Sphere by Crichton, Michael

COM SUMMARY DH-SURCOM/l

0910 BARNES TO SURCOM/1:

CIVILIAN AND USN PERSONNEL POLLED. ALTHOUGH ADVISED OF RISKS, ALL PERSONNEL ELECT TO REMAIN DOWN FOR DURATION OF STORM TO CONTINUE INVESTIGATION OF ALIEN SPHERE AND ASSOCIATED SPACECRAFT.

BARNES, USN.

“You’re kidding,” Norman said. “I thought Barnes wanted to leave.”

“He did, but he changed his mind when he saw that last room, and he didn’t bother to tell us. I’d like to kill the bastard,” Beth said. “You know what this is about, Norman, don’t you?”

Norman nodded. “He hopes to find a new weapon.”

“Right. Barnes is a Pentagon-acquisition man, and he wants to find a new weapon.”

“But the sphere is unlikely—”

“It’s not the sphere,” Beth said. “Barnes doesn’t really [[129]] care about the sphere. He cares about the ‘associated spacecraft.’ Because, according to congruity theory, it’s the spacecraft that is likely to pay off. Not the sphere.”

Congruity theory was a troublesome matter for the people who thought about extraterrestrial life. In a simple way, the astronomers and physicists who considered the possibility of contact with extraterrestrial life imagined wonderful benefits to mankind from such a contact. But other thinkers, philosophers and historians, did not foresee any benefits to contact at all.

For example, astronomers believed that if we made contact with extraterrestrials, mankind would be so shocked that wars on Earth would cease, and a new era of peaceful cooperation between nations would begin.

But historians thought that was nonsense. They pointed out that when Europeans discovered the New World—a similarly world-shattering discovery—the Europeans did not stop their incessant fighting. On the contrary: they fought even harder. Europeans simply made the New World an extension of pre-existing animosities. It became another place to fight, and to fight over.

Similarly, astronomers imagined that when mankind met extraterrestrials, there would be an exchange of information and technology, giving mankind a wonderful advancement.

Historians of science thought that was nonsense, too. They pointed out that what we called “science” actually consisted of a rather arbitrary conception of the universe, not likely to be shared by other creatures. Our ideas of science were the ideas of visually oriented, monkey-like creatures who enjoyed changing their physical environment. If the aliens were blind and communicated by odors, they might have evolved a very different science, which described a very different universe. And they might have made very different choices about the directions their science would explore. For example, they might ignore the physical world entirely, and instead develop a highly sophisticated science of mind—in other words, the exact opposite of what Earth science had done. The alien technology might be purely mental, with no visible hardware at all.

[[130]] This issue was at the heart of congruity theory, which said that unless the aliens were remarkably similar to us, no exchange of information was likely. Barnes of course knew that theory, so he knew he wasn’t likely to derive any useful technology from the alien sphere. But he was very likely to get useful technology from the spaceship itself, since the spaceship had been made by men, and congruity was high.

And he had lied to keep them down. To keep the search going.

“What should we do with the bastard?” Beth said. “Nothing, for the moment,” Norman said.

“You don’t want to confront him? Jesus, I do.”

“It won’t serve any purpose,” Norman said. “Ted won’t care, and the Navy people are all following orders. And anyway, even if it had been arranged for us to depart as planned, would you have gone, leaving Harry behind in the sphere?”

“No,” Beth admitted.

“Well, then. It’s all academic.”

“Jesus, Norman …”

“I know. But we’re here now. And for the next couple of days, there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. Let’s deal with that reality as best we can, and point the finger later.”

“You bet I’m going to point the finger!”

“That’s fine. But not now, Beth.”

“Okay,” she sighed. “Not now.”

She went back upstairs.

Alone, Norman stared at the console. He had his work cut out for him, keeping everybody calm for the next few days. He hadn’t looked into the computer system before; he started pressing buttons. Pretty soon he found a file marked ULF CONTACT TEAM BIOG. [[131]] He opened it up.

Civilian Team Members

1. Theodore Fielding, astrophysicist/planetary geologist

2. Elizabeth Halpern, zoologist/biochemist

3. Harold J. Adams, mathematician/logician

4. Arthur Levine, marine biologist/biochemist

5. John F. Thompson, psychologist

Choose one:

Norman stared in disbelief at the list.

He knew Jack Thompson, an energetic young psychologist from Yale. Thompson was world-renowned for his studies of the psychology of primitive peoples, and in fact for the past year had been somewhere in New Guinea, studying native tribes.

Norman pressed more buttons.

ULF TEAM PSYCHOLOGIST: CHOICES BY RANK

1. John F. Thompson, Yale—approved

2. William L. Hartz, UCB—approved

3. Jeremy White, UT—approved (pending clearance)

4. Norman Johnson, SDU—rejected (age)

He knew them all. Bill Hartz at Berkeley was seriously ill with cancer. Jeremy White had gone to Hanoi during the Vietnam War, and would never get clearance.

That left Norman.

He understood now why he had been the last to be called in. He understood now about the special tests. He felt a burst of intense anger at Barnes, at the whole system which had brought him down here, despite his age, with no concern for his safety. At fifty-three, Norman Johnson had no business being a thousand feet underwater in a pressurized exotic gas environment—and the Navy knew it.

It was an outrage, he thought. He wanted to go upstairs and give Barnes hell in no uncertain terms. That lying son of a bitch

He gripped the arms of his chair and reminded himself of what he had told Beth. Whatever had happened up to this point, there was nothing any of them could do about it now. He would indeed give Barnes hell—he promised himself he [[132]] would—but only when they got back to the surface. Until then, it was no use making trouble.

He shook his head and swore.

Then he turned the console off.

The hours crept by. Harry was still in the sphere. Tina ran her image intensification of the videotape that showed the sphere open, trying to see interior detail. “Unfortunately, we have only limited computing power in the habitat,” she said. “If I could hard-link to the surface I could really do a job, but as it is …” She shrugged.

She showed them a series of enlarged freeze-frames from the open sphere. The images clicked through at one-second intervals. The quality was poor, with jagged, intermittent static.

“The only internal structures we can see in the blackness,” Tina said, pointing to the opening, “are these multiple pointsources of light. The lights appear to move from frame to frame.”

“It’s as if the sphere is filled with fireflies,” Beth said. “Except these lights are much dimmer than fireflies, and they don’t blink. They are very numerous. And they give the impression of moving together, in surging patterns …”

“A flock of fireflies?”

“Something like that.” The tape ran out. The screen went dark.

Ted said, “That’s it?”

“I’m afraid so, Dr. Fielding.”

“Poor Harry,” Ted said mournfully.

Of all the group, Ted was the most visibly upset about Harry. He kept staring at the closed sphere on the monitor, saying, “How did he do that?” Then he would add, “I hope he’s all right.”

He repeated it so often that finally Beth said, “I think we know your feelings, Ted.”

“I’m seriously concerned about him.”

“I am, too. We all are.”

“You think I’m jealous, Beth? Is that what you’re saying?”

[[133]] “Why would anyone think that, Ted?”

Norman changed the subject. It was crucial to avoid confrontations among group members. He asked Ted about his analysis of the flight data aboard the spaceship.

“It’s very interesting,” Ted said, warming to his subject. “My detailed examination of the earliest flight-data images,” he said, “convinced me that they show three planets—Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto—and the sun, very small in the background. Therefore, the pictures are taken from some point beyond the orbit of Pluto. This suggests that the black hole is not far beyond our own solar system.”

“Is that possible?” Norman said.

“Oh sure. In fact, for the last ten years some astrophysicists have suspected that there’s a black hole—not a large one, but a black hole just outside our solar system.”

“I hadn’t heard that.”

“Oh yes. In fact, some of us have argued that, if it was small enough, in a few years we could go out and capture the black hole, bring it back, park it in Earth orbit, and use the energy it generates to power the entire planet.”

Barnes smiled. “Black-hole cowboys?”

“In theory, there’s no reason it couldn’t be done. Then just think: the entire planet would be free of its dependency on fossil fuels. … The whole history of mankind would be changed.”

Barnes said, “Probably make a hell of a weapon, too.”

“Even a very tiny black hole would be a little too powerful to use as a weapon.”

“So you think this ship went out to capture a black hole?”

“I doubt it,” Ted said. “The ship is so strongly made, so shielded against radiation, that I suspect it was intended to go through a black hole. And it did.”

“And that’s why the ship went back in time?” Norman said.

“I’m not sure,” Ted said. “You see, a black hole really is the edge of the universe. What happens there isn’t clear to anybody now alive. But what some people think is that you don’t go through the hole, you sort of skip into it, like a [[134]] pebble skipping over water, and you get bounced into a different time or space or universe.”

“So the ship got bounced?”

“Yes. Possibly more than once. And when it bounced back here, it undershot and arrived a few hundred years before it left.”

“And on one of its bounces, it picked up that?” Beth said, pointing to the monitor.

They looked. The sphere was still closed. But lying next to it, sprawled on the deck in an awkward pose, was Harry Adams.

For a moment they thought he was dead. Then Harry lifted his head and moaned.

THE SUBJECT

Norman wrote in his notebook: Subject is a thirty-year-old black mathematician who has spent three hours inside a sphere of unknown origin. On recovery from the sphere was stuporous and unresponsive; he did not know his name, where he was, or what year it was. Brought back to habitat; slept for one half-hour then awoke abruptly complaining of headache.

“Oh God.”

Harry was sitting in his bunk, holding his head in his hands, groaning.

“Hurt?” Norman asked.

“Brutal. Pounding.”

“Anything else?”

“Thirsty. God.” He licked his lips. “Really thirsty.”

Extreme thirst, Norman wrote.

Rose Levy, the cook, showed up with a glass of lemonade. [[135]] Norman handed the glass to Harry, who drank it in a single gulp, passed it back.

“More.”

“Better bring a pitcher,” Norman said. Levy went off. Norman turned to Harry, still holding his head, still groaning, and said, “I have a question for you.”

“What?”

“What’s your name?”

“Norman, I don’t need to be psychoanalyzed right now.”

“Just tell me your name.”

“Harry Adams, for Christ’s sake. What’s the matter with you? Oh, my head.”

“You didn’t remember before,” Norman said. “When we found you.”

“When you found me?” he asked. He seemed confused again.

Norman nodded. “Do you remember when we found you?”

“It must have been … outside.”

“Outside?”

Harry looked up, suddenly furious, eyes glowing with rage. “Outside the sphere, you goddamn idiot! What do you think I’m talking about?”

“Take it easy, Harry.”

“Your questions are driving me crazy!”

“Okay, okay. Take it easy.”

Emotionally labile. Rage and irritability. Norman made more notes.

“Do you have to make so much noise?”

Norman looked up, puzzled.

“Your pen,” Harry said. “It sounds like Niagara Falls.”

Norman stopped writing. It must be a migraine, or something like migraine. Harry was holding his head in his hands delicately, as if it were made of glass.

“Why can’t I have any aspirin, for Christ’s sake?”

“We don’t want to give you anything for a while, in case you’ve hurt yourself. We need to know where the pain is.”

“The pain, Norman, is in my head. It’s in my goddamn head! Now, why won’t you give me any aspirin?”

[[136]] “Barnes said not to.”

“Is Barnes still here?”

“We’re all still here.”

Harry looked up slowly. “But you were supposed to go to the surface.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you go?”

“The weather went bad, and they couldn’t send the subs.”

“Well, you should go. You shouldn’t be here, Norman.”

Levy arrived with more lemonade. Harry looked at her as he drank.

“You’re still here, too?”

“Yes, Dr. Adams.”

“How many people are down here, all together?”

Levy said, “There are nine of us, sir.”

“Jesus.” He passed the glass back. Levy refilled it. “You should all go. You should leave.”

“Harry,” Norman said. “We can’t go.”

“You have to go.”

Norman sat on the bunk opposite Harry and watched as Harry drank. Harry was demonstrating a rather typical manifestation of shock: the agitation, the irritability, the nervous, manic flow of ideas, the unexplained fears for the safety of others—it was all characteristic of shocked victims of severe accidents, such as major auto crashes or airplane crashes. Given an intense event, the brain struggled to assimilate, to make sense, to reassemble the mental world even as the physical world was shattered around it. The brain went into a kind of overdrive, hastily trying to reassemble things, to get things right, to re-establish equilibrium. Yet it was fundamentally a confused period of wheel-spinning.

You just had to wait it out.

Harry finished the lemonade, handed the glass back.

“More?” Levy asked.

“No, that’s good. Headache’s better.”

Perhaps it was dehydration after all, Norman thought. But why would Harry be dehydrated after three hours in the sphere?

“Harry … ?”

[[137]] “Tell me something. Do I look different, Norman?”

“No.”

“I look the same to you?”

“Yes. I’d say so.”

“Are you sure?” Harry said. He jumped up, went to a mirror mounted on the wall. He peered at his face.

“How do you think you look?” Norman said.

“I don’t know. Different.”

“Different how?”

“I don’t know!” … He pounded the padded wall next to the mirror. The mirror image vibrated. He turned away, sat down on the bunk again. He sighed. “Just different.”

“Harry…”

“What?”

“Do you remember what happened?”

“Of course.”

“What happened?”

“I went inside.”

He waited, but Harry said nothing further. He just stared at the carpeted floor.

“Do you remember opening the door?” Harry said nothing.

“How did you open the door, Harry?”

Harry looked up at Norman. “You were all supposed to leave. To go back to the surface. You weren’t supposed to stay.

“How did you open the door, Harry?”

There was a long silence. “I opened it.” He sat up straight, his hands at his sides. He seemed to be remembering, reliving it.

“And then?”

“I went inside.”

“And what happened inside?”

“It was beautiful. …”

“What was beautiful?”

“The foam,” Harry said. And then he fell silent again, staring vacantly into space.

“The foam?” Norman prompted.

“The sea. The foam. Beautiful …”

[[138]] Was he talking about the lights? Norman wondered. The swirling pattern of lights?

“What was beautiful, Harry?”

“Now, don’t kid me,” Harry said. “Promise you won’t kid me.”

“I won’t kid you.”

“You think I look the same?”

“Yes, I do.”

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