Arthur Clarke - 2061 - Odyssey Three

Floyd looked embarrassed, and clutched at the table as the ship rocked slightly in a sudden gust.

'I wish I could, sir, but I'm not permitted.'

'By whom, may I ask?'

'Frankly, I'm not sure.'

That was perfectly true. He suspected it was ASTROPOL, but the two quietly impressive gentlemen who had briefed him on Ganymede had unaccountably failed to provide this information.

'As captain of this ship – especially in the present circumstances – I would like to know what's going on here. If we get out of this, I'm going to spend the next few years of my life at Courts of Enquiry. And you'll probably be doing the same.'

Floyd managed a wry grin.

'Hardly worth being rescued, is it, Sir? All I know is that some high-level agency expected trouble on this mission, but didn't know what form it would take. I was just told to keep my eyes open. I'm afraid I didn't do much good, but I imagine I was the only qualified person they could get hold of in time.'

'I don't think you can blame yourself. Who would have imagined that Rosie -'

The Captain paused, struck by a sudden thought.

'Do you suspect anyone else?' He felt like adding 'Me, for instance?', but the situation was already sufficiently paranoiac.

Floyd looked thoughtful, then apparently came to a decision.

'Perhaps I should have spoken to you before, Sir, but I know how busy you've been. I'm sure Dr van der Berg is involved somehow. He's a Mede, of course; they're odd people, and I don't really understand them.' Or like them, he might have added. Too clannish – not really friendly to offworlders. Still, one could hardly blame them; all pioneers trying to tame a new wilderness were probably much the same.

'Van der Berg – hmm. What about the other scientists?'

'They've been checked, of course. All perfectly legitimate, and nothing unusual about any of them.'

That was not altogether true. Dr Simpson had more wives than was strictly legal, at least at one time, and Dr Higgins had a large collection of most curious books. Second Officer Floyd was not quite sure why he had been told all this; perhaps his mentors merely wanted to impress him with their omniscience. He decided that working for ASTROPOL (or whoever it was) had some entertaining fringe benefits.

'Very well,' said the Captain, dismissing the amateur agent. 'But please keep me informed if you discover anything – anything at all– that might affect the safety of the ship.'

In the present circumstances, it was hard to imagine what that might be. Any further hazards seemed slightly superfluous.

Even twenty-four hours before they sighted the island, it was still not certain whether Galaxy would miss it and be blown on out into the emptiness of the central ocean. Her position, as observed by the Ganymede radar, was plotted on a large chart which everyone aboard examined anxiously several times a day.

Even if the ship did reach land, her problems might be just beginning. She might be pounded to pieces on a rocky coast, rather than gently deposited on some conveniently shelving beach.

Acting Captain Lee was keenly aware of all these possibilities. He had once been shipwrecked himself, in a cabin cruiser whose engines had failed at a critical moment, off the island of Bali. There had been little danger, though a good deal of drama, and he had no wish to repeat the experience – especially as there was no coastguard here to come to the rescue.

There was a truly cosmic irony in their plight. Here they were, aboard one of the most advanced transportation devices ever made by man – capable of crossing the Solar System! – yet now they could not deflect it more than a few metres from its course. Nevertheless, they were not completely helpless; Lee still had a few cards to play.

On this sharply curving world, the island was only five kilometres away when they first sighted it. To Lee's great relief, there were none of the cliffs he had feared; nor, on the other hand, was there any sign of the beach he had hoped for. The geologists had warned him that he was a few million years too early to find sand here; the mills of Europa, grinding slowly, had not yet had time to do their work.

As soon as it was certain they would hit the land, Lee gave orders to pump out Galaxy's main tanks, which he had deliberately flooded soon after touchdown. Then followed a very uncomfortable few hours, during which at least a quarter of the crew took no further interest in the proceedings.

Galaxy rose higher and higher in the water, oscillating more and more wildly – then tumbled with a mighty splash, to lie along the surface, like the corpse of a whale in the bad old days when the catcher-boats pumped them full of air to stop them sinking. When he saw how the ship was lying, Lee adjusted her buoyancy again, until she was slightly stern-down, and the forward bridge was just clear of the water.

As he expected, Galaxy then swung broadside-on to the wind. Another quarter of the crew became incapacitated then, but Lee had enough helpers to get out the sea-anchor he had prepared for this final act. It was merely an improvised raft, made of empty boxes lashed together, but its drag caused the ship to point towards the approaching land.

Now they could see that they were heading – with agonizing slowness – towards a narrow stretch of beach, covered with small boulders. If they could not have sand, this was the best alternative...

The bridge was already over the beach when Galaxy grounded, and Lee played his last card. He had made only a single test-run, not daring to do more in case the abused machinery failed.

For the last time, Galaxy extended her landing gear. There was a grinding and shuddering as the pads on the underside dug their way into the alien beach. Now she was securely anchored against the winds and waves of this tideless ocean.

There was no doubt that Galaxy had found her final resting place – and, all too possibly, that of her crew.

And now Universe was moving so swiftly that its orbit no longer even remotely resembled that of any natural object in the Solar System. Mercury, closest to the Sun, barely exceeds fifty kilometres a second at perihelion; Universe had reached twice that speed in the first day – and at only half the acceleration it would achieve when it was lighter by several thousand tons of water.

For a few hours, as they passed inside its orbit, Venus was the brightest of all heavenly bodies, next to the Sun and Lucifer. Its tiny disc was just visible to the naked eye, but even the ship's most powerful telescopes showed no markings whatever. Venus guarded her secrets as jealously as Europa.

By going still closer to the Sun – well inside the orbit of Mercury – Universe was not merely taking a short cut, but was also getting a free boost from the Sun's gravitational field. Because nature always balances her books, the Sun lost some velocity in the transaction; but the effect would not be measurable for a few thousand years.

Captain Smith used the ship's perihelion passage to restore some of the prestige his foot-dragging had cost him.

'Now you know,' he said, 'exactly why I flew the ship through Old Faithful. If we hadn't washed all that dirt off the hull, by this time we'd be badly overheating. In fact, I doubt if the thermal controls would have handled the load – it's already ten times Earth level.' Looking – through filters that were almost black – at the hideously swollen Sun, his passengers could easily believe him. They were all more than happy when it had shrunk back to normal size – and continued to dwindle astern as Universe sliced across the orbit of Mars, outward bound on the final leg of its mission.