‘Dr Millson would like you to return his call as soon as possible.’
‘I know. But I don’t have a secure circuit, I’ve some important visitors coming shortly, and I’m damned if I’m driving down to your office in Hilo just to say I’ve read two documents. Tell him that I’ve studied them carefully and await any further communication with interest.’
For a moment it looked as if the colonel was going to argue. Then he thought better of it, made a stiff farewell, and departed morosely into the night.
‘Now, what was all that about?’ asked Caroline. ‘We’re not expecting any visitors tonight, important or otherwise.’
‘I hate being pushed around, particularly by Victor Millson.’
‘Bet he calls you back as soon as the colonel reports.’
‘Then we must switch off video and make some party noises. But to be perfectly truthful, at this stage I really don’t have anything to say.’
‘About what, if I’m allowed to ask.’
‘Sorry, dear. It seems that Discovery is playing tricks on us. We thought the ship was in a stable orbit, but it may be about to crash.’
‘Into Jupiter?’
‘Oh no – that’s quite impossible. Bowman left it parked at the inner Lagrange point, on the line between Jupiter and Io. It should have stayed there, more or less, though the perturbations of the outer moons would have made it wander back and forth.
‘But what’s happening now is something very odd, and we don’t know the full explanation. Discovery’s drifting more and more rapidly toward Io – though sometimes it accelerates, and sometimes even moves backward. If it keeps this up, it will impact within two or three years.’
‘I thought this couldn’t happen in astronomy. Isn’t celestial mechanics supposed to be an exact science? So we poor backward biologists were always being told.’
‘It is an exact science, when everything is taken into account. But some very strange things go on around Io. Apart from its volcanoes, there are tremendous electrical discharges – and Jupiter’s magnetic field is spinning round every ten hours. So gravitation isn’t the only force acting on Discovery; we should have thought of this sooner – much sooner.’
‘Well, it’s not your problem anymore. You should be thankful for that.’
‘Your problem’ – the very expression that Dimitri had used. And Dimitri – cunning old fox! – had known him much longer than Caroline.
It might not be his problem, but it was still his responsibility. Though many others had been involved, in the final analysis he had approved the plans for the Jupiter Mission, and supervised their execution.
Even at the time, he had had qualms; his views as a scientist had conflicted with his duties as a bureaucrat. He could have spoken out, and opposed the old administration’s shortsighted policies – though to what extent those had actually contributed to the disaster was still uncertain.
Perhaps it was best if he closed this chapter of his life, and focused all his thoughts and energies upon his new career. But in his heart he knew that was impossible; even if Dimitri had not revived old guilts, they would have surfaced of their own accord.
Four men had died, and one had disappeared, out there among the moons of Jupiter. There was blood on his hands, and he did not know how to wash them clean.
3
SAL 9000
Dr Sivasubramanian Chandrasegarampillai, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana, also had an abiding sense of guilt, but one very different from Heywood Floyd’s. Those of his students and colleagues who often wondered if the little scientist was quite human would not have been surprised to learn that he never thought of the dead astronauts. Dr Chandra grieved only for his lost child, HAL 9000.
Even after all these years, and his endless reviews of the data radioed back from Discovery, he was not sure what had gone wrong. He could only formulate theories; the facts he needed were frozen in Hal’s circuits, out there between Jupiter and Io.
The sequence of events had been clearly established, up to the moment of the tragedy; thereafter, Commander Bowman had filled in a few more details on the brief occasions when he had re-established contact. But knowing what happened did not explain why.
The first hint of trouble had been late in the mission, when Hal had reported the imminent failure of the unit that kept Discovery’s main antenna aligned to Earth. If the half-billion-kilometre-long radio beam wandered off target, the ship would be blind, deaf, and dumb.
Bowman himself had gone out to retrieve the suspect unit, but when it was tested it appeared, to everyone’s surprise, to be in perfectly good order. The automatic checking circuits could find nothing wrong with it. Nor could Hal’s twin, SAL 9000, back on Earth, when the information was transmitted to Urbana.
But Hal had insisted on the accuracy of his diagnosis, making pointed remarks about ‘human error’. He had suggested that the control unit be put back in the antenna until it finally failed, so that the fault could be precisely located. No one could think of any objection, for the unit could be replaced in minutes, even if it did break down.
Bowman and Poole, however, had not been happy; they both felt that something was wrong, though neither could pinpoint it. For months they had accepted Hal as the third member of their tiny world, and knew his every mood. Then the atmosphere aboard the ship had subtly altered; there was a sense of strain in the air.
Feeling rather like traitors – as a distraught Bowman had later reported to Mission Control – the human two-thirds of the crew had discussed what should be done if their colleague was indeed malfunctioning. In the worst possible case, Hal would have to be relieved of all his higher responsibilities. This would involve disconnection – the computer equivalent of death.
Despite their doubts, they had carried out the agreed programme. Poole had flown out of Discovery in one of the little space pods that served as transporters and mobile workshops during extravehicular activities. Since the somewhat tricky job of replacing the antenna unit could not be performed by the pod’s own manipulators, Poole had started to do it himself.
What happened then had been missed by the external cameras, which was a suspicious detail in itself. Bowman’s first warning of disaster was a cry from Poole – then, silence. A moment later he saw Poole, tumbling over and over, spinning away into space. His own pod had rammed him, and was itself blasting away out of control.
As Bowman admitted later, he had then made several serious mistakes – all but one excusable. In the hope of rescuing Poole, if he was still alive, Bowman launched himself in another space pod – leaving Hal in full control of the ship.
The EVA was in vain; Poole was dead when Bowman reached him. Numb with despair, he had carried the body back to the ship – only to be refused entry by Hal.
But Hal had underestimated human ingenuity and determination. Though he had left his suit helmet in the ship, and thus had to risk direct exposure to space, Bowman forced his way in by an emergency hatch not under computer control. Then he proceeded to lobotomize Hal, unplugging his brain modules one by one.
When he regained control of the ship, Bowman made an appalling discovery. During his absence, Hal had switched off the life-support systems of the three hibernating astronauts. Bowman was alone, as no man had ever been before in the whole of human history.
Others might have abandoned themselves in helpless despair, but now David Bowman proved that those who had selected him had indeed chosen well. He managed to keep Discovery operational, and even re-established intermittent contact with Mission Control, by orienting the whole ship so that the jammed antenna pointed toward Earth.
On its preordained trajectory, Discovery had finally arrived at Jupiter. There Bowman had encountered, orbiting among the moons of the giant planet, a black slab of exactly the same shape as the monolith excavated in the lunar crater Tycho – but hundreds of times larger. He had gone out in a space pod to investigate, and had disappeared leaving that final, baffling message: ‘My God, it’s full of stars!’
That mystery was for others to worry about; Dr Chandra’s overwhelming concern was with Hal. If there was one thing his unemotional mind hated, it was uncertainty. He would never be satisfied until he knew the cause of Hal’s behaviour. Even now, he refused to call it a malfunction; at most, it was an ‘anomaly’.
The tiny cubbyhole he used as his inner sanctum was equipped only with a swivel chair, a desk console, and a blackboard flanked by two photographs. Few members of the general public could have identified the portraits, but anyone permitted thus far would have recognized them instantly as John von Neumann and Alan Turing, the twin gods of the computing pantheon.