least would have covered a fair-
sized city.

    They were clearly alive, for they were moving with slow deliberation along 
the flanks of the aerial mountains, browsing off their slopes like colossal 
sheep. And they were calling to each other in the metre band, their radio voices 
faint but clear against the cracklings and concussions of Jupiter itself.

    Nothing less than living gasbags, they floated in the narrow zone between 
freezing heights and scorching depths. Narrow, yes - but a domain far larger 
than all the biosphere of Earth.

    They were not alone. Moving swiftly among them were other creatures so small 
that they could easily have been overlooked. Some of them bore an almost uncanny 
resemblance to terrestrial aircraft, and were of about the same size. But they 
too were alive - perhaps predators, perhaps parasites, perhaps even herdsmen.

    A whole new chapter of evolution, as alien as that which he had glimpsed on 
Europa, was opening before him. There were jet-propelled torpedoes like the 
squids of the terrestrial oceans, hunting and devouring the huge gas-bags. But 
the balloons were not defenceless; some of them fought back with electric 
thunderbolts and with clawed tentacles like kilometre-long chainsaws.

    There were even stranger shapes, exploiting almost every possibility of 
geometry - bizarre, translucent kites, tetrahedra, spheres, polyhedra, tangles 
of twisted ribbons... The gigantic plankton of the Jovian atmosphere, they were 
designed to float like gossamer in the uprising currents, until they had lived 
long enough to reproduce; then they would be swept down into the depths to be 
carbonized and recycled in a new generation.

    He was searching a world more than a hundred times the area of Earth, and 
though he saw many wonders, nothing there hinted of intelligence. The radio 
voices of the great balloons carried only simple messages of warning or of fear. 
Even the hunters, who might have been expected to develop higher degrees of 
organization, were like the sharks in Earth's oceans - mindless automata.

    And for all its breathtaking size and novelty, the biosphere of Jupiter was 
a fragile world, a place of mists and foam, of delicate silken threads and 
paper-thin tissues spun from the continual snowfall of petrochemicals formed by 
lightning in the upper atmosphere. Few of its constructs were more substantial 
than soap bubbles; its most awesome predators could be torn to shreds by even 
the feeblest of terrestrial carnivores.

    Like Europa, but on a vastly grander scale, Jupiter was an evolutionary cul-
de-sac. Intelligence would never emerge here; even if it did, it would be doomed 
to a stunted existence. A purely aerial culture might develop, but in an 
environment where fire was impossible, and solids scarcely existed, it could 
never even reach the Stone Age.

    

31
Nursery

    

    MISS PRINGLE RECORD

    Well, Indra - Dim - I hope that came through in good shape - I still find it 
hard to believe. All those fantastic creatures - surely we should have detected 
their radio voices, even if we couldn't understand them! - wiped out in a 
moment, so that Jupiter could be made into a sun.

    And now we can understand why. It was to give the Europs their chance. What 
pitiless logic: is intelligence the only thing that matters? I can see some long 
arguments with Ted Khan over this - The next question is: will the Europs make 
the grade - or will they remain forever stuck in the kindergarten - not even 
that - the nursery? Though a thousand years is a very short time, one would have 
expected some progress, but according to Dave they're exactly the same now as 
when they left the sea. Perhaps that's the trouble; they still have one foot - 
or one twig! - in the water.

    And here's another thing we got completely wrong. We thought they went back 
into the water to sleep. It's just the other way round - they go back to eat, 
and sleep when they come on land! As we might have guessed from their structure 
- that network of branches - they're plankton feeders...

    I asked Dave about the igloos they've built. Aren't they a technological 
advance? And he said: not really - they're only adaptations of structures they 
make on the sea-bed, to protect themselves from various predators - especially 
something like a flying carpet, as big as a football field...

    There's one area, though, where they have shown initiative - even 
creativity. They're fascinated by metals, presumably because they don't exist in 
pure form in the ocean. That's why Tsien was stripped - the same thing's 
happened to the occasional probes that have come down in their territory. What 
do they do with the copper and beryllium and titanium they collect? Nothing 
useful, I'm afraid. They pile it all together in one place, in a fantastic heap 
that they keep reassembling. They could be developing an aesthetic sense - I've 
seen worse in the Museum of Modem Art... But I've got another theory - did you 
ever hear of cargo cults? During the twentieth century, some of the few 
primitive tribes that still existed made imitation aeroplanes out of bamboo, in 
the hope of attracting the big birds in the sky that occasionally brought them 
wonderful gifts. Perhaps the Europs have the same idea.

    Now that question you keep asking me... What is Dave? And how did he - and 
Hal - become whatever it is they are now?

    The quick answer, of course, is that they're both emulations - simulations - 
in the Monolith's gigantic memory. Most of the time they're inactivated; when I 
asked Dave about this, he said he'd been 'awake' - his actual word -for only 
fifty years altogether, in the thousand since his - er - metamorphosis.

    When I asked if he resented this takeover of his life, he said, 'Why should 
I resent it? I am performing my functions perfectly.' Yes, that sounds exactly 
like Hal! But I believe it was Dave - if there's any distinction now.

    Remember that Swiss Army knife analogy? Halman is one of this cosmic knife's 
myriad of components.

    But he's not a completely passive tool - when he's awake, he has some 
autonomy, some independence - presumably within limits set by the Monolith's 
overriding control. During the centuries, he's been used as a kind of 
intelligent probe to examine, Jupiter - as you've just seen - as well as 
Ganymede and the Earth. That confirms those mysterious events in Florida, 
reported by Dave's old girl-friend, and the nurse who was looking after his 
mother, just moments before her death... as well as the encounters in Anubis 
City.

    And it also explains another mystery. I asked Dave directly: why was I 
allowed to land on Europa, when everyone else has been turned away for 
centuries? I fully expected to be!

    The answer's ridiculously simple. The Monolith uses Dave - Halman - from 
time to time, to keep an eye on us.

    Dave knew all about my rescue - even saw some of the media interviews I 
made, on Earth and on Ganymede. I must say I'm still a little hurt he made no 
attempt to contact me! But at least he put out the Welcome mat when I did 
arrive...

    Dim - I still have forty-eight hours before Falcon leaves - with or without 
me! I don't think I'll need them, now I've made contact with Halman; we can keep 
in touch just as easily from Anubis... if he wants to do so.

    And I'm anxious to get back to the Grannymede as quickly as possible. 
Falcon's a fine little spacecraft, but her plumbing could be improved - it's 
beginning to smell in here, and I'm itching for a shower.

    Look forward to seeing you - and especially Ted Khan.

    We have much to talk about, before I return to Earth.

    TRANSMIT

    STORE

    

V
TERMINATION

    The toil of all that be
    Heals not the primal fault;
    It rains into the sea,
    And still the sea is salt.
    - A. E. Housman, More Poems

    

32
A Gentleman of Leisure

    

    On the whole, it had been an interesting but uneventful decades, punctuated 
by the joys and sorrows which Time and Fate bring to all mankind. The greatest 
of those had been wholly unexpected; in fact, before he left for Ganymede, Poole 
would have dismissed the very idea as preposterous.

    There is much truth in the saying that absence makes the heart grow fonder. 
When he and Indra Wallace met again, they discovered that, despite their 
bantering and occasional disagreements, they were closer than they had imagined. 
One thing led to another including, to their mutual joy, Dawn Wallace and Martin 
Poole.

    It was rather late in life to start a family - quite apart from that little 
matter of a thousand years - and Professor Anderson had warned them that it 
might be impossible. Or even worse...

    'You were lucky in more ways than you realize,' he told Poole. 'Radiation 
damage was surprisingly low, and we were able to make all essential repairs from 
your intact DNA. But until we do some more tests, I can't promise genetic 
integrity. So enjoy yourselves - but don't start a family until I give the OK.'

    The tests had been time-consuming, and as Anderson had feared, further 
repairs were necessary. There was one major set-back - something that could 
never have lived, even if it had been allowed to go beyond the first few weeks 
after conception - but Martin and Dawn were perfect, with just the right number 
of heads, arms and legs. They were also handsome and intelligent, and barely 
managed to escape being spoiled by their doting parents - who continued to be 
the best of friends when, after fifteen years, each opted for independence 
again. Because of their Social Achievement Rating, they would have been 
permitted - indeed, encouraged - to have another child, but they decided not to 
put any more of a burden on their astonishingly good luck.

    One tragedy had shadowed Poole's personal life during this period - and 
indeed had shocked the whole Solar community. Captain Chandler and his entire 
crew had been lost when the nucleus of a comet they were reconnoitring exploded 
suddenly, destroying Goliath so completely that only a few fragments were ever 
located. Such explosions - caused by reactions among unstable molecules which 
existed at very low temperatures - were a well-known danger to comet-collectors, 
and Chandler had encountered several during his career. No one would ever know 
the exact circumstances which caused so experienced a spaceman to be taken by 
surprise.

    Poole missed Chandler very badly: he had played a unique role in his life, 
and there was no one to replace him - no one, except Dave Bowman, with whom he 
had shared so momentous an adventure. He and Chandler had often made plans to go 
into space together again, perhaps all the way out to the Oort Cloud with its 
unknown mysteries and its remote but inexhaustible wealth of ice. Yet some 
conflict of schedules had always upset their plans, so this was a wished-for 
future that would never exist.

    Another long-desired goal Poole had managed to achieve - despite doctor's 
orders. He had been down to Earth: and once was quite enough.

    The vehicle in which he had travelled looked almost identical to the 
wheelchairs used by the luckier paraplegics of his own time. It was motorized, 
and had balloon tyres which allowed it to roll over reasonably smooth surfaces. 
However, it could also fly - at an altitude of about twenty centimetres - on an 
aircushion produced by a set of small but very powerful fans. Poole was 
surprised that so primitive a technology was still in use, but inertia-control 
devices were too bulky for such small-scale applications.

    Seated comfortably in his hoverchair, he was scarcely conscious of his 
increasing weight as he descended into the heart of Africa; though he did notice 
some difficulty in breathing, he had experienced far worse during his astronaut 
training. What he was not prepared for was the blast of furnace-heat that smote 
him as he rolled out of the gigantic, sky-piercing cylinder that formed the base 
of the Tower. Yet it was still morning: what would it be like at noon?

    He had barely accustomed himself to the heat when his sense of smell was 
assailed. A myriad odours - none unpleasant, but all unfamiliar - clamoured for 
his attention. He closed his eyes for a few minutes, in an attempt to avoid 
overloading his input circuits.

    Before he had decided to open them again, he felt some large, moist object 
palpating the back of his neck.

    'Say hello to Elizabeth,' said his guide, a burly young man dressed in 
traditional Great White Hunter garb, much too smart to have seen any real use: 
'she's our official greeter.'

    Poole twisted round in his chair, and found himself looking into the soulful 
eyes of a baby elephant.

    'Hello, Elizabeth,' he answered, rather feebly. Elizabeth lifted her trunk 
in salute, and emitted a sound not usually heard in polite society, though Poole 
felt sure it was well-intentioned.

    Altogether, he spent less than an hour on Planet Earth, skirting the edge of 
a jungle whose stunted trees compared unfavourably with Skyland's, and 
encountering much of the local fauna. His guides apologized for the friendliness 
of the lions, who had been spoilt by tourists - but the malevolent expressions 
of the crocodiles more than compensated; here was Nature raw and unchanged.

    Before he returned to the Tower, Poole risked taking a few steps away from 
his hoverchair. He realized that this would be the equivalent of carrying his 
own weight on his back, but that did not seem an impossible feat, and he would 
never forgive himself unless he attempted it.

    It was not a good idea; perhaps he should have tried it in a cooler climate. 
After no more than a dozen steps, he was glad to sink back into the luxurious 
clutches of the chair.

    'That's enough,' he said wearily. 'Let's go back to the Tower.'

    As he rolled into the elevator lobby, he noticed a sign which he had somehow 
overlooked during the excitement of his arrival. It read:

    

    WELCOME TO AFRICA!
    'In wildness is the preservation of the world.'
    HENRY DAVID THOREAU
    (1817-1862)

    

    Observing Poole's interest, the guide asked 'Did you know him?'

    It was the sort of question Poole heard all too often, and at the moment he 
did not feel equipped to deal with it.

    'I don't think so,' he answered wearily, as the great doors closed behind 
them, shutting out the sights, scents and sounds of Mankind's earliest home.

    His vertical safari had satisfied his need to visit Earth, and he did his 
best to ignore the various aches and pains acquired there when he returned to 
his apartment at Level 10,000 - a prestigious location, even in this democratic 
society. Indra, however, was mildly shocked by his appearance, and ordered him 
straight to bed.

    'Just like Antaeus - but in reverse!' she muttered darkly. 'Who?' asked 
Poole: there were times when his wife's erudition was a little overwhelming, but 
he had determined never to let it give him an inferiority complex.

    'Son of the Earth Goddess, Gaea. Hercules wrestled with him - but every time 
he was thrown to the ground, Antaeus renewed his strength.'

    'Who won?'

    'Hercules, of course - by holding Antaeus in the air, so Ma couldn't 
recharge his batteries.'

    'Well, I'm sure it won't take me long to recharge mine. And I've learned one 
lesson. If I don't get more exercise, I may have to move up to Lunar Gravity 
level.'

    Poole's good resolution lasted a full month: every morning he went for a 
brisk five-kilometre walk, choosing a different level of the Africa Tower each 
day. Some floors were still vast, echoing deserts of metal which would probably 
never be occupied, but others had been landscaped and developed over the 
centuries in a bewildering variety of architectural styles. Many were borrowings 
from past ages and cultures; others hinted at futures which Poole would not care 
to visit. At least there was no danger of boredom, and on many of his walks he 
was accompanied, at a respectful distance, by small groups of friendly children. 
They were seldom able to keep up with him for long.

    One day, as Poole was striding down a convincing - though sparsely populated 
- imitation of the Champs Elysees, he suddenly spotted a familiar face.

    'Danil!' he called.

    The other man took not the slightest notice, even when Poole called again, 
more loudly.

    'Don't you remember me?'

    Danil - and now that he had caught up with him, Poole did not have the 
slightest doubt of his identity - looked genuinely baffled.

    'I'm sorry,' he said. 'You're Commander Poole, of course. But I'm sure we've 
never met before.'

    Now it was Poole's turn to be embarrassed.

    'Stupid of me,' he apologized. 'Must have mistaken you for someone else. 
Have a good day.'

    He was glad of the encounter, and was pleased to know that Danil was back in 
normal society. Whether his original crime had been axe-murders or overdue 
library books should no longer be the concern of his one-time employer; the 
account had been settled, the books closed. Although Poole sometimes missed the 
cops-and-robbers dramas he had often enjoyed in his youth, he had grown to 
accept the current wisdom: excessive interest in pathological behaviour was 
itself pathological.

    With the help of Miss Pringle, Mk III, Poole had been able to schedule his 
life so that there were even occasional blank moments when he could relax and 
set his Braincap on Random Search, scanning his areas of interest. Outside his 
immediate family, his chief concerns were still among the moons of 
Jupiter/Lucifer, not least because he was recognized as the leading expert on 
the subject, and a permanent member of the Europa Committee.

    This had been set up almost a thousand years ago, to consider what, if 
anything, could and should be done about the mysterious satellite. Over the 
centuries, it had accumulated a vast amount of information, going all the way 
back to the Voyager flybys of 1979 and the first detailed surveys from the 
orbiting Galileo spacecraft of 1996.

    Like most long-lived organizations, the Europa Committee had become slowly 
fossilized, and now met only when there was some new development. It had woken 
up with a start after Halman's reappearance, and appointed an energetic new 
chairperson whose first act had been to co-opt Poole.

    Though there was little that he could contribute that was not already 
recorded, Poole was very happy to be on the Committee. It was obviously his duty 
to make himself available, and it also gave him an official position he would 
otherwise have lacked. Previously his status was what had once been called a 
'national treasure', which he found faintly embarrassing. Although he was glad 
to be supported in luxury by a world wealthier than all the dreams of war-
ravaged earlier ages could have imagined, he felt the need to justify his 
existence.

    He also felt another need, which he seldom articulated even to himself. 
Halman had spoken to him, if only briefly, at their strange encounter two 
decades ago. Poole was certain that, if he wished, Halman could easily do so 
again. Were all human contacts no longer of interest to him? He hoped that was 
not the case; yet that might be one explanation of his silence.

    He was frequently in touch with Theodore Khan - as active and acerbic as 
ever, and now the Europa Committee's representative on Ganymede. Ever since 
Poole had returned to Earth, Ted had been trying in vain to open a channel of 
communication with Bowman. He could not understand why long lists of important 
questions on subjects of vital philosophical and historic interest received not 
even brief acknowledgements.

    'Does the Monolith keep your friend Halman so busy that he can't talk to 
me?' he complained to Poole. 'What does he do with his time, anyway?'

    It was a very reasonable question; and the answer came, like a thunderbolt 
out of a cloudless sky, from Bowman himself - as a perfectly commonplace 
vidphone call.

    

33
Contact

    

    'Hello, Frank. This is Dave. I have a very important message for you. I 
assume that you are now in your suite in Africa Tower. If you are there, please 
identify yourself by giving the name of our instructor in orbital mechanics. I 
will wait for sixty seconds, and if there is no reply will try again in exactly 
one hour.'

    That minute was hardly long enough for Poole to recover from the shock. He 
felt a brief surge of delight, as well as astonishment, before another emotion 
took over. Glad though he was to hear from Bowman again, that phrase 'a very 
important message' sounded distinctly ominous.

    At least it was fortunate, Poole told himself, that he's asked for one of 
the few names I can remember. Yet who could forget a Scot with a Glasgow accent 
so thick it had taken them a week to master it? But he had been a brilliant 
lecturer - once you understood what he was saying.

    'Dr Gregory McVitty.'

    'Accepted. Now please switch on your Braincap receiver. It will take three 
minutes to download this message. Do not attempt to monitor: I am using ten-to-
one compression. I will wait two minutes before starting.'

    How is he managing to do this? Poole wondered. Jupiter/Lucifer was now over 
fifty light-minutes away, so this message must have left almost an hour ago. It 
must have been sent with an intelligent agent in a properly addressed package on 
the Ganymede-Earth beam - but that would have been a trivial feat to Halman, 
with the resources he had apparently been able to tap inside the Monolith.

    The indicator light on the Brainbox was flickering. The message was coming 
through.

    At the compression Halman was using, it would take half an hour for Poole to 
absorb the message in real-time. But he needed only ten minutes to know that his 
peaceful life-style had come to an abrupt end

    

34
Judgement

    

    In a world of universal and instantaneous communication, it was very 
difficult to keep secrets. This was a matter, Poole decided immediately, for 
face-to-face discussion.

    The Europa Committee had grumbled, but all its members had assembled in his 
apartment. There were seven of them - the lucky number, doubtless suggested by 
the phases of the Moon, that had always fascinated Mankind. It was the first 
time Poole had met three of the Committee's members, though by now he knew them 
all more thoroughly than he could possibly have done in a pre-Braincapped 
lifetime.

    'Chairperson Oconnor, members of the Committee - I'd like to say a few words 
- only a few, I promise! - before you download the message I've received from 
Europa. And this is something I prefer to do verbally; that's more natural for 
me - I'm afraid I'll never be quite at ease with direct mental transfer.'

    'As you all know, Dave Bowman and Hal have been stored as emulations in the 
Monolith on Europa. Apparently it never discards a tool it once found useful, 
and from time to time it activates Halman, to monitor our affairs - when they 
begin to concern it. As I suspect my arrival may have done - though perhaps I 
flatter myself.'

    'But Halman isn't just a passive tool. The Dave component still retains 
something of its human origins - even emotions. And because we were trained 
together - shared almost everything for years - he apparently finds it much 
easier to communicate with me than with anyone else. I would like to think he 
enjoys doing it, but perhaps that's too strong a word.'

    'He's also curious - inquisitive - and perhaps a little resentful of the way 
he's been collected, like a specimen of wildlife. Though that's probably what we 
are, from the viewpoint of the intelligence that created the Monolith.'

    'And where is that intelligence now? Halman apparently knows the answer, and 
it's a chilling one.'

    'As we always suspected, the Monolith is part of a galactic network of some 
kind. And the nearest node - the Monolith's controller, or immediate superior - 
is 450 light-years away.'

    'Much too close for comfort! This means that the report on us and our 
affairs that was transmitted early in the twenty-first century was received half 
a millennium ago. If the Monolith's - let's say Supervisor - replied at once, 
any further instructions should be arriving just about now.'

    'And that's exactly what seems to be happening. During the last few days, 
the Monolith has been receiving a continuous string of messages, and has been 
setting up new programs, presumably in accordance with these.'

    'Unfortunately, Halman can only make guesses about the nature of those 
instructions. As you'll gather when you've downloaded this tablet, he has some 
limited access to many of the Monolith's circuits and memory banks, and can even 
carry on a kind of dialogue with it. If that's the right word - since you need 
two people for that! I still can't really grasp the idea that the Monolith, for 
all its powers, doesn't possess consciousness - doesn't even know that it 
exists!'

    'Halman's been brooding over the problem for a thousand years - on and off - 
and has come to the same answer that most of us have done. But his conclusion 
must surely carry far more weight, because of his inside knowledge.'

    'Sorry! I wasn't intending to make a joke - but what else could you call 
it?'

    'Whatever went to the trouble of creating us - or at least tinkering with 
our ancestors' minds and genes - is deciding what to do next. And Halman is 
pessimistic. No - that's an exaggeration. Let's say he doesn't think much of our 
chances, but is now too detached an observer to be unduly worried. The future - 
the survival! - of the human race isn't much more than an interesting problem to 
him, but he's willing to help.'

    Poole suddenly stopped talking, to the surprise of his intent audience.

    'That's strange. I've just had an amazing flashback... I'm sure it explains 
what's happening. Please bear with me.'

    'Dave and I were walking together one day, along the beach at the Cape, a 
few weeks before launch, when we noticed a large beetle lying on the sand. As 
often happens, it had fallen on its back and was waving its legs in the air, 
struggling to get right-way-up.'

    'I ignored it - we were engaged in some complicated technical discussion - 
but not Dave. He stepped aside, and carefully flipped it over with his shoe. As 
it flew away I commented, "Are you sure that was a good idea? Now it will go off 
and chomp somebody's prize chrysanthemums." And he answered, "Maybe you're 
right. But I'd like to give it the benefit of the doubt."

    'My apologies - I'd promised to say only a few words! But I'm very glad I 
remembered that incident: I really believe it puts Halman's message in the right 
perspective. He's giving the human race the benefit of the doubt...'

    'Now please check your Braincaps. This is a high-density recording - top of 
the u.v. band, Channel 110. Make yourselves comfortable, but be sure you're free 
line of sight. Here we go...'

    

35
Council of War

    

    No one asked for a replay. Once was sufficient.

    There was a brief silence when the playback finished; then Chairperson Dr 
Oconnor removed her Braincap, massaged her shining scalp, and said slowly:

    'You taught me a phrase from your period that seems very appropriate now. 
This is a can of worms.'

    'But only Bowman - Halman - has opened it,' said one of the Committee 
members. 'Does he really understand the operation of something as complex as the 
Monolith? Or is this whole scenario a figment of his imagination?'

    'I don't think he has much imagination,' Dr Oconnor answered. 'And 
everything checks perfectly. Especially the reference to Nova Scorpio. We 
assumed that was an accident; apparently it was a - judgement.'

    'First Jupiter - now Scorpio,' said Dr Kraussman, the distinguished 
physicist who was popularly regarded as a reincarnation of the legendary 
Einstein. A little plastic surgery, it was rumoured, had also helped. 'Who will 
be next in line?'

    'We always guessed,' said the Chair, 'that the TMAs were monitoring us.' She 
paused for a moment, then added ruefully: 'What bad - what incredibly bad! - 
luck that the fmal report went off, just after the very worst period in human 
history!'

    There was another silence. Everyone knew that the twentieth century had 
often been branded 'The Century of Torture'

    Poole listened without interrupting, while he waited for some consensus to 
emerge. Not for the first time, he was impressed by the quality of the Committee 
No one was trying to prove a pet theory, score debating points, or inflate an 
ego: he could not help drawing a contrast with the often bad-tempered arguments 
he had heard in own time, between Space Agency engineers and administrators, 
Congressional staffs, and industrial executives.

    Yes, the human race had undoubtedly improved. The Braincap had not only 
helped to weed out misfits, but had enormously increased the efficiency of 
education. Yet there had also been a loss; there were very few memorable 
characters in this society. Offhand he could think of only four - Indra, Captain 
Chandler, Dr Khan and the Dragon Lady of wistful memory.

    The Chairperson let the discussion flow smoothly back and forth until 
everyone had had a say, then began her summing up.

    'The obvious first question - how seriously should we take this threat - 
isn't worth wasting time on. Even if it's a false alarm, or a misunderstanding, 
it's potentially so grave that we must assume it's real, until we have absolute 
proof to the contrary. Agreed?'

    'Good. And we don't know how much time we have. So we must assume that the 
danger is immediate. Perhaps Halman may be able to give us some further warning, 
but by then it may be too late.'

    'So the only thing we have to decide is: how can we protect ourselves, 
against something as powerful as the Monolith? Look what happened to Jupiter! 
And, apparently, Nova Scorpio...'

    'I'm sure that brute force would be useless, though perhaps we should 
explore that option. Dr Kraussman - how long would it take to build a super-
bomb?'

    'Assuming that the designs still exist, so that no research is necessary - 
oh, perhaps two weeks. Thermonuclear weapons are rather simple, and use common 
materials - after all, they made them back in the Second Millennium! But if you 
wanted something sophisticated - say an antimatter bomb, or a mini-black-hole - 
well, that might take a few months.'

    'Thank you: could you start looking into it? But as I've said, I don't 
believe it would work; surely something that can handle such powers must also be 
able to protect itself against them. So - any other suggestions?'

    'Can we negotiate?' one councillor asked, not very hopefully.

    'With what... or whom?' Kraussman answered. 'As we've discovered, the 
Monolith is essentially a pure mechanism, doing just what it's been programmed 
to do. Perhaps that program is flexible enough to allow of changes, but there's 
no way we can tell. And we certainly can't appeal to Head Office - that's half a 
thousand light-years away!'

    Poole listened without interrupting; there was nothing he could contribute 
to the discussion, and indeed much of it was completely over his head. He began 
to feel an insidious sense of depression, would it have been better, he 
wondered, not to pass on this information? Then, if it was a false alarm, no one 
would be any the worse. And if it was not - well, humanity would still have 
peace of mind, before whatever inescapable doom awaited it.

    He was still mulling over these gloomy thoughts when he was suddenly alerted 
by a familiar phrase.

    A quiet little member of the Committee, with a name so long and difficult 
that Poole had never been able to remember, still less pronounce it, had 
abruptly dropped just two words into the discussion.

    'Trojan Horse!'

    There was one of those silences generally described as 'pregnant', then a 
chorus of 'Why didn't I think of that!' 'Of course!' 'Very good idea!' until the 
Chairperson, for the first time in the session, had to call for order.

    'Thank you, Professor Thirugnanasampanthamoorthy,' said Dr Oconnor, without 
missing a beat. 'Would you like to be more specific?'

    'Certainly. If the Monolith is indeed, as everyone seems to think, 
essentially a machine without consciousness - and hence with only limited self-
monitoring ability - we may already have the weapons that can defeat it. Locked 
up in the Vault.'

    'And a delivery system - Halman!'

    'Precisely.'

    'Just a minute, Dr T. We know nothing - absolutely nothing - about the 
Monolith's architecture. How can we be sure that anything our primitive species 
ever designed would be effective against it?'

    'We can't - but remember this. However sophisticated it is, the Monolith has 
to obey exactly the same universal laws of logic that Aristotle and Boole 
formulated, centuries ago. That's why it may - no, should! - be vulnerable to 
the things locked up in the Vault. We have to assemble them in such a way that 
at least one of them will work. It's our only hope - unless anybody can suggest 
a better alternative.'

    'Excuse me,' said Poole, finally losing patience. 'Will someone kindly tell 
me - what and where is this famous Vault you're talking about?'

    

36
Chamber of Horrors

    

    History is full of nightmares, some natural, some manmade.

    By the end of the twenty-first century, most of the natural ones - smallpox, 
the Black Death, AIDS, the hideous viruses lurking in the African jungle - had 
been eliminated, or at least brought under control, by the advance of medicine. 
However, it was never wise to underestimate the ingenuity of Mother Nature, and 
no one doubted that the future would still have unpleasant biological surprises 
in store for Mankind.

    It seemed a sensible precaution, therefore, to keep a few specimens of all 
these horrors for scientific study - carefully guarded, of course, so that there 
was no possibility of them escaping and again wreaking havoc on the human race. 
But how could one be absolutely sure that there was no danger of this happening?

    There had been - understandably - quite an outcry in the late twentieth 
century when it was proposed to keep the last known smallpox viruses at Disease 
Control Centres in the United States and Russia. However unlikely it might be, 
there was a finite possibility that they might be released by such accidents as 
earthquakes, equipment failures - or even deliberate sabotage by terrorist 
groups.

    A solution that satisfied everyone (except a few 'Preserve the lunar 
wilderness!' extremists) was to ship them to the Moon, and to keep them in a 
laboratory at the end of a kilometre-long shaft drilled into the isolated 
mountain Pico, one of the most prominent features of the Mare Imbrium. And here, 
over the years, they were joined by some of the most outstanding examples of 
misplaced human ingenuity - indeed, insanity.

    There were gases and mists that, even in microscopic doses, caused slow or 
instant death. Some had been created by religious cultists who, though mentally 
deranged, had managed to acquire considerable scientific knowledge. Many of them 
believed that the end of the world was at hand (when, of course, only their 
followers would be saved). In case God was absent-minded enough not to perform 
as scheduled, they wanted to make sure that they could rectify His unfortunate 
oversight.

    The first assaults of these lethal cultists were made on such vulnerable 
targets as crowded subways, World Fairs, sports stadiums, pop concerts... tens 
of thousands were killed, and many more injured before the madness was brought 
under control in the early twenty-first century. As often happens, some good 
came out of evil, because it forced the world's law-enforcement agencies to co-
operate as never before; even rogue states which had promoted political 
terrorism were unable to tolerate this random and wholly unpredictable variety.

    The chemical and biological agents used in these attacks - as well as in 
earlier forms of warfare - joined the deadly collection in Pico. Their 
antidotes, when they existed, were also stored with them. It was hoped that none 
of this material would ever concern humanity again - but it was still available, 
under heavy guard, if it was needed in some desperate emergency.

    The third category of items stored in the Pico vault, although they could be 
classified as plagues, had never killed or injured anyone - directly. They had 
not even existed before the late twentieth century, but in a few decades they 
had done billions of dollars' worth of damage, and often wrecked lives as 
effectively as any bodily illness could have done. They were the diseases which 
attacked Mankind's newest and most versatile servant, the computer.

    Taking names from the medical dictionaries - viruses, prions, tapeworms - 
they were programs that often mimicked, with uncanny accuracy, the behaviour of 
their organic relatives. Some were harmless - little more than playful jokes, 
contrived to surprise or amuse Computer operators by unexpected messages and 
images on their visual displays. Others were far more malicious - deliberately 
designed agents of catastrophe.

    In most cases their purpose was entirely mercenary; they were the weapons 
that sophisticated criminals used to blackmail the banks and commercial 
organizations that now depended utterly upon the efficient operation of their 
computer systems. On being warned that their data banks would be erased 
automatically at a certain time, unless they transferred a few megadollars to 
some anonymous offshore number, most victims decided not to risk possibly 
irreparable disaster. They paid up quietly, often - to avoid public or even 
private embarrassment - without notifying the police.

    This understandable desire for privacy made it easy for the network 
highwaymen to conduct their electronic holdups: even when they were caught, they 
were treated gently by legal systems which did not know how to handle such novel 
crimes - and, after all, they had not really hurt anyone, had they? Indeed, 
after they had served their brief sentences, many of the perpetrators were 
quietly hired by their victims, on the old principle that poachers make the best 
game-keepers.

    These computer criminals were driven purely by greed, and certainly did not 
wish to destroy the organizations they preyed upon: no sensible parasite kills 
its host. But there were other, and much more dangerous, enemies of society at 
work...

    Usually, they were maladjusted individuals - typically adolescent males - 
working entirely alone, and of course in complete secrecy. Their aim was to 
create programs which would simply create havoc and confusion, when they had 
been spread over the planet by the world-wide cable and radio networks, or on 
physical carriers such as diskettes and CD ROMS. Then they would enjoy the 
resulting chaos, basking in the sense of power it gave their pitiful psyches.

    Sometimes, these perverted geniuses were discovered and adopted by national 
intelligence agencies for their own secretive purposes - usually, to break into 
the data banks of their rivals. This was a fairly harmless line of employment, 
as the organizations concerned did at least have some sense of civic 
responsibility.

    Not so the apocalyptic sects, who were delighted to discover this new 
armoury, holding weapons far more effective, and more easily disseminated, than 
gas or germs. And much more difficult to counter, since they could be broadcast 
instantaneously to millions of offices and homes.

    The collapse of the New York-Havana Bank in 2005, the launching of Indian 
nuclear missiles in 2007 (luckily with their warheads unactivated), the shutdown 
of Pan-European Air Traffic Control in 2008, the paralysis of the North American 
telephone network in that same year - all these were cult-inspired rehearsals 
for Doomsday. Thanks to brilliant feats of counterintelligence by normally 
uncooperative, and even warring, national agencies, this menace was slowly 
brought under control.

    At least, so it was generally believed: there had been no serious attacks at 
the very foundations of society for several hundred years. One of the chief 
weapons of victory had been the Braincap - though there were some who believed 
that this achievement had been bought at too great a cost.

    Though arguments over the freedom of the Individual versus the duties of the 
State were old when Plato and Aristotle attempted to codify them, and would 
probably continue until the end of time, some consensus had been reached in the 
Third Millennium. It was generally agreed that Communism was the most perfect 
form of government; unfortunately it had been demonstrated - at the cost of some 
hundreds of millions of lives - that it was only applicable to social insects, 
Robots Class II, and similar restricted categories. For imperfect human beings, 
the least-worst answer was Demosocracy, frequently defined as 'individual greed, 
moderated by an efficient but not too zealous government'.

    Soon after the Braincap came into general use, some highly intelligent - and 
maximally zealous - bureaucrats realized that it had a unique potential as an 
early-warning system. During the setting-up process, when the new wearer was 
being mentally 'calibrated' it was possible to detect many forms of psychosis 
before they had a chance of becoming dangerous. Often this suggested the best 
therapy, but when no cure appeared possible the subject could be electronically 
tagged - or, in extreme cases, segregated from society. Of course, this mental 
monitoring could test only those who were fitted with a Braincap - but by the 
end of the Third Millennium this was as essential for everyday life as the 
personal telephone had been at its beginning. In fact, anyone who did not join 
the vast majority was automatically suspect, and checked as a potential deviant.

    Needless to say, when 'mind-probing', as its critics called it, started 
coming into general use, there were cries of outrage from civil-rights 
organizations; one of their most effective slogans was 'Braincap or Braincop?' 
Slowly - even reluctantly - it was accepted that this form of monitoring was a 
necessary precaution against far worse evils; and it was no coincidence that 
with the general improvement in mental health, religious fanaticism also started 
its rapid decline-

    When the long-drawn-out war against the cybernet criminals ended, the 
victors found themselves owning an embarrassing collection of spoils, all of 
them utterly incomprehensible to any past conqueror. There were, of course, 
hundreds of computer viruses, most of them very difficult to detect and kill. 
And there were some entities - for want of a better name - that were much more 
terrifying. They were brilliantly invented diseases for which there was no cure 
- in some cases not even the possibility of a cure

    Many of them had been linked to great mathematicians who would have been 
horrified by this corruption of their discoveries. As it is a human 
characteristic to belittle a real danger by giving it an absurd name, the 
designations were often facetious: the Godel Gremlin, the Mandelbrot Maze, the 
Combinatorial Catastrophe, the Transfinite Trap, the Conway Conundrum, the 
Turing Torpedo, the Lorentz Labyrinth, the Boolean Bomb, the Shannon Snare, the 
Cantor Cataclysm...

    If any generalization was possible, all these mathematical horrors operated 
on the same principle. They did not depend for their effectiveness on anything 
as nave as memory-erasure or code corruption - on the contrary. Their approach 
was more subtle; they persuaded their host machine to initiate a program which 
could not be completed before the end of the universe, or which - the Mandelbrot 
Maze was the deadliest example - involved a literally infinite series of steps.

    A trivial example would be the calculation of Pi, or any other irrational 
number. However, even the most stupid electro-optic computer would not fall into 
such a simple trap: the day had long since passed when mechanical morons would 
wear out their gears, grinding them to powder as they tried to divide by zero...

    The challenge to the demon programmers was to convince their targets that 
the task set them had a definite conclusion that could be reached in a finite 
time. In the battle of wits between man (seldom woman, despite such role-models 
as Lady Ada Lovelace, Admiral Grace Hopper and Dr Susan Calvin) and machine, the 
machine almost invariably lost.

    It would have been possible - though in some cases difficult and even risky 
- to destroy the captured obscenities by ERASE/OVERWRITE commands, but they 
represented an enormous investment in time and ingenuity which, however 
misguided, seemed a pity to waste. And, more important, perhaps they should be 
kept for study, in some secure location, as a safeguard against the time when 
some evil genius might reinvent and deploy them.

    The solution was obvious. The digital demons should be sealed with their 
chemical and biological counterparts, it was hoped for ever, in the Pico Vault.

    

37
Operation Damocles

    

    Poole never had much contact with the team who assembled the weapon everyone 
hoped would never have to be used. The operation - ominously, but aptly, named 
Damocles - was so highly specialized that he could contribute nothing directly, 
and he saw enough of the task force to realize that some of them might almost 
belong to an alien species. Indeed, one key member was apparently in a lunatic 
asylum - Poole had been surprised to find that such places still existed - and 
Chairperson Oconnor sometimes suggested that at least two others should join 
him.

    'Have you ever heard of the Enigma Project?' she remarked to Poole, after a 
particularly frustrating session. When he shook his head, she continued: 'I'm 
surprised - it was only a few decades before you were born: I came across it 
while when I was researching material for Damocles. Very similar problem - in 
one of your wars, a group of brilliant mathematicians was gathered together, in 
great secrecy, to break an enemy code... incidentally, they built one of the 
very first real computers, to make the job possible.'

    'And there's a lovely story - I hope it's true - that reminds me of our own 
little team. One day the Prime Minister came on a visit of inspection, and 
afterwards he said to Enigma's Director: "When I told you to leave no stone 
unturned to get the men you needed, I didn't expect you to take me so 
literally".'

    Presumably all the right stones had been turned for Project Damocles. 
However, as no one knew whether they were working against a deadline of days, 
weeks or years, at first it was hard to generate any sense of urgency. The need 
for secrecy also created problems; since there was no point in spreading alarm 
throughout the Solar System, not more than fifty people knew of the project. But 
they were the people who mattered - who could marshal all the forces necessary, 
and who alone could authorize the opening of the Pico Vault, for the first time 
in five hundred years.

    When Halman reported that the Monolith was receiving messages with 
increasing frequency, there seemed little doubt that something was going to 
happen. Poole was not the only one who found it hard to sleep in those days, 
even with the help of the Braincap's anti-insomnia programs. Before he finally 
did get to sleep, he often wondered if he would wake up again. But at last all 
the components of the weapon were assembled - a weapon invisible, untouchable 
and unimaginable to almost all the warriors who had ever lived.

    Nothing could have looked more harmless and innocent than the perfectly 
standard terabyte memory tablet, used with millions of Braincaps every day. But 
the fact that it was encased in a massive block of crystalline material, criss-
crossed with metal bands, indicated that it was something quite out of the 
ordinary. Poole received it with reluctance; he wondered if the courier who had 
been given the awesome task of carrying the Hiroshima atom bomb's core to the 
Pacific airbase from which it was launched had felt the same way. And yet, if 
all their fears were justified, his responsibility might be even greater.

    And he could not be certain that even the first part of his mission would be 
successful. Because no circuit could be absolutely secure, Halman had not yet 
been informed about Project Damocles; Poole would do that when he returned to 
Ganymede.

    Then he could only hope that Halman would be willing to play the role of 
Trojan Horse - and, perhaps, be destroyed in the process.

    

38
Pre-emptive Strike

    

    It was strange to be back in the Hotel Grannymede after all these years - 
strangest of all, because it seemed completely unchanged, despite everything 
that had happened. Poole was still greeted by the familiar image of Bowman as he 
walked into the suite named after him: and, as he expected, Bowman/Halman was 
waiting, looking slightly less substantial than the ancient hologram.

    Before they could even exchange greetings, there was an interruption that 
Poole would have welcomed - at any other time than this. The room vidphone gave 
its urgent trio of rising notes - also unchanged since his last visit -and an 
old friend appeared on the screen.

    'Frank!' cried Theodore Khan, 'why didn't you tell me you were coming! When 
can we meet? Why no video - someone with you? And who were all those official-
looking types who landed at the same time -'

    'Please Ted! Yes, I'm sorry - but believe me, I've got very good reasons - 
I'll explain later. And I do have someone with me - call you back just as soon 
as I can. Good-bye!'

    As he belatedly gave the 'Do Not Disturb' order, Poole said apologetically: 
'Sorry about that - you know who it was, of course.'

    'Yes - Dr Khan. He often tried to get in touch with me.'

    'But you never answered. May I ask why?' Though there were far more 
important matters to worry about, Poole could not resist putting the question.

    'Ours was the only channel I wished to keep open. Also, I was often away. 
Sometimes for years.'

    That was surprising - yet it should not have been. Poole knew well enough 
that Halman had been reported in many places, in many times. Yet - 'away for 
years'? He might have visited quite a few star systems - perhaps that was how he 
knew about Nova Scorpio, only forty light-years distant. But he could never have 
gone all the way to the Node; there and back would have been a nine-hundred-year 
journey.

    'How lucky that you were here when we needed you!' It was very unusual for 
Halman to hesitate before replying. There was much longer than the unavoidable 
three-second time-lag before he said slowly 'Are you sure that it was luck?'

    'What do you mean?'

    'I do not wish to talk about it, but twice I have - glimpsed - powers - 
entities - far superior to the Monoliths, and perhaps even their makers. We may 
both have less freedom than we imagine.'

    That was indeed a chilling thought; Poole needed a deliberate effort of will 
to put it aside and concentrate on the immediate problem.

    'Let us hope we have enough free-will to do what is necessary. Perhaps this 
is a foolish question. Does the Monolith know that we are meeting? Could it be - 
suspicious?'

    'It is not capable of such an emotion. It has numerous fault-protection 
devices, some of which I understand. But that is all.'

    'Could it be overhearing us now?'

    'I do not believe so.'

    I wish that I could be sure it was such a nave and simple-minded super-
genius, thought Poole as he unlocked his briefcase and took out the sealed box 
containing the tablet. In this low gravity its weight was almost negligible; it 
was impossible to believe that it might hold the destiny of Mankind.

    'There was no way we could be certain of getting a secure circuit to you, so 
we couldn't go into details. This tablet contains programs which we hope will 
prevent the Monolith from carrying out any orders which threaten Mankind. There 
are twenty of the most devastating viruses ever designed on this, most of which 
have no known antidote; in some cases, it is believed that none is possible. 
There are five copies of each. We would like you to release them when - and if - 
you think it is necessary. Dave - Hal - no one has ever been given such a 
responsibility. But we have no other choice.'

    Once again, the reply seemed to take longer than the three-second round trip 
from Europa.

    'If we do this, all the Monolith's functions may cease. We are uncertain 
what will happen to us then.'

    'We have considered that, of course. But by this lime, you must surely have 
many facilities at your command -some of them probably beyond our understanding. 
I am also sending you a petabyte memory tablet. Ten to the fifteenth bytes is 
more than sufficient to hold all the memories and experiences of many lifetimes. 
This will give you one escape route: I suspect you have others.'

    'Correct. We will decide which to use at the appropriate time.'

    Poole relaxed - as far as was possible in this extraordinary situation. 
Halman was willing to co-operate: he still had sufficient links with his 
origins.

    'Now, we have to get this tablet to you - physically. Its contents are too 
dangerous to risk sending over any radio or optical channel. I know you possess 
long-range control of matter: did you not once detonate an orbiting bomb? Could 
you transport it to Europa? Alternatively, we could send it in an auto-courier, 
to any point you specify.'

    'That would be best: I will collect it in Tsienville. Here are the co-
ordinates...

    

    Poole was still slumped in his chair when the Bowman Suite monitor admitted 
the head of the delegation that had accompanied him from Earth. Whether Colonel 
Jones was a genuine Colonel - or even if his name was Jones - were minor 
mysteries which Poole was not really interested in solving; it was sufficient 
that he was a superb organizer and had handled the mechanics of Operation 
Damocles with quiet efficiency.

    'Well, Frank - it's on its way. Will be landing in one hour, ten minutes. I 
assume that Halman can take it from there, but I don't understand how he can 
actually handle - is that the right word? - these tablets.'

    'I wondered about that, until someone on the Europa Committee explained it. 
There's a well-known - though not to me! - theorem stating that any computer can 
emulate any other computer. So I'm sure that Halman knows exactly what he's 
doing. He would never have agreed otherwise.'

    'I hope you're right,' replied the Colonel. 'If not - well, I don't know 
what alternative we have.'

    There was a gloomy pause, until Poole did his best to relieve the tension.

    'By the way, have you heard the local rumour about our visit?'

    'Which particular one?'

    'That we're a special commission sent here to investigate crime and 
corruption in this raw frontier township. The Mayor and the Sheriff are supposed 
to be running scared.'

    'How I envy them,' said 'Colonel Jones'. 'Sometimes it's quite a relief to 
have something trivial to worry about.'

    

39
Deicide

    

    Like all the inhabitants of Anubis City (population now 56,521), Dr Theodore 
Khan woke soon after local midnight to the sound of the General Alarm. His first 
reaction was 'Not another Icequake, for Deus's sake!'

    He rushed to the window, shouting 'Open' so loudly that the room did not 
understand, and he had to repeat the order in a normal voice. The light of 
Lucifer should have come streaming in, painting the patterns on the floor that 
so fascinated visitors from Earth, because they never moved even a fraction of a 
millimetre, no matter how long they waited...

    That unvarying beam of light was no longer there. As Khan stared in utter 
disbelief through the huge, transparent bubble of the Anubis Dome, he saw a sky 
that Ganymede had not known for a thousand years. It was once more ablaze with 
stars; Lucifer had gone.

    And then, as he explored the forgotten constellations, Kahn noticed 
something even more terrifying. Where Lucifer should have been was a tiny disc 
of absolute blackness, eclipsing the unfamiliar stars.

    There was only one possible explanation, Khan told himself numbly. Lucifer 
has been swallowed by a Black Hole. And it may be our turn next.

    On the balcony of the Grannymede Hotel, Poole was watching the same 
spectacle, but with more complex emotions. Even before the general alarm, his 
comsec had woken him with a message from Halman.

    'It is beginning. We have infected the Monolith. But one - perhaps several - 
of the viruses have entered our own circuits. We do not know if we will be able 
to use the memory tablet you have given us. If we succeed, we will meet you in 
Tsienville.'

    Then came the surprising and strangely moving words whose exact emotional 
content would be debated for generations:

    'If we are unable to download, remember us.' From the room behind him, Poole 
heard the voice of the Mayor, doing his best to reassure the now sleepless 
citizens of Anubis. Though he opened with that most terrifying of official 
statements - 'No cause for alarm' - the Mayor did indeed have words of comfort.

    'We don't know what's happening but Lucifer's still shining normally! I 
repeat - Lucifer is still shining! We've just received news from the interorbit 
shuttle Alcyone, which left for Callisto half an hour ago. Here's their view -, 
Poole left the balcony and rushed into his room just in time to see Lucifer 
blaze reassuringly on the vidscreen.

    'What's happened,' the Mayor continued breathlessly, 'is that something has 
caused a temporary eclipse - we'll zoom in to look at it... Callisto 
Observatory, come in please...'

    How does he know it's 'temporary'? thought Poole, as he waited for the next 
image to come up on the screen.

    Lucifer vanished, to be replaced by a field of stars. At the same time, the 
Mayor faded out and another voice took over:

    '- two-metre telescope, but almost any instrument will do. It's a disc of 
perfectly black material, just over ten thousand kilometres across, so thin it 
shows no visible thickness. And it's placed exactly - obviously deliberately -to 
block Ganymede from receiving any light.

    'We'll zoom in to see if it shows any details, though I rather doubt it...'

    From the viewpoint of Callisto, the occulting disc was foreshortened into an 
oval, twice as long as it was wide. It expanded until it completely filled the 
screen; thereafter, it was impossible to tell whether the image was being 
zoomed, as it showed no structure whatsoever.

    'As I thought - there's nothing to see. Let's pan over to the edge of the 
thing...'

    Again there was no sense of motion, until a field of stars suddenly 
appeared, sharply defined by the curving edge of the world-sized disc. It was 
exactly as if they were looking past the horizon of an airless, perfectly smooth 
planet.

    No, it was not perfectly smooth...

    'That's interesting,' commented the astronomer, who until now had sounded 
remarkably matter-of-fact, as if this sort of thing was an everyday occurrence. 
'The edge looks jagged - but in a very regular fashion - like a saw-blade...'

    A circular saw Poole muttered under his breath. Is it going to carve us up? 
Don't be ridiculous...

    'This is as close as we can get before diffraction spoils the image - we'll 
process it later and get much better detail:'

    The magnification was now so great that all trace of the disc's circularity 
had vanished. Across the vidscreen was a black band, serrated along its edge 
with triangles so identical that Poole found it hard to avoid the ominous 
analogy of a saw-blade. Yet something else was nagging at the back of his 
mind...

    Like everyone else on Ganymede, he watched the infinitely more distant stars 
drifting in and out of those geometrically perfect valleys. Very probably, many 
others jumped to the same conclusion even before he did.

    If you attempt to make a disc out of rectangular blocks -whether their 
proportions are 1:4:9 or any other - it cannot possibly have a smooth edge. Of 
course, you can make it as near a perfect circle as you like, by using smaller 
and smaller blocks. Yet why go to that trouble, if you merely wanted to build a 
screen large enough to eclipse a sun?

    The Mayor was right; the eclipse was indeed temporary. But its ending was 
the precise opposite of a solar one.

    First light broke through at the exact centre, not in the usual necklace of 
Bailey's Beads along the very edge. Jagged lines radiated from a dazzling 
pinhole - and now, under the highest magnification, the structure of the disc 
was being revealed. It was composed of millions of identical rectangles, perhaps 
the same size as the Great Wall of Europa. And now they were splitting apart: it 
was as if a gigantic jigsaw puzzle was being dismantled.

    Its perpetual, but now briefly interrupted, daylight was slowly returning to 
Ganymede, as the disc fragmented and the rays of Lucifer poured through the 
widening gaps. Now the components themselves were evaporating, almost as if they 
needed the reinforcement of each other's contact to maintain reality.

    Although it seemed like hours to the anxious watchers in Anubis City, the 
whole event lasted for less than fifteen minutes. Not until it was all over did 
anyone pay attention to Europa itself.

    The Great Wall was gone: and it was almost an hour before the news came from 
Earth, Mars and Moon that the Sun itself had appeared to flicker for a few 
seconds, before resuming business as usual.

    It had been a highly selective set of eclipses, obviously targeted at 
humankind. Nowhere else in the Solar System would anything have been noticed.

    In the general excitement, it was a little longer before the world realized 
that TMA ZERO and TMA ONE had both vanished, leaving only their four-million-
year-old imprints on Tycho and Africa.

    

    It was the first time the Europs could ever have met humans, but they seemed 
neither alarmed nor surprised by the huge creatures moving among them at such 
lightning speed. Of course, it was not too easy to interpret the emotional state 
of something that looked like a small, leafless bush, with no obvious sense 
organs or means of communication. But if they were frightened by the arrival of 
Alcyone, and the emergence of its passengers, they would surely have remained 
hiding in their igloos.

    As Frank Poole, slightly encumbered by his protective suit and the gift of 
shining copper wire he was carrying, walked into the untidy suburbs of 
Tsienville, he wondered what the Europs thought of recent events. For them, 
there had been no eclipse of Lucifer, but the disappearance of the Great Wall 
must surely have been a shock. It had stood there for a thousand years, as a 
shield and doubtless much more; then, abruptly, it was gone, as if it had never 
been...

    The petabyte tablet was waiting for him, with a group of Europs standing 
around it, demonstrating the first sign of curiosity that Poole had ever 
observed in them. He wondered if Halman had somehow told them to watch over this 
gift from space, until he came to collect it.

    And to take it back, since it now contained not only a sleeping friend but 
terrors which some future age might exorcise, to the only place where it could 
be safely stored.

    

40
Midnight: Pico

    

    It would be hard, Poole thought, to imagine a more peaceful scene - 
especially after the trauma of the last weeks. The slanting rays of a nearly 
full Earth revealed all the subtle details of the waterless Sea of Rains - not 
obliterating them, as the incandescent fury of the Sun would do.

    The small convoy of mooncars was arranged in a semicircle a hundred metres 
from the inconspicuous opening at the base of Pico that was the entrance to the 
Vault. From this viewpoint, Poole could see that the mountain did not live up to 
the name that the early astronomers, misled by its pointed shadow, had given to 
it. It was more like a rounded hill than a sharp peak, and he could well believe 
that one of the local pastimes was bicycle-riding to the summit. Until now, none 
of those sportsmen and women could have guessed at the secret hidden beneath 
their wheels: he hoped that the sinister knowledge would not discourage their 
healthy exercise.

    An hour ago, with a sense of mingled sadness and triumph, he had handed over 
the tablet he had brought -never letting it out of his sight - from Ganymede 
directly to the Moon.

    'Good-bye, old friends,' he had murmured. 'You've done well. Perhaps some 
future generation will reawaken you. But on the whole - I rather hope not.'

    He could imagine, all too clearly, one desperate reason why Halman's 
knowledge might be needed again. By now, surely, some message was on its way to 
that unknown control centre, bearing the news that its servant on Europa no 
longer existed. With reasonable luck, it would take 950 years, give or take a 
few, before any response could be expected.

    Poole had often cursed Einstein in the past; now he blessed him. Even the 
powers behind the Monoliths, it now appeared certain, could not spread their 
influence faster than the speed of light. So the human race should have almost a 
millennium to prepare for the next encounter - if there was to be one. Perhaps 
by that time, it would be better prepared.

    Something was emerging from the tunnel - the track-mounted, semi-humanoid 
robot that had carried the tablet into the Vault. It was almost comic to see a 
machine enclosed in the kind of isolation suit used as protection against deadly 
germs and here on the airless Moon! But no one was taking any chances, however 
unlikely they might seem. After all, the robot had moved among those carefully 
sequestered nightmares, and although according to its video cameras everything 
appeared in order, there was always a chance that some vial had leaked, or some 
canister's seal had broken. The Moon was a very stable environment, but during 
the centuries it had known many quakes and meteor impacts.

    The robot came to a halt fifty metres outside the tunnel. Slowly, the 
massive plug that sealed the Vault swung back into place, and began to rotate in 
its threads, like a giant bolt being screwed into the mountain.

    'All not wearing dark glasses, please close your eyes or look away from the 
robot!' said an urgent voice over the mooncar radio. Poole twisted round in his 
seat, just in time to see an explosion of light on the roof of the vehicle. When 
he turned back to look at Pico, all that was left of the robot was a heap of 
glowing slag; even to someone who had spent much of his life surrounded by 
vacuum, it seemed altogether wrong that tendrils of smoke were not slowly 
spiralling up from it.

    'Sterilization completed,' said the voice of the Mission Controller. 'Thank 
you, everybody. Now returning to Plato City.'

    How ironic - that the human race had been saved by the skilful deployment of 
its own insanities! What moral, Poole wondered, could one possibly draw from 
that?

    He looked back at the beautiful blue Earth, huddling beneath its tattered 
blanket of clouds for protection against the cold of space. Up there, a few 
weeks from now, he hoped to cradle his first grandson in his arms.

    Whatever godlike powers and principalities lurked beyond the stars, Poole 
reminded himself, for ordinary humans only two things were important - Love and 
Death.

    His body had not yet aged a hundred years: he still had plenty of time for 
both.

    

EPILOGUE

    

    'Their little universe is very young, and its god is still a child. But it 
is too soon to judge them; when We return in the Last Days, We will consider 
what should be saved.'

    

