Arthur Clarke - 2010 - Odyssey Two

'I was afraid of that, but I quite see your point of view. I'm ready as soon as you are.'

'I'm always ready. Come along – please.'

The ship's hospital was just large enough to hold an operating table, two exercise bicycles, a few cabinets of equipment, and an X-ray machine. While Dr Rudenko was giving Floyd a quick but thorough examination, she asked unexpectedly: 'What's that little gold cylinder Dr Chandra carries on the chain around his neck – some kind of communications device? He wouldn't take it off – in fact, he was almost too shy to take anything off.'

Floyd could not help smiling; it was easy to imagine the modest Indian's reactions to this rather overwhelming lady.

'It's a lingam.'

'A what?'

'You're the doctor – you ought to recognize it. The symbol of male fertility.'

'Of course – stupid of me. Is he a practising Hindu? It's a little late to ask us to arrange a strict vegetarian diet.'

'Don't worry – we wouldn't have done that to you without fair warning. Though he won't touch alcohol, Chandra's not fanatical about anything except computers. He once told me that his grandfather was a priest in Benares, and gave him that lingam – it's been in the family for generations.'

Rather to Floyd's surprise, Dr Rudenko did not show the negative reaction he had expected; indeed, her expression became uncharacteristically wistful.

'I understand his feeling. My grandmother gave me a beautiful icon – sixteenth century. I wanted to bring it – but it weighs five kilos.'

The doctor became abruptly businesslike again, gave Floyd a painless injection with a gas-gun hypodermic, and told him to come back as soon as he was sleepy. That, she assured him, would be in less than two hours.

'Meanwhile, relax completely,' she ordered. 'There's an observation port on this level – Station D.6. Why don't you go there?'

It seemed a good idea, and Floyd drifted away with a docility that would have surprised his friends. Dr Rudenko glanced at her watch, dictated a brief entry into her autosec, and set its alarm thirty minutes ahead.

When he reached the D.6 viewport, Floyd found Chandra and Curnow already there. They looked at him with a total lack of recognition, then turned once more toward the awesome spectacle outside. It occurred to Floyd – and he congratulated himself on such a brilliant observation – that Chandra could not really be enjoying the view. His eyes were tightly closed,

A totally unfamiliar planet hung there, gleaming with glorious blues and dazzling whites. How strange, Floyd told himself. What has happened to the Earth? Why, of course – no wonder he didn't recognize it! It was upside down! What a disaster – he wept briefly for all those poor people, falling off into space..

He barely noticed when two crew members removed Chandra's unresisting form. When they came back for Curnow, Floyd's own eyes were shut, but he was still breathing. When they returned for him, even his breathing had ceased.

And they told us we wouldn't dream, thought Heywood Floyd, more with surprise than annoyance. The glorious pink glow that surrounded him was very soothing; it reminded him of barbecues and the crackling logs of Christmas fire. But there was no warmth; indeed, he felt a distinct though not uncomfortable coldness.

Voices were murmuring, just too softly for him to understand the words. They became louder – but still he could not understand.

'Surely,' he said in sudden amazement, 'I can't be dreaming in Russian!'

'No, Heywood,' answered a woman's voice. 'You're not dreaming. It's time to get out of bed.'

The lovely glow faded; he opened his eyes, and had a blurred glimpse of a flashlight being withdrawn from his face. He was lying on a couch, held against it by elastic webbing; figures were standing around him, but they were too out of focus to identify.

Gentle fingers closed his eyelids and massaged his forehead.

'Don't exert yourself. Breathe deeply... again... that's right... now how do you feel?'

'I don't know... strange... light-headed... and hungry.'

'That's a good sign. Do you know where you are? You can open your eyes now.'

The figures came into focus – first Dr Rudenko, then Captain Orlova. But something had happened to Tanya since he had seen her, only an hour ago. When Floyd identified the cause, it was almost a physical shock.

'You've grown your hair back!'

'I hope you think it's an improvement. I can't say the same about your beard.'

Floyd lifted his hand to his face, finding that he had to make a conscious effort to plan every stage of the movement. His chin was covered with short stubble – a two or three days' growth. In hibernation, hair grew at only a hundredth of its normal rate.

'So I made it,' he said. 'We've arrived at Jupiter.'

Tanya looked at him sombrely, then glanced at the doctor, who gave a barely perceptible nod.

'No, Heywood,' she said. 'We're still a month away. Don't be alarmed – the ship's fine, and everything's running normally. But your friends in Washington have asked us to wake you up ahead of time. Something very unexpected has happened. We're in a race to reach Discovery – and I'm afraid we're going to lose.'

When Heywood Floyd's voice came from the comset speaker, the two dolphins suddenly stopped circling around the pool and swam over to its edge. They placed their heads on the rim and stared intently at the source of the sound.

So they recognize Heywood, thought Caroline, with a twinge of bitterness: Yet Christopher, crawling around his playpen, did not even stop playing with the colour controls of his picture book as his father's voice came loud and clear across half a billion kilometres of space.

'... My dear, you won't be surprised to hear from me, a month ahead of schedule; you'll have known for weeks that we have company out here.

'I still find it hard to believe; in some ways, it doesn't even make sense. They can't possibly have enough fuel for a safe return to Earth; we don't even see how they can make the rendezvous.

'We never saw them, of course. Even at its closest, Tsien was more than fifty million kilometres away. They had plenty of time to answer our signals if they wanted to, but they ignored us completely. Now they'll be much too busy for friendly chat. In a few hours they'll hit Jupiter's atmosphere – and then we'll see how well their aerobraking system works. If it does its job, that will be good for our morale. But if it fails, well, let's not talk about that.

'The Russians are taking it remarkably well, all things considered. They're angry and disappointed, of course – but I've heard many expressions of frank admiration. It was certainly a brilliant trick, building that ship in full view and making everyone think it was a spacestation until they hitched on those boosters.

'Well, there's nothing we can do, except watch. And at our distance, we won't have a much better view than your best telescopes. I can't help wishing them luck, though of course I hope they leave Discovery alone. That's our property, and I bet the State Department's reminding them of it, every hour on the hour.

'It's an ill wind – if our Chinese friends hadn't jumped the gun on us, you wouldn't have heard from me for another month. But now that Dr Rudenko's woken me up, I'll be speaking to you every couple of days.

'After the initial shock, I'm settling down nicely– getting to know the ship and its crew, finding my space legs. And polishing up my lousy Russian, though I don't have much chance of using it – everyone insists on speaking English.

What shocking linguists we Americans are! I sometimes feel ashamed of our chauvinism – or our laziness.