Arthur Clarke: 2010: Odyssey Two

Which, of course, will once more be out of date by 2001...

Arthur C. Clarke COLOMBO, SRI LANKA JANUARY 1982

Even in this metric age, it was still the thousand-foot telescope, not the three-hundred-metre one. The great saucer set among the mountains was already half full of shadow, as the tropical sun dropped swiftly to rest, but the triangular raft of the antenna complex suspended high above its centre still blazed with light. From the ground far below, it would have taken keen eyes to notice the two human figures in the aerial maze of girders, support cables, and wave-guides.

'The time has come,' said Dr Dimitri Moisevitch to his old friend Heywood Floyd, 'to talk of many things. Of shoes and spaceships and sealing wax, but mostly of monoliths and malfunctioning computers.'

'So that's why you got me away from the conference. Not that I really mind – I've heard Carl give that SETI speech so many times that I can recite it myself. And the view certainly is fantastic – you know, all the times I've been to Arecibo, I've never made it up here to the antenna feed.'

'Shame on you. I've been here three times. Imagine – we're listening to the whole universe – but no one can overhear us. So let's talk about your problem.'

'What problem?'

'To start with, why you had to resign as Chairman of the National Council on Astronautics.'

'I didn't resign. The University of Hawaii pays a lot better.'

'Okay – you didn't resign – you were one jump ahead of them. After all these years, Woody, you can't fool me, and you should give up trying. If they offered the NCA back to you right now, would you hesitate?'

'All right, you old Cossak. What do you want to know?'

'First of all, there are lots of loose ends in the report you finally issued after so much prodding. We'll overlook the ridiculous and frankly illegal secrecy with which your people dug up the Tycho monolith -'

'That wasn't my idea.'

'Glad to hear it: I even believe you. And we appreciate the fact that you're now letting everyone examine the thing – which of course is what you should have done in the first place. Not that it's done much good...'

There was a gloomy silence while the two men contemplated the black enigma up there on the Moon, still contemptuously defying all the weapons that human ingenuity could bring to bear upon it. Then the Russian scientist continued.

'Anyway, whatever the Tycho monolith may be, there's something more important out at Jupiter. That's where it sent its signal, after all. And that's where your people ran into trouble. Sorry about that, by the way – though Frank Poole was the only one I knew personally. Met him at the '98 IAF Congress – he seemed a good man.'

'Thank you; they were all good men. I wish we knew what happened to them.'

'Whatever it was, surely you'll admit that it now concerns the whole human race – not merely the United States. You can no longer try to use your knowledge for purely national advantage.'

'Dimitri – you know perfectly well that your side would have done exactly the same thing. And you'd have helped.'

'You're absolutely right. But that's ancient history – like the just-departed administration of yours that was responsible for the whole mess. With a new President, perhaps wiser counsels will prevail.'

'Possibly. Do you have any suggestions, and are they official or just personal hopes?'

'Entirely unofficial at the moment. What the bloody politicians call exploratory talks. Which I shall flatly deny ever occurred.'

'Fair enough. Go on.'

'Okay – here's the situation. You're assembling Discovery 2 in parking orbit as quickly as you can, but you can't hope to have it ready in less than three years, which means you'll miss the next launch window -,

'I neither confirm nor deny. Remember I'm merely a humble university chancellor, the other side of the world from the Astronautics Council.'

'And your last trip to Washington was just a holiday to see old friends, I suppose. To continue: our own Alexei Leonov ,

'I thought you were calling it Gherman Titov.'

'Wrong, Chancellor. The dear old CIA's let you down again. Leonov it is, as of last January. And don't let anyone know I told you it will reach Jupiter at least a year ahead of Discovery.'

'Don't let anyone know I told you we were afraid of that. But do go on.'

'Because my bosses are just as stupid and shortsighted as yours, they want to go it alone. Which means that whatever went wrong with you may happen to us, and we'll all be back to square one – or worse.'

'What do you think went wrong? We're just as baffled as you are. And don't tell me you haven't got all of Dave Bowman's transmissions.'

'Of course we have. Right up to that last "My God, it's full of stars!" We've even done a stress analysis on his voice patterns. We don't think he was hallucinating; he was trying to describe what he actually saw.'

'And what do you make of his doppler shift?'

'Completely impossible, of course. When we lost his signal, he was receding at a tenth of the speed of light. And he'd reached that in less than two minutes. A quarter of a million gravities!'

'So he must have been killed instantly.'

'Don't pretend to be naive, Woody. Your space-pod radios aren't built to withstand even a hundredth of that acceleration. If they could survive, so could Bowman – at least, until we lost contact.'

'Just doing an independent check on your deductions. From there on, we're as much in the dark as you are. If you are.'

'Merely playing with lots of crazy guesses I'd be ashamed to tell you. Yet none of them, I suspect, will be half as crazy as the truth.'

In small crimson explosions the navigation warning lights winked on all around them, and the three slim towers supporting the antenna complex began to blaze like beacons against the darkling sky. The last red sliver of the sun vanished below the surrounding hills; Heywood Floyd waited for the Green Flash, which he had never seen. Once again, he was disappointed.

'So, Dimitri,' he said, 'let's get to the point. Just what are you driving at?'

'There must be a vast amount of priceless information stored in Discovery's data banks; presumably it's still being gathered, even though the ship's stopped transmitting. We'd like to have that.'

'Fair enough. But when you get out there, and Leonov makes a rendezvous, what's to prevent you from boarding Discovery and copying everything you want?'

'I never thought I'd have to remind you that Discovery is United States territory, and an unauthorized entry would be piracy.'

'Except in the event of a life-or-death emergency, which wouldn't be difficult to arrange. After all, it would be hard for us to check what your boys were up to, from a billion kilometres away.'

'Thanks for the most interesting suggestion; I'll pass it on. But even if we went aboard, it would take us weeks to learn all your systems, and read out all your memory banks. What I propose is cooperation. I'm convinced that's the best idea – but we may both have a job selling it to our respective bosses.'

'You want one of our astronauts to fly with Leonov?'

'Yes – preferably an engineer who's specialized in Discovery's systems. Like the ones you're training at Houston to bring the ship home.'

'How did you know that?'

'For heaven's sake, Woody – it was on Aviation Week's videotext at least a month ago.'

'I am out of touch; nobody tells me what's been declassified.'

'All the more reason to spend time in Washington. Will you back me up?'

'Absolutely. I agree with you one hundred per cent. But -'

'But what?'