Arthur Clarke - 2061 - Odyssey Three

* * *

When the muted roar of the braking rockets had died away, Chris Floyd safetied the firing circuits for the last time, released his seat belt, and stretched arms and legs as far as he could in Bill Tee's confined quarters.

'Not such a bad view – for Europa,' he said cheerfully. 'Now we've four days to find out if shuttle rations are as bad as they claim. So – which of us starts talking first?'

I wish I'd studied some psychology, thought van der Berg; then I could explore the parameters of his delusion. Yet now he seems completely sane – except on that one subject.

Though almost any seat was comfortable at one-sixth of a gravity, Floyd had tilted his to the fully reclining position and had clasped his hands behind his head. Van der Berg suddenly recalled that this was the classic position of a patient, in the days of the old and still not entirely discredited Freudian analysis.

He was glad to let the other talk first, partly out of sheer curiosity but chiefly because he hoped that the sooner Floyd got this nonsense out of his system, the sooner he would be cured – or, at least, harmless. But he did not feel too optimistic: there must have been some serious, deep-seated problem in the first place to trigger so powerful an illusion.

It was very disconcerting to find that Floyd agreed with him completely, and had already made his own diagnosis.

'My crew psych rating is Al plus,' he said, 'which means that they'll even let me look at my own files – only about ten per cent can do this. So I'm as baffled as you are – but I saw Grandfather, and he spoke to me. I've never believed in ghosts – who does? – but this must mean that he's dead. I wish I could have got to know him better – I'd been looking forward to our meeting... Still, now I have something to remember...'

Presently van der Berg asked: 'Tell me exactly what he said.'

Chris smiled a little wanly and answered: 'I've never had one of those total recall memories, and I was so stunned by the whole thing that I can't give you many of the actual words.' He paused, and a look of concentration appeared on his face.

'That's strange; now I look back, I don't think we did use words.'

Even worse, thought van der Berg; telepathy as well as survival after death. But he merely said:

'Well, give me the general gist of the – er -conversation. I never heard you say anything remember.'

'Right. He said something like, "I wanted to see you again, and I'm very happy. I'm sure everything is going to work out well, and Universe will soon pick you up."

Typical bland spirit message, thought van der Berg. They never say anything useful or surprising – merely reflect the hopes and fears of the listener. Zero-information echoes from the subconscious.

'Go on.'

'Then I asked him where everyone was – why the place was deserted. He laughed and gave me an answer I still don't understand. Something like: "I know you didn't intend any harm – when we saw you coming, we barely had time to give the warning. All the – " and here he used a word I couldn't pronounce even if I could remember it – "got into the water – they can move quite quickly when they have to! They won't come out until you've left, and the wind has blown the poison away." What could he have meant by that? Our exhaust is nice, clean steam – and that's what most of their atmosphere is, anyway.'

Well, thought van der Berg, I suppose there's no law that says a delusion – any more than a dream – has to make logical sense. Perhaps the concept of 'poison' symbolizes some deep-rooted fear that Chris, despite his excellent psych rating, is unable to face. Whatever it is, I doubt if it's any concern of mine. Poison, indeed! Bill Tee's propellant mass is pure, distilled water shipped up to orbit from Ganymede.

But wait a minute. How hot is it when it comes out of the exhaust? Haven't I read somewhere... ?

'Chris,' said van der Berg cautiously, 'after the water's gone through the reactor, does it all come out as steam?'

'What else could it do? Oh, if we run really hot, ten or fifteen per cent gets cracked to hydrogen and oxygen.'

Oxygen! Van der Berg felt a sudden chill, even though the shuttle was at comfortable room temperature. It was most unlikely that Floyd understood the implications of what he had just said; the knowledge was outside his normal sphere of expertise.

'Did you know, Chris, that to primitive organisms on Earth, and certainly to creatures living in an atmosphere like Europa's, oxygen is a deadly poison?'

'You're joking.'

'I'm not: it's even poisonous to us, at high pressure.'

'I did know that; we were taught it in our diving course.'

'Your – grandfather – was talking sense. It's as if we'd sprayed that city with mustard gas. Well, not quite as bad as that – it would disperse very quickly.'

'So now you believe me.'

'I never said I didn't.'

'You would have been crazy if you did!'

That broke the tension, and they had a good laugh together.

'You never told me what he was wearing.'

'An old-fashioned dressing gown, just as I remembered when I was a boy. Looked very comfortable.'

'Any other details?'

'Now you mention it, he looked much younger, and had more hair than when I saw him last. So I don't think he was – what can I say? – real. Something like a computer-generated image. Or a synthetic hologram.'

'The Monolith!'

'Yes – that's what I thought. You remember how Dave Bowman appeared to Grandfather on Discovery? Perhaps it's his turn now. But why? He didn't give me any warning – not even any particular message. Just wanted to say goodbye and wish me well...'

For a few embarrassing moments Floyd's face began to crumple; then he regained control, and smiled at van der Berg.

'I've done enough talking. Now it's your turn to explain just what a million-million-ton diamond is doing – on a world made mostly of ice and sulphur. It had better be good.'

'It is,' said Dr Rolf van der Berg.

'When I was studying at Flagstaff,' began van der Berg, 'I came across an old astronomy book that said: "The Solar System consists of the Sun, Jupiter – and assorted debris." Puts Earth in its place, doesn't it? And hardly fair to Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – the other three gas giants come to almost half as much as Jupiter.

'But I'd better start with Europa. As you know, it was flat ice before Lucifer started warming it up – greatest elevation only a couple of hundred metres – and it wasn't much different after the ice had melted and a lot of the water had migrated and frozen out on Farside. From 2015 – when our detailed observations began – until '38, there was only one high point on the whole moon – and we know what that was.'

'We certainly do. But even though I've seen it with my own eyes, I still can't picture the Monolith as a wall! I always visualize it as standing upright – or floating freely in space.'

'I think we've learned that it can do anything it wants to – anything we can imagine – and a lot more.

'Well, something happened to Europa in '37, between one observation and the next. Mount Zeus – all of ten kilometres high! – suddenly appeared.

'Volcanoes that big don't pop up in a couple of weeks; besides, Europa's nothing like as active as Io.'

'It's active enough for me,' Floyd grumbled. 'Did you feel that one?'

'Besides, if it had been a volcano, it would have spewed enormous amounts of gas into the atmosphere; there were some changes, but nothing like enough to account for that explanation. It was all a complete mystery, and because we were scared of getting too close – and were busy on our own projects – we didn't do much except spin fantastic theories. None of them, as it turned out, as fantastic as the truth.