‘I’ve an unpleasant feeling you’re right,’ said Curnow. ‘And if we’d stuck to our launch date, and not used Discovery as a booster, would it, or they, have done anything to save us? That wouldn’t have required much extra effort for an intelligence that could blow up Jupiter.’
There was an uneasy silence, broken at last by Heywood Floyd.
‘On the whole,’ he said, ‘I’m very glad that’s one question we’ll never get answered.’
54
Between Suns
The Russians, thought Floyd, are going to miss Walter’s songs and wisecracks on the way home. After the excitement of the last few days, the long fall Sunward – and Earthward – will seem a monotonous anticlimax. But a monotonous, uneventful trip was what everyone devoutly hoped for.
He was already feeling sleepy, but was still aware of his surroundings and capable of reacting to them. Will I look as dead when I’m in hibernation? he asked himself. It was always disconcerting to look at another person – especially someone very familiar – when he had entered the long sleep.
Perhaps it was too poignant a reminder of one’s own mortality.
Curnow was completely out, but Chandra was still awake, though already groggy from the final injection. He was obviously no longer himself, for he seemed quite unperturbed by his own nakedness or Katerina’s watchful presence. The gold lingam that was his only article of clothing kept trying to float away from him, until its chain recaptured it.
‘Everything going okay, Katerina?’ asked Floyd.
‘Perfectly. But how I envy you. In twenty minutes, you’ll be home.’
‘If that’s any consolation – how can you be sure we won’t have some horrible dreams?’
‘No one’s ever reported any.’
‘Ah – they may forget them when they wake up.’
Katerina, as usual, took him quite seriously. ‘Impossible. If there were dreams in hibernation, the EEG records would have revealed them. Okay, Chandra – close your eyes. Ah – there he goes. Now it’s your turn, Heywood. The ship will seem very strange without you.’
‘Thanks, Katerina… hope you have a nice trip.’
Drowsy though he was, Floyd became aware that Surgeon-Commander Rudenko seemed a little uncertain, even – could it be? – shy. It looked as if she wanted to tell him something, but couldn’t make up her mind.
‘What is it, Katerina?’ he said sleepily.
‘I haven’t told anyone else yet – but you certainly won’t be talking. Here’s a little surprise.’
‘You’d… better… hurry…’
‘Max and Zenia are going to get married.’
‘That… is… supposed… to… be… a… surprise?…’
‘No. It’s just to prepare you. When we get back to Earth, so are Walter and I. What do you think of that?’
Now I understand why you were spending so much time together. Yes, it is indeed a surprise… who would have thought it!
‘I’m… very… happy… to… hear…’
Floyd’s voice faded out before he could complete the sentence. But he was not yet unconscious, and was still able to focus some of his dissolving intellect on this new situation.
I really don’t believe it, he said to himself. Walter will probably change his mind before he wakes up.
And then he had one final thought, just before he went to sleep himself. If Walter does change his mind, he’d better not wake up.
Dr Heywood Floyd thought that was very funny. The rest of the crew often wondered why he was smiling all the way back to Earth.
55
Lucifer Rising
Fifty times more brilliant than the full Moon, Lucifer had transformed the skies of Earth, virtually banishing night for months at a time. Despite its sinister connotations, the name was inevitable; and indeed ‘Light-bringer’ had brought evil as well as good. Only the centuries and the millennia would show in which direction the balance tilted.
On the credit side, the end of night had vastly extended the scope of human activity, especially in the less-developed countries. Everywhere, the need for artificial lighting had been substantially reduced, with resulting huge savings in electrical power. It was as if a giant lamp had been hoisted into space, to shine upon half the globe. Even in daytime Lucifer was a dazzling object, casting distinct shadows.
Farmers, mayors; city managers, police, seamen, and almost all those engaged in outdoor activities – especially in remote areas – welcomed Lucifer; it had made their lives much safer and easier. But it was hated by lovers, criminals, naturalists, and astronomers.
The first two groups found their activities seriously restricted, while naturalists were concerned about Lucifer’s impact upon animal life. Many nocturnal creatures had been seriously affected, while others had managed to adapt. The Pacific grunion, whose celebrated mating pattern was locked to high tides and moonless nights, was in grave trouble, and seemed to be heading for rapid extinction.
And so, it seemed, were Earth-based astronomers. That was not such a scientific catastrophe as it would once have been, for more than fifty per cent of astronomical research depended upon instruments in space or on the Moon. They could be easily shielded from Lucifer’s glare; but terrestrial observatories were seriously inconvenienced by the new sun in what had once been the night sky.
The human race would adapt, as it had done to so many changes in the past. A generation would soon be born that had never known a world without Lucifer; but that brightest of all stars would be an eternal question to every thinking man and woman.
Why had Jupiter been sacrificed – and how long would the new sun radiate? Would it burn out quickly, or would it maintain its power for thousands of years-perhaps for the lifetime of the human race? Above all, why the interdiction upon Europa, a world now as cloud-covered as Venus?
There must be answers to those questions; and Mankind would never be satisfied until it had found them.
Epilogue: 20,001
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.
Only during the last few generations have the Europans ventured into the Farside, beyond the light and warmth of their never-setting sun, into the wilderness where the ice that once covered all their world may still be found. And even fewer have remained there to face the brief and fearful night that comes, when the brilliant but powerless Cold Sun sinks below the horizon.
Yet already, those few hardy explorers have discovered that the Universe around them is stranger than they ever imagined. The sensitive eyes they developed in the dim oceans still serve them well; they can see the stars and the other bodies moving in their sky. They have begun to lay the foundations of astronomy, and some daring thinkers have, even surmised that the great world of Europa is not the whole of creation.
Very soon after they had emerged from the ocean, during the explosively swift evolution forced upon them by the melting of the ice, they had realized that the objects in the sky fell into three distinct classes. Most important, of course, was the sun. Some legends – though few took them seriously – claimed that it had not always been there, but had appeared suddenly, heralding a brief, cataclysmic age of transformation, when much of Europa’s teeming life had been destroyed. If that was indeed true, it was a small price to pay for the benefits that poured down from the tiny, inexhaustible source of energy that hung unmoving in the sky.
Perhaps the Cold Sun was its distant brother, banished for some crime and condemned to march forever around the vault of heaven. It was of no importance except to those peculiar Europans who were always asking questions about matters that all sensible folk took for granted.
Still, it must be admitted that those cranks had made some interesting discoveries during their excursions into the darkness of Farside. They claimed – though this was hard to believe – that the whole sky was sprinkled with uncountable myriads of tiny lights, even smaller and feebler than the Cold Sun. They varied greatly in brilliance; and though they rose and set, they never moved from their fixed positions.
Against this background, there were three objects that did move, apparently obeying complex laws that no one had yet been able to fathom. And unlike all the others in the sky, they were quite large – though both shape and size varied continually. Sometimes they were disks, sometimes half-circles, sometimes slim crescents. They were obviously closer than all the other bodies in the Universe, for their surfaces showed an immense wealth of complex and ever-changing detail.
The theory that they were indeed other worlds had at last been accepted – though no one except a few fanatics believed that they could be anything like as large, or as important, as Europa. One lay toward the Sun, and was in a constant state of turmoil. On its nightside could be seen the glow of great fires – a phenomenon still beyond the understanding of the Europans, for their atmosphere, as yet, contains no oxygen. And sometimes vast explosions hurl clouds of debris up from the surface; if the sunward globe is indeed a world, it must be a very unpleasant place to live. Perhaps even worse than the nightside of Europa.