Валентина Журавлева: Stone from the Stars

It was in the early hours before dawn. The scientists sat in the small conference hall in gloomy silence, their faces drawn with fatigue.

Nikonov passed a hand over his face as if to brush away his weariness.

"There is nothing more to be done," he said in a flat voice.

The others confirmed this tragic fact.

Throughout the next six days, while the few remaining cells of the artificial brain still lived, we kept up constant observations. It is hard to enumerate all that we learned in that time. But the most interesting was the discovery of the

substance that protected the living tissue from radiation.

The outer shell of the space ship was comparatively thin and could be easily penetrated by cosmic rays. This had prompted us from the very outset to search for some protective substance in the cells of the bio-automaton itself. And we found it. A minute concentration of this substance immunizes the body against the most powerful radiation. This discovery will enable us to simplify the design of our own space ships. It obviates the need for heavy metal shields for the atomic reactor, and this brings the era of space travel in atom-powered ships much closer.

Extremely interesting too was the system for regeneration of oxygen. A colony of seaweed unknown to us and weighing less than a kilogram which absorbed carbon dioxide and exhaled oxygen had provided the ship with adequate "air conditioning" for many years.

But all these are purely biological discoveries. The knowledge gained in the sphere of engineering is perhaps even more important. As Astakhov had surmised, the space ship was powered by a gravitation engine. Engineers have not yet grasped the principle of the mechanism. But it may be safely asserted that our physicists will have substantially to revise their ideas about the nature of gravitation. The epoch of atomic engineering will evidently be followed by an epoch of gravitational engineering, when men will have still greater sources of energy and speed at their disposal.

The outer covering of the space ship consisted of an alloy of titanium and beryllium. As distinct from the usual alloys, the entire casing was made of a single-crystal metal. Our metals consist, roughly speaking, of myriads of crystals. And although each of them is strong enough, they do not cohere too well. The future belongs to the single-crystal metal, which will have properties we still have to discover* Moreover, by governing the systems of crystallization, man will be able to govern its optical properties, durability and heat conductivity at will.

Nevertheless the most important discovery of all, though not as yet deciphered, is connected with the artificial brain.

The three wires attached to the cylinder proved to be connected with the brain through a rather complicated amplifying system. For six days sensitive oscillographs registered the bio-automaton's currents. These currents were nothing like those of the human brain. And this is where the difference between the artificial and the human brain was manifested. After all, the brain of the space ship was essentially nothing more than a cybernetic device, with living cells taking the place of electronic tubes. With all its complex structure this brain was immeasurably simpler and, as it were, more specialized than the human brain. Hence its electrical signals resembled a code more than the extremely complex pattern of biocurrents in the human brain.

Thousands of metres of oscillograms were recorded in those six days. Will it be possible to decipher them? What will they toll us? The story of a voyage through space perhaps?

It is hard to answer these questions. We are continuing to study the space ship and each day brings some new discovery.

So far many know much about this stone, everyone knows something, but nobody knows enough. But the day is not far off when the last secrets of the star stone will be fathomed.

And then space ships powered with gravitational engines will set out from the Earth for the boundless expanses of the Universe. They will be manned not by human beings-for man's life is brief, and the Universe is infinite. The interstellar ships will be manned by bio-automatons. After voyaging thousands of years in space, after reaching distant island universes, the ships will come back to Earth bearing the unfading torch of Knowledge.