Arthur Clarke - 2061 - Odyssey Three

The 'Famous Five' had all adjusted, in their various ways, to the unexpected change in their lives. Mihailovich was composing copiously and noisily, and was seldom seen except when he emerged at meals, to tell outrageous stories and tease all available victims, especially Willis. Greenburg had elected himself, no-one dissenting, an honorary crew member, and spent much of his time on the bridge.

Maggie M viewed the situation with rueful amusement.

'Writers,' she remarked, 'are always saying what a lot of work they could do if they were only in some place with no interruptions – no engagements; lighthouses and prisons are their favourite examples. So I can't complain – except that my requests for research material keep getting delayed by high priority messages.'

Even Victor Willis had now come to much the same conclusion; he too was busily at work on sundry long-range projects. And he had an additional reason to keep to his cabin. It would still be several weeks before he looked as if he had forgotten to shave, and months before he returned to his full glory.

Yva Merlin spent hours every day in the entertainment centre, catching up – as she readily explained – with her favourite classics. It was fortunate that Universe's library and projection facilities had been installed in time for the voyage; though the collection was still relatively small, there was sufficient for several lifetimes of viewing.

All the famous works of visual art were there, right back to the flickering dawn of the cinema. Yva knew most of them, and was happy to share her knowledge.

Floyd, of course, enjoyed listening to her, because then she became alive – an ordinary human being, not an icon. He found it both sad and fascinating that only through an artificial universe of video images could she establish contact with the real world.

One of the strangest experiences of Heywood Floyd's fairly eventful life was sitting in semi-darkness just behind Yva, somewhere outside the orbit of Mars, while they watched the original Gone with the Wind together. There were moments when he could see her famous profile silhouetted against that of Vivien Leigh, and could compare the two – though it was impossible to say that one actress was better than the other; both were sui generis.

When the lights went up, he was astonished to see that Yva was crying. He took her hand and said tenderly: 'I cried too, when Bonny died.'

Yva managed a faint smile.

'I was really crying for Vivien,' she said. 'While we were shooting Two, I read a lot about her – she had such a tragic life. And talking about her, right out here between the planets, reminds me of something that Larry said when he brought the poor thing back from Ceylon after her nervous breakdown. He told his friends: "I've married a woman from outer space."

Yva paused for a moment, and another tear trickled (rather theatrically, Floyd could not help thinking) down her cheek.

'And here's something even stranger. She made her last movie exactly a hundred years ago – and do you know what it was?'

'Go on – surprise me again.'

'I expect it will surprise Maggie – if she's really writing the book she keeps threatening us with. Vivien's very last film was – Ship of Fools.'

Now that they had so much unexpected time on their hands, Captain Smith had finally agreed to give Victor Willis the long-delayed interview which was part of his contract. Victor himself had kept putting it off, owing to what Mihailovich persisted in calling his 'amputation'. As it would be many months before he could regenerate his public image, he had finally decided to do the interview off-camera; the studio on Earth could fake him in later with library shots.

They had been sitting in the Captain's still only partly furnished cabin, enjoying one of the excellent wines which apparently made up much of Victor's baggage allowance. As Universe would cut its drive and start coasting within the next few hours, this would be the last opportunity for several days. Weightless wine, Victor maintained, was an abomination; he refused to put any of his precious vintage into plastic squeezebulbs.

'This is Victor Willis, aboard the spaceship Universe at 18.30 on Friday, 15 July 2061. Though we're not yet at the mid-point of our journey, we're already far beyond the orbit of Mars, and have almost reached our maximum velocity. Which is, Captain?'

'One thousand and fifty kilometres a second.'

'More than a thousand kilometres a second -almost four million kilometres an hour!'

Victor Willis' surprise sounded perfectly genuine; no-one would have guessed that he knew the orbital parameters almost as well as did the Captain. But one of his strengths was his ability to put himself in the place of his viewers, and not only to anticipate their questions, but to arouse their interest.

'That's right,' the Captain answered with quiet pride. 'We are travelling twice as fast as any human beings since the beginning of time.'

That should have been one of my lines, thought Victor; he did not like his subject to get ahead of him. But, good professional that he was, he quickly adapted.

He pretended to consult his famous little memo pad, with its sharply directional screen whose display only he could see.

'Every twelve seconds, we're travelling the diameter of Earth. Yet it will still take us another ten days to reach Jupi – ah, Lucifer! That gives some idea of the scale of the Solar System.

'Now, Captain, this is a delicate subject, but I've had a lot of questions about it during the last week.'

Oh no, groaned Smith. Not the zero gravity toilets again!

'At this very moment, we are passing right through the heart of the asteroid belt -'

(I wish it was the toilets, thought Smith...)

'– and though no spaceship has ever been seriously damaged by a collision, aren't we taking quite a risk? After all, there are literally millions of bodies, down to the size of beachballs, orbiting in this section of space. And only a few thousand have been charted.'

'More than a few: over ten thousand.'

'But there are millions we don't know about.'

'That's true; but it wouldn't help us much if we did.'

'What do you mean?'

'There's nothing we can do about them.'

'Why not?'

Captain Smith paused for careful thought. Willis was right – this was indeed a delicate subject; Head Office would rap his knuckles smartly, if he said anything to discourage potential customers.

'First of all, space is so enormous that even here – as you said, right in the heart of the asteroid belt – the chance of collision is – infinitesimal. We've been hoping to show you an asteroid – the best we can do is Hanuman, a miserable three hundred metres across – but the nearest we get to it is a quarter of a million kilometres.'

'But Hanuman is gigantic, compared to all the unknown debris that's floating around out here. Aren't you worried about that?'

'About as worried as you are, at being struck by lightning on Earth.'

'As a matter of fact, I once had a narrow escape, on Pike's Peak in Colorado – the flash and the bang were simultaneous. But you admit that the danger does exist – and aren't we increasing the risk, by the enormous speed at which we're travelling?'

Willis, of course, knew the answer perfectly well; once again he was putting himself in the place of his legions of unknown listeners on the planet that was getting a thousand kilometres further away with every passing second.

'It's hard to explain without mathematics,' said the Captain (how many times he had used that phrase. Even when it wasn't true!), 'but there's no simple relationship between speed and risk. To hit anything at spacecraft velocities would be catastrophic; if you're standing next to an atomic bomb when it goes off, it makes no difference whether it's in the kiloton or megaton class.'