Arthur Clarke - 2010 - Odyssey Two

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This sequel to "2001: A Space Odyssey" answers the questions left by its predecessor. Captain Chandler investigates the lapse in HAL's sanity and the disappearance of Dave Bowman...

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The light suddenly dimmed; Sasha had operated the external sun shields. Now it was possible to look directly at the source, and to see that it was a mere pinpoint – just another star, showing no dimensions at all. This could have nothing to do with Jupiter; when Floyd had looked at the planet only a few minutes ago, it had been four times larger than the distant, shrunken sun.

It was well that Sasha had lowered the shields. A moment later, that tiny star exploded – so that even through the dark filters it was impossible to watch with the naked eye. But the final orgasm of light lasted only a brief fraction of a second; then Jupiter – or what had been Jupiter – was expanding once again.

It continued to expand, until it was far larger than it had been before the transformation. Soon the sphere of light was fading rapidly, down to merely solar brilliance; and presently Floyd could see that it was actually a hollow shell, for the central star was still clearly visible at its heart.

He did a quick mental calculation. The ship was more than one light-minute from Jupiter, yet that expanding shell – now turning into a bright-edged ring – already covered a quarter of the sky. That meant it was coming toward them at – My God! – nearly half the speed of light. Within minutes, it would engulf the ship.

Until then, no one had spoken a word since Sasha's first announcement. Some dangers are so spectacular and so much beyond normal experience that the mind refuses to accept them as real, and watches the approach of doom without any sense of apprehension. The man who looks at the onrushing tidal wave, the descending avalanche, or the spinning funnel of the tornado, yet makes no attempt to flee, is not necessarily paralysed with fright or resigned to an unavoidable fate. He may simply be unable to believe that the message of his eyes concerns him personally. It is all happening to somebody else.

As might have been expected, Tanya was the first to break the spell, with a series of orders that brought Vasili and Floyd hurrying to the bridge.

'What do we do now?' she asked, when they had assembled.

We certainly can't run away, thought Floyd. But perhaps we can improve the odds.

'The'ship's broadside on,' he said. 'Shouldn't we turn away from that thing so we're a smaller target? And get as much of our mass as we can between it and us, to act as a radiation shield?'

Vasili's fingers were already flying over the controls.

'You're right, Woody – though it's already too late as far as any gammas and X rays are concerned. But there may be slower neutrons and alphas and heaven knows what else still on the way.'

The patterns of light began to slide down the walls as the ship turned ponderously on its axis. Presently they vanished completely; Leonov was now oriented so that virtually all its mass lay between the fragile human cargo and the approaching shell of radiation.

Will we actually feel the shock wave, wondered Floyd, or will the expanding gases be too tenuous to have any physical effect by the time they reach us? Seen from the external cameras, the ring of fire now almost encircled the sky. But it was fading rapidly; some of the brighter stars could even be seen shining through it. We're going to live, thought Floyd. We've witnessed the destruction of the greatest of planets – and we've survived.

And presently the cameras showed nothing except stars – even if one was a million times brighter than all the others. The bubble of fire blown by Jupiter had swept harmlessly past them, impressive though it had been. At their distance from the source, only the ship's instruments had recorded its passing.

Slowly, the tension aboard relaxed. As always happens in such circumstances, people started to laugh and to make silly jokes. Floyd scarcely heard them; despite his relief at still being alive, he felt a sense of sadness.

Something great and wonderful had been destroyed. Jupiter, with all its beauty and grandeur and now never-to-be-solved mysteries, had ceased to exist. The father of all the gods had been struck down in his prime.

Yet there was another way of looking at the situation. They had lost Jupiter: What had they gained in its place?

Tanya, judging her moment nicely, rapped for attention.

'Vasili – any damage?'

'Nothing serious – one camera burned out. All radiation meters still well above normal, but none near danger limits.'

'Katerina – check the total dosage we've received. It looks as if we were lucky, unless there are more surprises. We certainly owe a vote of thanks to Bowman – and to you, Heywood. Do you have any idea what happened?'

'Only that Jupiter's turned into a sun.'

'I always thought it was much too small for that. Didn't someone once call Jupiter "the sun that failed"?'

'That's true,' said Vasili, 'Jupiter is too small for fusion to start – unaided.'

'You mean, we've just seen an example of astronomical engineering?'

'Undoubtedly. Now we know what Zagadka was up to.'

'How did it do the trick? If you were given the contract, Vasili, how would you ignite Jupiter?'

Vasili thought for a minute, then shrugged wryly. 'I'm only a theoretical astronomer – I don't have much experience in this line of business. But let's see... Well, if I'm not allowed to add about ten Jupiter masses, or change the gravitational constant, I suppose I'll have to make the planet denser – hmm, that's an idea...'

His voice trailed off into silence; everyone waited patiently, eyes flickering from time to time to the viewing screens.

The star that had been Jupiter seemed to have settled down after its explosive birth; it was now a dazzling point of light, almost equal to the real Sun in apparent brilliance.

'I'm just thinking out loud – but it might be done this way. Jupiter is – was – mostly hydrogen. If a large percentage could be converted into much denser material – who knows, even neutron matter? – that would drop down to the core. Maybe that's what the billions of Zagadkas were doing with all the gas they were sucking in. Nucleosynthesis – building up higher elements from pure hydrogen. That would be a trick worth knowing! No more shortage of any metal – gold as cheap as aluminium!'

'But how would that explain what happened?' asked Tanya.

'When the core became dense enough, Jupiter would collapse – probably in a matter of seconds. The temperature would rise high enough to start fusion. Oh, I can see a dozen objections – how would they get past the iron minimum; what about radiative transfer; Chandrasekhar's limit. Never mind. This theory will do to start with; I'll work out the details later. Or I'll think of a better one.'

'I'm sure you will, Vasili,' Floyd agreed. 'But there's a more important question. Why did they do it?'

'A warning?' ventured Katerina over the ship's intercom.

'Against what?'

'We'll find that out later.'

'I don't suppose,' said Zenia diffidently, 'that it was an accident?'

That brought the discussion to a dead halt for several seconds.

'What a terrifying idea!' said Floyd. 'But I think we can rule it out. If that was the case, there'd have been no warn – Perhaps. If you start a forest fire because you've been careless, at least you do your best to warn everyone.'

'And there's another thing we'll probably never know,' lamented Vasili. 'I always hoped Carl Sagan would be right, and there'd be life on Jupiter.'

'Our probes never saw any.'

'What chance did they have? Would you find any life on Earth, if you looked at a few hectares of the Sahara or the Antarctic? That's about all we ever did on Jupiter.'

'Hey!' said Brailovsky. 'What about Discovery – and Hal?' Sasha switched on the long-range receiver and started to search on the beacon frequency. There was no trace of a signal.

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