Ivan Yefremov - Andromeda (A Space-Age Tale)

Erg Noor and Nisa disappeared. An oval door of the same grey colour as the hull moved out of the black opening. A second later the most discerning eye could not have detected the place where there had been an opening in the steep flanks of the huge hull.

There was something human about the spaceship standing vertically on its landing struts. The impression was, perhaps, created by the round globe of the nose, surmounted by a pointed cap and gleaming with signal lights that looked like eyes. Or perhaps it was the ribbed bulkheads of the central, storage part of the ship that had the appearance of the pauldrons of a knight’s armour. The spaceship stood on its struts as though it were a giant standing on straddled legs, contemptuously and arrogantly peering over the heads of the crowd.

The first take-off signals sounded ominously. As though by magic, wide self-propelled platforms appeared beside the ship to take away the people. The tripods of the TVP and the floodlights crawled away from the ship, too, but they kept their lenses and their rays fixed on it. The grey hull of Lebed seemed to fade away and diminish in size. Evil-looking red lights glowed in the ship’s “head,” the signal that the crew were ready to start. The vibration of its powerful motors made the earth tremble as the spaceship began to turn on its landing struts to get direction for the take-off. The platforms with the people seeing the ship off moved farther and farther away until they were to the leeward of the safety line that gleamed phosphorescent in the darkness. Here the people jumped down from the platforms and the latter went back for the others.

“They’ll never see us again, or our sky, either, will they?” asked Chara, turning to Mven Mass, who bent low over her.

“No, unless it’s in a stereotelescope.”

Green lights flashed up under the ship’s keel. The radio beacon turned furiously on the tower of the central building sending out warnings of the giant ship’s take-off in all directions.

“The spaceship is being ordered away!” a metal voice of tremendous power shouted so suddenly that Chara shuddered and clung tight to Mven Mass. “Everybody inside the danger circle raise your hands above your heads. Raise your hands above your heads or you will be killed! Raise your hands above your heads, or…” the automaton continued shouting while searchlights raked the field to make sure that nobody was left inside the danger line.

There was nobody there and the searchlights went out. The robot screamed again and, it seemed to Chara, more furiously than before.

“After the bell rings turn your backs to the ship and shut your eyes. Keep them shut until the second bell rings. Turn your backs to the ship and shut your eyes!” howled the automaton with alarm and menace.

“It’s frightening!” whispered Veda Kong to her companion. Darr Veter calmly took from his belt half masks with dark glasses rolled up into a tube, put one mask on Veda and the other on his own head. He just had time to fasten the buckles when a huge, high-pitched bell rang out, swaying back and forth under the roof of the signal tower.

The ringing stopped and the grasshoppers, indifferent to everything, could be plainly heard.

Suddenly the spaceship gave a howl that penetrated right to the marrow of a man’s bones and its lights went out. Once, twice, three times, four times the howl swept across that dark plain and the more impressionable people standing there felt that the ship itself was crying with sorrow at the departure.

The howl broke off as suddenly as it had started. A wall of indescribably bright light shot up round the ship. Everything else in the world ceased to exist for a moment except that Cosmic fire. The tower of fire changed to a column, stretched out longer and thinner until it became a dazzlingly bright line of fire. The bell rang for the second time and as the people turned round they saw an empty plain on which was a huge patch of red-hot soil. There was a big star high up in the sky — the spaceship Lebed was moving away from Earth.

The people wandered slowly back to the electrobuses, looking at the sky and then at the place where the ship had taken off, a place that had suddenly become as lifeless as if the Hammada El Homra had returned, the desert that had been the terror of travellers in days gone by.

Well-known stars gleamed on the southern horizon. All eyes were turned to the point where the bright blue star Achernar burned in the sky. Lebed would reach that star after a journey of eighty-four years at a speed of 800 million kilometres an hour. For us, on Earth, it would be eighty-four years but for Lebed it would be forty-seven. Perhaps they would find a new world, just as beautiful and joyous, in the green rays of the zirconium sun.

Darr Veter and Veda Kong overtook Chara Nandi and Mven Mass. The African was answering the girl’s questions.

“No, it is not sorrow but a great and sad pride — such are my feelings today. Pride because we rise ever higher above our planet and merge with the Cosmos, sorrow because our beloved Earth is becoming so small. Long, long ago the Mayas, the red-skinned people of Central America, left behind them a proud and sad inscription. I gave it to Erg Noor and he’ll have it written up in the library-laboratory of Lebed.”

The African looked round and noticed that friends who had caught up with them were listening, too. He continued in a louder voice:

“Thou who will later show thy face here! If thy mind can think thou wilt ask, "Who were they?” Ask the dawn, ask the forest, ask the waves, ask the storm, ask love. Ask the earth, the earth of suffering and the earth beloved. Who are we? We are the Earth!’ I too am Earth through and through!” added Mven Mass.

Renn Bose came running up to meet them, panting for breath. The friends surrounded the physicist who told them in a few words the unprecedented news — the first contact between two gigantic stellar islands.

“I hoped to get here before the take-off,” said Renn Bose, sadly, “to tell Erg Noor about it. While he was still on the black planet he realized that the spiral disc had come from a far distant world, a completely alien world, and that the strange ship had been flying for a long time in the Cosmos.”

“Will Erg Noor never know that the spiral disc has come from such tremendous depths of the Universe, that it has come from another galaxy, from the Andromeda Nebula?” asked Veda. “What a pity that he did not hear today’s reception!”

“He’ll hear about it!” said Darr Veter, with confidence. “We’ll ask the Council to sanction power for a special transmission. I’ll call the spaceship through Satellite 36. Lebed will be within range of our transmitters for another nineteen hours!”

Billion — is used in its European meaning of a million millions (1012).

Parsec — the unit of measure of astronomical distance, equal to 3.26 light years or 32×1012 km.

Sporamin — a drug to maintain the organism active over long periods without sleep (imaginary).

Anameson — atomic fuel in which the meson bonds of the nucleus have been disrupted; it has an exhaust velocity equal to the speed of light (imaginary).

Bomb Beacons — automatic radio robots transmitting signals powerful enough to penetrate the atmosphere of a planet. They were dropped from the spaceships for reconnaissance purposes (imaginary).

Independent Year — a terrestrial year that is Independent of the speed of the spaceship.

Spectral Classes — are indicated by the letters 0, B, A, F, G, K, M. They range from hot blue stars with a surface temperature of 100,000 °C. to red stars with a temperature of 3,000 °C. Each class has ten descending degrees of magnitude shown by indices, as A;. There are special classes N, P, R and S with an augmented content of carbon, cyanogen, titanium and zirconium in their spectra. N. B. In other systems of classification the spectral classes 0, B, A and F are all called,white stars” and not,blue stars” as here.