And it was also unsettling to hear the messages that continued to arrive for Poole and Whitehead, and to see the faces of their friends and relatives as they sent greetings to men who had been dead for months. It was a constant reminder of their own uncertain future, now that it was time for their hibernation to begin.
There were better places to have slept, but they had little choice in the matter. They could only hope that Jupiter V would continue to treat them with complete indifference, as they circled it every ninety minutes until, three or four or five years from now, the recovery expedition arrived.
During the last days they checked every detail of the ship, closed down all unnecessary equipment, and tried to anticipate everything that could possibly go wrong. The shadow of Poole’s death often lay heavy on their minds, but they never mentioned it. Whether it had been due to a random failure, or a loss of tolerance, there was nothing that could be done. They had no alternative but to proceed as planned.
One by one, their work completed, they made their goodbyes and went to rest, until at last only the captain was left. To Bowman, all this had a haunting familiarity; once before he had cracked the same jokes, made the same-he hoped-temporary farewells, and had been left alone in the sleeping ship.
He would wait two days before he followed the others. One would be long enough to check that everything was running smoothly; the second would be his own-to share with the last game of the World Series.
Curiously enough, while on Earth, he had never been an avid baseball fan, but like all the members of the crew he had acquired a passionate interest in the sport programs relaying from Earth. One day more or less made no difference to Bowman now, and he was anxious to see if the New York Yankees would make a comeback after their long years in the doldrums. He doubted it; the Mets seemed more impregnable than ever.
And so, in the now deserted Control Center, David Bowman took his leave of the strangest sky that any man had ever seen. Half of it was filled with the steeply curving, ammonia-spattered landscape of Jupiter V; most of the rest was occupied by Jupiter itself. A huge, waning crescent, it was shrinking almost visibly as the ship rushed into its shadow; the distant Sun would soon be eclipsed behind it. And when, thought Bowman, shall I see the sun again?
The solar glare had already swallowed up the evening star called Earth. But though he could not see the world of men, its voice was still echoing through the ship, and on the Control Center monitor screen was a spectacle that would doubtless have baffled many quite intelligent extraterrestrial races.
One entity, holding a stubby rod in both hands, confronted another carrying a small spherical object. They both stood on a flat, triangular area of ground, while grouped around them in frozen, expectant postures, were some dozen other individuals. And at a greater distance, thousands more sat motionless on concentric tiers of seats.
The creature holding the sphere started to whirl its grasping limb around with ever-increasing violence. Suddenly, so swiftly that the eye could hardly follow its motion, the sphere escaped from its resting place and hurtled toward the entity with the rod. The creature was obviously in grave danger-but the projectile missed the intended target, and went racing past it.
There was a brief flurry of activity; then the sphere was returned to the original holder. The ordeal, it seemed, was to continue….
This time, however, the victim was able to defend himself more effectively. Puny though his protective shield was by luck or skill he managed to intercept the hurtling projectile-and even to send it soaring back over the head of his tormentor. Then, while his enemies were distracted, he started to spring for safety….
But Bowman never saw Malczinsky finish his home run. At that moment the alert and sleepless Athena, still watching over the ship, sounded the collision alarm.
The image from Earth was wiped off screen, as if it had never existed, to be replaced by the impersonal rings and spokes of the radar display. Bowman read their message in a second-and felt a sense of freezing loneliness that he had not known even when he had sent Kelvin Poole to follow Peter Whitehead to the stars.
Once more he was the only master of the ship, with none to help or advise him, in a moment of crisis. And this was a crisis indeed, for twenty miles ahead, directly in his line of flight, something was rising out of the Star Gate.
LAST MESSAGE
A moment later, Bowman switched to the high-definition display, and had a second surprise. The object was quite small-only about six feet long. Far too large to be a meteor, yet far too small to be a spaceship. He did not know whether to be disappointed, or relieved.
He locked the optical telescope onto the radar, and peered eagerly through the eyepiece. There it was, glinting in the sunlight-obviously metallic, obviously artificial. And then he cried out in astonishment; for the thing soaring out of the abyss was one of Discovery’s own space probes, dropped into Jupiter V days or weeks ago.
He switched on the radio and searched the telemetry band. The signal came in at once, loud and clear. All these probes had short-lived power supplies, so that they should not clutter up the spectrum when they had done their -work-but this one was still radiating. A quick check of the frequency confirmed what he had already guessed.
This was the very last probe they had dropped into the Star Gate. It had vanished into that abyss, eleven thousand miles “down,” while apparently moving faster than any manmade object in history. Yet now it had returned, still in perfect working order-only two days later.
It was moving quite slowly, rising up towards the face of Jupiter. And presently it vanished from sight against that looming disk; but he could still hear it, chirping briskly as it settled into an orbit that might or might not be stable -but which, he was quite certain, could only be the result of intelligent planning.
This could never have happened by chance, or by the operation of natural laws. The Star Gate had returned their gift; it must have done so deliberately.
Someone or something knew that they were here.
“This is David Bowman, recording for log. The ship is in perfect order and I am now scheduled to join Kaminski and Hunter and Kimball in hibernation.
“I am not going to do so. Instead, I am taking one of the pods, which is fully provisioned and fueled, and am descending into the Star Gate.
“I am completely aware of the risks, but I consider them acceptable. The safe return of our probe, after only two days, is proof that an object can pass unharmed through the Star Gate in a short period of time. I have enough oxygen for at least the one-way trip, and am prepared to take my chances at the other end.
“It seems to me that this is an invitation-even a sign of friendliness. I’m prepared to accept it as such. If I am wrong-well, I won’t be the first explorer to make such a mistake.
“Bill, Vic, and Jack-if I don’t see you again, good luck, and I hope you make it back to Earth. This is Dave, signing off.”
THE WORLDS OF THE STAR GATE
A water who sets out to describe a civilization superior to his own is obviously attempting the impossible. A glance at the science fiction of fifty-or even twenty-years ago shows how futile it is to peer even a little way into the mists of time, and when dealing merely with the world of men.
Longer-range anticipations are clearly even less likely to be successful; imagine what sort of forecast one of the Pilgrim Fathers could have made of the United States in the year 1970! Practically nothing in his picture would have had any resemblance to the reality-which, in fact, would have been virtually incomprehensible to him.
But Stanley Kubrick and I were attempting, at the climax of our Odyssey, something even more outrageous. We had to describe and to show on the screen-the activities and environments, and perhaps the physical nature, of creatures millions of years ahead of man. This was, by definition, impossible. One might as well expect Moon-Watcher to give a lucid description of David Bowman and his society.
Obviously, the problem had to be approached indirectly. Even if we showed any extraterrestrial creatures and their habitats, they would have to be fairly near us on the evolutionary scale-say, not more than a couple of centuries ahead. They could hardly be the three-million-year old entities who were the powers behind the Black Monolith and the Star Gate.