Ivan Yefremov - Andromeda (A Space-Age Tale)

“What? Darr Veter….”

“No, a cave collapsed during excavations.”

Veda gave him a brief description of what had happened in the Hall of Culture.

“You’re the only one of my friends who has free access to the Prophetic Brain.”

“To which of the four?”

“The Brain of Lower Definition.”

“I understand; you want me to calculate the possibility of reaching the door with a minimum expenditure of labour and material.”

“You’re right.”

“Have you got the data?”

“I have them before me.”

“All right. I’m listening.”

Mven Mass wrote down some columns of figures very rapidly.

“Now you’ll have to wait until the machine can accept my figures. If you wait I’ll get in touch with the Prophetic Brain engineer on duty. The Brain of Lower Definition is in the Australian Section of the southern zone.”

“Where is the Brain of Higher Definition?”

“That’s in the Indian Section, where I am, now. I’m changing over. Wait for me.”

As Veda stood before the empty screen she tried to imagine the Prophetic Brain. Her imagination pictured a gigantic human brain with its furrows and convolutions, alive and pulsating, although the young woman knew that they were electronic research machines of the highest class capable of solving any problem that could be solved by the known branches of mathematics. There were only four such machines on the planet and they all had special uses.

Veda did not have long to wait. The screen lit up and Mven Mass asked her to call him again in six days’ time. later in the evening.

“Mven, your help is invaluable!”

“Just because I know something of the rules of mathematics, is that it? And your work is invaluable because you know the ancient languages and cultures. Veda, you’re overdoing it with the Era of Disunity!”

The historian frowned but Mven Mass laughed with such good nature and so infectiously that Veda also laughed, waved him good-bye and disappeared.

At the appointed time Mven Mass again saw the young woman in the televisophone.

“You needn’t speak, I see by your face that the answer is unfavourable.”

“Yes, stability is below the safety limit. If you go straight to it you will have to remove almost a million cubic metres of rock.”

“It will only be possible for us to tunnel to the second cave and remove the safes,” said Veda, sadly.

“Is it a matter of such distress?”

“Excuse me, Mven, but you have also stood before a door that hid an unfathomed secret. Yours are great, universal secrets and mine are tiny little ones. Emotionally, however, my failure is the equal of yours!”

“We’re companions in misfortune. I can tell you that we’ll be knocking our heads against closed doors many times, yet. The stronger and more courageous our efforts the more often we shall come up against doors.”

“One of them will open!”

“Naturally.”

“You haven’t given up altogether, have you?”

“Of course not, we’re collecting fresh facts and the indicants of more correct methods.”

“And suppose you have to wait all your life?”

“What is my individual life compared with such a step forward in knowledge!”

“Mven, what has happened to your impassioned impatience?”

“It hasn’t disappeared, it’s been curbed — by suffering.”

“How’s Renn Bose?”

“He’s better. He’s looking for ways to make his abstractions more precise.”

“I see. Wait a minute, Mven, there’s something important for me!”

Veda disappeared from the screen and when the light flashed on again, she was another, younger and more carefree woman.

“Darr Veter is returning to Earth. Satellite 57 is being completed ahead of time.”

“As quickly as that? Is it finished?”

“No, it’s not finished, they’ve only put on the outer walls of the hull and mounted the engines. The work inside is easier. He is being called back to rest and to analyse Junius Antus’ report on a new form of communication around the Great Circle.”

“Thanks, Veda. I’ll be glad to see Darr Veter.”

“You’ll see him all right. I didn’t finish. Supplies of anameson for the new spaceship Lebed have been prepared by the efforts of the whole planet. The crew invite you to see them off on the journey from which there will be no return. Will you come?”

“I’ll be there. The planet will show Lebed’s crew everything that is beautiful and lovable in the world. They also wanted to see Chara’s dance at the Fete of the Flaming Bowls. She is going to repeat her performance at the central cosmoport in El Homra. We’ll meet there!”

“Good, Mven Mass, my friend.”

The huge plain of El Homra stretches away to the south of the Gulf of Sirt in North Africa. Up to the time the trade winds and doldrums were eliminated it had been known as Hammada, the Red Desert, a waste of sand and stone, especially the triangular red stones that had given it its name. In summer it had been an ocean of scorching sunlight and during the autumn and winter nights it became an ocean of cold winds. Only the wind now remained of the old Hammada and that sent wave after wave across the tall silvery-blue grass that covered the firm soil of the plain; the grass had been transplanted from the South African veldt. The whistling of the wind and the bowed grass awakened in man’s memory an uncertain feeling of sorrow and, at the same time, a feeling that the great grassy plains are somehow close to his heart, something that he had met with before in his life — not just once before, but many times and under different circumstances, in sorrow and in joy, in good times and bad.

Every take-off or landing of a spaceship left behind a circle, about a kilometre in diameter, of scorched and poisoned earth. These circles were surrounded by red metal screens and were out of bounds for a period of ten years, twice as long as the harmful fall-out from the spaceship’s exhaust would be active. After each landing or take-off the cosmoport was transferred to another place which gave its buildings the imprint of temporariness and made its staff kin to the ancient nomads of the Sahara who for thousands of years traversed the desert on a special kind of animal with a humped back, a long curved neck and big corns on its paws, an animal called the camel.

The planetship Barion on its thirteenth journey between the satellite under construction and Earth brought Darr Veter to the Arizona Plain that, on account of the accumulated radioactivity there, still remained a desert even after the climate had changed. At the very dawn of the application of nuclear energy in the Era of Disunity, many experiments and tests of this new technique had been carried out there. The radioactive fall-out has remained to this day — it is now too weak to harm man but is sufficient to check the growth of trees and bushes.

Darr Veter took pleasure not only in the great charm of Earth — its blue sky in a bridal gown of white clouds — but also in the dusty soil, the scanty, tough grass….

How wonderful it was to walk with a firm tread on solid earth, under the golden rays of the Sun and with his face turned to meet the fresh dry breeze. After he had been on the threshold of Cosmic space he could better appreciate the full beauty of our planet that our ancestors had once called “the vale of tears and sorrow.”

Grom Orme did not detain the builder for he himself wanted to be present when Lebed took off. They arrived at El Homra together on the day the expedition was to leave.