Ivan Yefremov Andromeda A space-age tale

191 Pages·2009·0.82 MB·English

by  Hubert Max Lerch

Ivan Yefremov
Andromeda
A space-age tale
Translated from Russian by George Hanna
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1. THE IRON STAR
CHAPTER 2. EPSILON TUCANAE
CHAPTER 3. CAPTIVES OF THE DARK
CHAPTER 4. THE RIVER OF TIME
CHAPTER 5. THE HORSE ON THE SEA BED
CHAPTER 6. THE LEGEND OF THE BLUE SUNS
CHAPTER 7. SYMPHONY IN F-MINOR, COLOUR TONE 4.75 ,u
CHAPTER 8. RED WAVES
CHAPTER 9. A THIRD CYCLE SCHOOL
CHAPTER 10. TIBETAN EXPERIMENT
CHAPTER 11. THE ISLAND OF OBLIVION
CHAPTER 12. THE ASTRONAUTICAL COUNCIL
CHAPTER 13. ANGELS OF HEAVEN
CHAPTER 14. THE STEEL DOOR
CHAPTER 15. THE ANDROMEDA NEBULA
GLOSSARY
CHARACTERS IN THE STORY
MEMBERS OF COSMIC EXPEDITION No. 37 IN THE SPACESHIP TANTRA
Men: Erg Noor, Commander of the Expedition
Pour Hyss, astronomer
Eon Thai, biologist
Pel Lynn, astronavigator
Taron, mechanical engineer
Kay Bear, electronic engineer
Women: Nisa Greet, astronavigator
Louma Lasvy, ship's physician
Ingrid Dietra, astronomer
Beena Ledd, geologist
Ione Marr, teacher of gymnastics, storekeeper
CHARACTERS ON EARTH:
Men: Grom Orme, President of the Astronautical Council
Diss Ken, his son
Thor Ann, son of Zieg Zohr, Ken's friend
Mir Ohm, Secretary of the Astronautical Council
Darr Veter, retiring Director of the Outer Stations
Mven Mass, successor to Darr Veter
Junius Antus, Director of the Electronic Memory Machines
Kam Amat, Indian scientist (In a former age)
Liao Lang, palaeontologist
Renn Bose, physicist
Cart Sann, painter
Frith Don, Director of the Maritime Archaeological Expedition
Sherliss, mechanic to the expedition
Ahf Noot, prominent surgeon
Grimm Schar, biologist of the Institute of Nerve Currents
Zann Senn, poet-historian
Heb Uhr, soil scientist
Beth Lohn, mathematician, criminal in exile
Embe Ong, candidate for Director of the Outer Stations
Cadd Lite, engineer on Satellite 57
Women : Evda Nahl, psychiatrist Rhea, her daughter Veda Kong, historian
Miyiko Eigoro, historian, Veda's assistant
Chara Nandi, biologist, dancer, artist's model
Onar, girl of the Island of Oblivion
Eva Djann, astronomer
Liuda Pheer, psychologist (in a former age)

EXTRATERRESTRIAL CHARACTERS:
Goor Hahn, observer on the diurnal satellite
Zaph Phthet, Director of External Relations of the planet of 61 Cygni
CHAPTER ONE. THE IRON STAR
In the faint light emitted by the helical tube on the ceiling the rows
of dials on the instrument panels had the appearance of a portrait
gallery-the round dials had jovial faces, the recumbent oval physiognomies
were impudently self-satisfied and the square mugs were immobile in their
stupid complacency. The light- and dark-blue, orange and green lights
flickering inside the instruments served to intensify the impression.
A big dial, glowing dull red, gazed out from the middle of the convex
control desk. The girl in front of it had forgotten her chair and stood with
her head bowed, her brow almost touching the glass, in the attitude of one
in prayer. The red glow made her youthful face older and sterner, cast
clear-cut shadows round her full lips and even made her slightly snub nose
look pointed. Her thick eyebrows, knitted in a frown, looked jet black in
that light and gave her eyes the expression of despair seen in the eyes of
the doomed.
The faint hum of the meters was interrupted by a soft metallic click.
The girl started and raised her head, straightening her tired back.
The door opened behind her, a big shadow appeared and turned into a man
with abrupt and precise movements. A flood of golden light sprang up, making
the girl's thick, dark-auburn hair sparkle like gold. She turned to the
newcomer with a look that told both of her love for him and of her anxiety.
"Why aren't you sleeping? A hundred sleepless hours!" "A bad example,
eh?" There was a note of gaiety in his voice but he did not smile; it was a
voice marked by high metallic notes that seemed to rivet his words together.
"The others are all asleep," the girl began timidly. "and ... don't know
anything ..." she added, whispering instinctively.
"Don't be afraid to speak. Everybody else is asleep, we're the only two
awake in the Cosmos and it's fifty billion1 kilometres to Earth-a
mere parsec and a half!"
"And we've got fuel for just one acceleration!" There was fascinated
horror in the girl's exclamation.
In two rapid strides Erg Noor, Commander of Cosmic Expedition No. 37,
reached the glowing dial.
"The fifth circle!"
"Yes, we've entered the fifth ... and ... still nothing." The girl cast
an eloquent glance at the loudspeaker of the automatic receiver.
"And so I have no right to sleep, as you see. I have to think over all
the variants and all the possibilities. We must find a solution by the end
of the fifth circle."
"But that's another hundred and ten hours."
"All right, I'll go to sleep in the armchair here as soon as the effect
of the sporamin wears off. I took it twenty-four hours ago."
The girl stood deep in thought for a time but at last decided to speak.
"Perhaps we should decrease the radius of the circle? Suppose
something's gone wrong with their transmitter?"
"Certainly not! If you reduce the radius without reducing speed you'll
break up the ship. If you reduce speed you'll be left without
anameson4... with a parsec and a half to go at the speed of the
ancient lunar rockets! At that rate we'd get somewhere near our solar system
in about a hundred thousand years."
"I know that. But couldn't they .."
"No, they couldn't. Aeons ago people could be careless or could deceive
each other and themselves. But not today!"
"That's not what I wanted to say." The sharpness of her retort showed
that the girl was offended. "I was going to say that Algrab may have
deviated from its course looking for us."
"It couldn't have deviated so much. It must have left at the time
computed and agreed on. If the improbable had happened and both transmitters
had been put out of action it would have had to cross the circle
diametrically and we should have heard it on the planetary receiver.
There's no possibility of a mistake-there it is, the rendezvous
planet."
Erg Noor pointed to the mirror screens in deep niches on all four sides
of the control tower. Countless stars burned in the profound blackness. A
tiny grey disc, barely illuminated by a sun very far away from them, from
the outer edge of the system B-7336-S+87-A, was crossing the forward port
screen.
"Our bomb beacons 5 are working well although we put them up
four independent years " ago." Erg Noor pointed to a clear-cut line of light
running along a glass panel that stretched the whole length of the left-hand
wall. "Algrab should have been here three months ago. That means,"
Erg Noor hesitated as though he did not wish to finish the sentence,
"Algrab is lost!"
"But suppose it isn't, suppose it has only been damaged
by a meteoroid and cannot regain its speed?" objected the auburn-haired
girl.
"Can't regain its speed!" repeated Erg Noor. "Isn't that the same
thing? If there is a journey thousands of years long between the ship and
its goal, so much the worse-instead of instantaneous death there will be
years of hopelessness for the doomed. Perhaps they will call. If they do,
we'll know ... on Earth ... in about six years' time."
With one of his impetuous movements Erg Noor pulled a folding armchair
from under the table of the electronic computer, a little MNU-11; on account
of its great weight, size and fragility, the ITU electronic brain that could
make any computation was not fitted in spaceships to pilot them unaided. A
navigator had always to be on duty in the control tower, especially as it
was impossible to plot an exact course over such terrific distances.
The commander's hands flashed over the levers and knobs with the
rapidity of a pianist's. The sharply defined features of his pale face were
as immobile as those of a statue and his lofty brow, inclined stubbornly
over the control desk, seemed to be challenging the elemental forces that
menaced that tiny world of living beings who bad dared penetrate into the
forbidden depths of space.
Nisa Greet, a young astronavigator on her first Cosmic expedition, held
her breath as she watched Erg Noor in silence, and the commander himself
seemed oblivious of everything but his work. How cool and collected, how
clever and full of energy was the man she loved. And she had loved him for a
long time, for the whole of the five years. There was no sense in hiding it
from him, lie knew it already, Nisa could feel that. Now that this great
misfortune had happened she had the tremendous joy of serving a watch with
him, three months alone with him while the other members of the crew lay in
deep hypnotic sleep. Another thirteen days and they, too, would be able to
sleep for six months while the other two watches-the navigators, astronomers
and mechanics-served their turns. The other members of the expedition, the
biologists and geologists who would only have work to do when they arrived
at their destination, could sleep longer, but the astronomers-oh! theirs was
the greatest strain of all.
Erg Noor got up from his seat and Nisa's train of thought was broken.
"I'm going to the charthouse. You'll be able to sleep in-" he looked at
the clock showing dependent or ship's time, "nine hours. I'll have time for
some sleep before I relieve you."
"I'm not tired, I can stay here as long as is necessary -you must get
some rest!"
Erg Noor frowned and wanted to object but was captivated by the
tenderness of her words and by the golden hazel eyes that appealed to him so
trustingly; he smiled and went out without another word.
Nisa sat down in the chair, cast an accustomed glance over the
instruments and was soon lost in deep meditation.
The reflector screens through which those in the control tower could
see what was happening in the space surrounding the ship gleamed black
overhead. The lights of differently coloured stars pierced the eyes like
needles of fire.
The spaceship was overtaking a planet and its pull made the ship
vacillate in a gravitation field of changing intensity. The magnificent but
malignant stars also made wild leaps in the reflector screens. The outlines
of the constellations changed with a rapidity that the memory could not
register.
Planet K2-2N 88, cold, lifeless, far from its sun, was known as a
convenient rendezvous for spaceships ... for the meeting that had not taken
place. The fifth circle- Nisa could picture her ship travelling with reduced
speed around a monster circle with a radius of a thousand million kilometres
and constantly gaining on a planet that crawled at tortoise speed. In a
hundred and ten hours the ship would complete the fifth circle-and what
then? Erg Noor's tremendous brain was now strained to the utmost to find the
best solution. As commander both of the expedition and the ship he could not
make mistakes for if he did First Class Spaceship Tantra with its crew of
the world's most eminent scientists would never return from outer space! But
Erg Noor would make no mistakes.
Nisa Greet was suddenly overcome by a feeling of nausea which meant
that the spaceship had deviated from its course by a tiny fraction of a
degree, something possible only at the reduced speed at which they were
travelling: at full speed not one of the ship's fragile human load would
have remained alive. The grey mist before the girl's eyes had not had time
to disperse before the nausea swept over her again as the ship returned to
its course. Delicately sensitive feelers had located a meteoroid, the
greatest enemy of the spaceships, in the black emptiness ahead of them and
had automatically made the deviation. The electronic machines guiding the
ship (only they could carry out all manipulations with the necessary
rapidity, since human nerves arc unsuited to Cosmic speeds) had taken her
off her course in a millionth of a second and, the danger past, had returned
her with equal speed.
"What could have prevented machines like these from saving Algraby
wondered Nisa when she had recovered. That ship had most certainly been
damaged by a meteoroid. Erg Noor had told her that up to then one spaceship
in ten had been wrecked by meteoroids, despite the invention of such
delicate locators as Voll Head's and the power screens that repelled smaller
particles. After everything had been so well planned and provided for, the
loss of Algrab had placed them in a dangerous position. Mentally Nisa went
over everything that had happened since they had taken off.
Cosmic Expedition No. 37 had been sent to the planetary system of the
nearest star in the Ophiuchus Constellation whose only inhabited planet,
Zirda, had long been in communication with Earth and other worlds through
the great Circle. Suddenly the planet had gone silent, and for over seventy
years nothing more had been heard from there. It was the duty of Earth, as
the nearest of the Circle planets to Zirda, to find out what had happened.
With this aim in view the expedition's ship had taken on board a large
number of instruments and several prominent scientists, those whose nerves,
after lengthy testing, had proved capable of standing up to confinement in a
spaceship for several years. The ship was fuelled with anameson; only the
barely necessary amount had been taken, not because of its weight but
because of the tremendous size of the containers in which it was stored. It
was expected that supplies could be renewed on Zirda. In case something
serious had happened to Zirda, Second Class Spaceship Algrab was to have met
Tantra with fuel supplies on the orbit of planet K2-2N 88.
Nisa's attuned ear caught the changed tone in the hum of the artificial
gravitational field. The discs of three instruments on the right began to
wink irregularly as the starboard electron feeler came into action. An
angular mass flashed on to the screen, brightening it up. It flew straight
at Tantra like a shell which meant that it was a long way away-a huge
fragment of material such as is seldom met with in cosmic space, and Nisa
hurried to determine its volume, mass, velocity and direction. She did not
return to her meditations until the spool of the automatic log gave a click
to show that the entries were finished.
Her most vivid memory was that of a blood-red sun that had been
steadily growing in their field of vision during the last months of their
fourth space-borne year. It had been the fourth year for the inhabitants of
the spaceship as it travelled with a speed of 5/6ths of the absolute unit,
the speed of light, but on Earth seven of the years known as independent
years had passed.
The filters on the screens were kind to human eyes;
they reduced the composition of the rays of any celestial body to what
they would have been had they been seen through the thick terrestrial
atmosphere with its protective screens of ozone and water vapours. The
indescribable ghostly violet light of the high temperature bodies was toned
down to blue or white and the gloomy greyish-pink stars took on jolly
golden-yellow hues, like our Sun. A celestial body that burned triumphantly
with bright crimson fire took on a deep, blood-red colour, the tone that a
terrestrial observer sees in stars of the spectral class
M5.7 The planet was much nearer to its star than Earth
is to the Sun and as the ship drew nearer to Zirda the star grew into a
tremendous crimson disc that irradiated a mass of heat rays.
For two months before approaching Zirda Tantra had begun attempts to
get in touch with the planet's outer space station. There was only one such
station-on a small natural satellite with no atmosphere that was much nearer
to Zirda than the Moon is to Earth.
The spaceship continued calling when the planet was no more than thirty
million kilometres away and the terrific speed of Tantra had been reduced to
three thousand kilometres a second. It was Nisa's watch but all the crew
were awake, sitting in anticipation in front of the control-tower screens.
Nisa kept on calling, increasing the power of the transmissions and
sending rays out fanwise ahead of the ship.
At last they saw the tiny shining dot of the satellite.
The spaceship came into orbit around the planet, approaching it in a
spiral and gradually adjusting its speed to that of the satellite. Soon
Tantra's speed was the same as that of the fast-moving little satellite and
it seemed as though an invisible hawser held them fast. The ship's
electronic stereotelescope searched the surface of the satellite until the
crew of Tantra were suddenly confronted with an unforgettable sight.
A huge, flat-topped glass building seemed to be on fire in the rays of
the blood-red sun. Directly under the roof was something in the nature of an
assembly hall. There a number of beings-unlike terrestrial humans but
unmistakably people-were frozen into immobility. Excitedly, Pour Hyss, the
astronomer of the expedition, continued to adjust the focus. The vague rows
of people visible under the glass roof were absolutely motionless. Pour Hyss
increased the instrument's magnification. Out of the vagueness a dais
surrounded by instrument panels appeared, and on it a long table on which a
man sat cross-legged facing the audience, his crazy, terrifying eyes staring
into the distance.
"They're dead, frozen!" exclaimed Erg Noor. The spaceship continued to
hover over Zirda's satellite and fourteen pairs of eyes remained fixed on
that glass tomb, for such, indeed, it was. How long had the dead been
sitting there in their glass house? The planet had broken off communication
seventy years before and if we add to that six years for the rays to reach
Earth it meant three quarters of a century.
All eyes were turned on the commander. Erg Noor, his face pale, was
staring into the yellow, smoky atmosphere of the planet through which the
lines of the mountain ranges and the glint of the sea were faintly
discernible. But there was nothing to provide the answer they had come there
for.
"The station perished seventy-five years ago and has not been
re-established! That can only mean a catastrophe on the planet. We must go
down into the atmosphere, perhaps even land. Everybody is present now so
I'll ask your opinion."
The only objection was raised by Pour Hyss, a man on his first Cosmic
trip; he had been substituted for an experienced worker who had fallen ill
just before the start. Nisa looked with indignation at his big, hawk-like
nose and his ugly ears set low down on his head.
"If there has been a catastrophe on the planet there is no possibility
of our getting anameson there. If we circle the planet at low level we shall
reduce our supply of planetary fuel, if we land, we reduce it to a still
greater extent. Apart from that we don't know what's happened, there may be
some powerful radiations that will kill us."
The other members of the expedition supported their commander.
"There is no planetary radiation that can be dangerous to a ship with
Cosmic shielding. Weren't we sent here to find out what has happened? What
are we going to tell the Great Circle? It isn't enough to establish a fact,
we have to explain it-excuse me if this sounds like a lecture to
schoolboys!" said Erg Noor and the usual metallic tones in his voice now had
a note of ridicule in them. "I don't imagine we can evade doing what is our
plain duty."
"The upper layers of the atmosphere have a normal temperature!"
exclaimed Nisa, happily, on completion of her rapidly performed
measurements.
Erg Noor smiled and began to put the ship down in a spiral each turn of
which was slower than the last as they neared the surface of the planet.
Zirda was somewhat smaller than Earth and no great speed was needed to
circumnavigate it at low level. The astronomers and the geologist checked
the maps of the planet with what was observed by Tantra's optical
instruments. There had been no noticeable change in the outlines of the
continents and the seas gleamed calmly in the red sun. Nor had the chains of
mountains changed the shapes that were known from former photographs-but the
planet was silent.
The crew spent thirty-five hours at their instruments, relieving each
other occasionally.
The composition of the atmosphere, the radiation of the red sun,
everything agreed with formerly recorded Zirda data. Erg Noor looked for the
Zirda stratosphere tables in his reference book. Ionization was higher than
they showed. A vague and alarming concept was taking form in Noor's mind.
On the sixth turn of the descending spiral the outlines of big cities
became clearly visible. And still not a sound was recorded by the
spaceship's receivers.
Nisa Greet was relieved from her post for a meal and seemed to have
dozed off for a while. She thought, however, that she had not slept for more
than a few minutes. The spaceship was crossing Zirda's night disc at a speed
no greater than that of a terrestrial helicopter. Below them there should
have been cities, factories and ports, but not a single light showed in the
pitch blackness no matter how thoroughly the powerful stereotelescopes
searched the ground. The thunder of the spaceship cutting through the
atmosphere should have been audible for dozens of miles. Another hour passed
and still no light was seen. The anxious waiting was becoming unbearable.
Noor switched on the warning sirens hoping that their awe-inspiring howl,
added to the roar of the spaceship, would be heard by the mysteriously
silent inhabitants of Zirda.
A wave of fiery light swept away the evil darkness as Tantra reached
the daylight side of the planet. Below them everything was still black.
Rapidly developed and enlarged photographs showed that the earth was covered
with a solid carpet of flowers something like the velvety-black poppies that
grow on Earth. The masses of black poppies stretched for thousands of miles
to the exclusion of all other vegetation-trees and bushes, reeds and grass.
The streets of the cities looked like the ribs of giant skeletons lying on a
black carpet; metal structures formed gaping rusty wounds. Not a living
being, not a tree anywhere, nothing but the black poppies!
Tantra dropped an observation bomb beacon and again plunged into the
night. Six hours later the robot reported the content of the air,
temperature, pressure and other conditions obtaining on the surface of the
planet. Everything was normal for Zirda with the exception of increased
radioactivity.
"What an awful tragedy!" muttered Eon Thai, the expedition's biologist,
in a dull voice as he recorded the data supplied by the station. "They have
killed themselves and everything on their planet!"
"How could they?" asked Nisa, hiding the tears that were ready to flow.
"Is it as bad as that? The ionisation isn't so very high."
"A long time has passed since then," answered the biologist, glumly.
His manly Circassian face with its aquiline nose assumed an expression of
sternness, despite his youth. "Radioactive disintegration is dangerous just
because it accumulates unnoticed. For hundreds of years the total radiation
could increase corns by corus, the unit of radiation; then suddenly there
comes a qualitative change, heredity collapses, the reproduction of the
species ceases and added to that there are epidemics of radiation diseases.
This has happened more than once before, the Circle knows of similar
catastrophes."
"Such as the so-called 'planet of the lilac sun,'" came Erg Noor's
voice from behind them.
"Whose sun of spectral class A", with a light intensity equal to 78 of
our suns, provided its inhabitants with very high energy," added the morose
Pour Hyss.
"Where is that planet?" asked Eon Thai, the biologist. "Isn't that the
one the Council intends to colonize?"
"That's the one, the lost Algrab was named after its star."
"The star Algrab, that's Delta Corvi," exclaimed the biologist. "But
it's such a long way off!"
"Forty-six parsecs. But we're constantly increasing the power of our
spaceship...."
The biologist nodded his head and muttered that it was hardly right to
call a spaceship after a star that had perished.
"The star didn't perish and the planet is still safe and sound. Before
another century has passed we shall plant vegetation there and settle the
planet," said Erg Noor with confidence.
He had decided to perform a difficult manoeuvre-to change the ship's
orbit from latitudinal to meridional, sending the ship along a north-south
line parallel to the planet's axis of rotation. How could they leave the
planet until they were sure that there were no survivors? It might be that
survivors were unable to communicate with the spaceship because power
installations had been wrecked and instruments damaged.
This was not the first time Nisa had seen her commander at the control
desk in a moment of great responsibility. With his impenetrably
expressionless face and his abrupt but always precise movements he seemed
like a hero of legendary times to the auburn-haired astronavigator.
Again Tantra continued her hopeless journey round Zirda, this time from
pole to pole. In some places, especially in the temperate latitudes, there
were wide belts of bare earth, a yellow haze hung over them and through it,
from time to time, appeared the lines of gigantic red dunes from which the
wind sent up clouds of sand.
Then again came the funereal pall of black velvet poppies, the only
plant that had withstood radioactivity or had produced a mutation of its
species viable under irradiation.
The whole picture was clear. It was not only useless,
it was even dangerous to search for supplies of anameson that had, on
the recommendation of the Great Circle, been laid in for visitors from other
worlds (Zirda had no spaceships of her own, only planetships). Tantra began
slowly unwinding the spiral away from the planet. She gained a velocity of
17 kilometres a second using her ion trigger motors, the planetary motors
that gave her speed enough for trips between adjacent planets and for taking
off and landing, and drew away from the dead planet. Tantra turned her nose
towards an uninhabited system known only by its code name where bomb beacons
had been thrown out and where Algrab should have awaited her. The anameson
motors were switched on and in fifty-two hours they accelerated the
spaceship to her normal speed of 900,000,000 kilometres an hour. Fifteen
months' journey would take them to the meeting place-eleven months of the
dependent time of the ship-and the whole crew, with the exception of those
on watch, could spend that time in sleep. A month, however, passed in
discussion, in calculations and in the preparation of a report for the
Council. From reference books it was discovered that risky experiments had
been made on Zirda with partially disintegrating atomic fuels. They found
references to statements by leading scientists who warned the people that
there were symptoms of the adverse biological effect of the experiments and
demanded that they be stopped.
A hundred and eighteen years before a brief warning had been sent
through the Great Circle; it would have been sufficient for people of the
higher intellectual categories but apparently it had not been treated
seriously by the government of Zirda.
There could be no doubt that Zirda had perished from an accumulation of
harmful radiations following numerous careless experiments and the reckless
use of dangerous forms of nuclear energy instead of wisely continuing the
search for other, less harmful sources.
The mystery had long since been solved, twice the spaceship's crew had
changed their three months' period of sleep for normal periods of activity
of the same length.
Tantra had been circling round the grey planet for many days and with
each passing hour the possibility of meeting Algrab grew less and less.
Something terrible loomed ahead.
Erg Noor stood in the doorway with his eyes on Nisa as she sat there in
meditation-her inclined head with its cap of thick hair like a luxuriant
golden flower, the mischievous, boyish profile, the slightly slanting eyes
that were often screwed up by restrained laughter and were now wide open,
apprehensively but courageously probing the unknown.... The girl did not
realize what a tremendous moral support her selfless love had become for
him. Despite the long years of trial that had steeled his willpower and his
senses, he sometimes grew tired of being commander, of having to be ready at
any moment to shoulder any responsibility for the crew, for the ship and for
the success of the expedition. Back there on Earth such single-handed
responsibility had long since been abandoned-decisions there were taken
collectively by the group of people who had to carry them out. If anything
unusual occurred on Earth you could always get advice, and consultations on
the most intricate problems could be arranged. Here there was nobody to turn
to and spaceship commanders were granted special rights. It would have been
easier if such responsibility had been for two or three years instead of the
ten to fifteen years that were normal for space expeditions! Erg Noor
entered the control tower.
Nisa jumped up to meet him. "I've got all the necessary material and
the charts," he said, "we'll start the machine working!"
The commander stretched himself in his armchair and slowly turned over
the thin metal sheets he had brought, calling out the numbers of
coordinates, the strength of magnetic, electric and gravitational fields,
the power of Cosmic dust streams and the velocity and density of me-teoroid
streams. Nisa, all her muscles tensed with excitement, pressed the buttons
and turned the knobs of the computing machine. Erg Noor listened to a series
of answers, frowned and lapsed into deep thought.
"There's a strong gravitational field in our way, the area in the
Scorpion where there is an accumulation of dark matter near star 6555 CR+11
PKU," began Noor. "We can save fuel by deviating this way, towards the
Serpent. In the old days they flew without motors, using the gravitational
fields as accelerators, along their edges." "Can we do the same?" asked
Nisa.
"No, our spaceships are too fast. At a speed of 5/6ths of the absolute
unit or 250,000 kilometres a second our weight would be 12,000 times greater
in a field of gravitation and that would turn the whole expedition into
dust. We can only fly like this in the Cosmos, far from large accumulations
of matter. As soon as the spaceship enters a gravitational field we have to
reduce speed, the stronger the field the more we must reduce."
"So there's a contradiction here," said Nisa, resting her head on her
hand in a childish manner, "the stronger the gravitational field the slower
we have to fly!"
"That's only true where velocities close to the speed of light are
concerned, when the spaceship is something like a ray of light and can only
move in a straight line or along the so-called curve of equal tension."
"If I've understood you correctly we have to aim our Tantra light ray
straight at the solar system."
"That's where the great difficulty of space travel comes in. It's
practically impossible to aim directly at any star although we make all the
corrective calculations imaginable. Throughout the entire journey we have to
compute the accumulating error and constantly change the course of the ship
so that no automatic piloting is possible. Our position now is a dangerous
one. We have nothing left to start another acceleration going so that a halt
or even a considerable reduction in speed after this acceleration would be
certain death. Look, the danger is here-in area 344 4- 2U that has never
been explored. Here there are no stars, no inhabited planets, nothing is
known except the gravitational field-there is its edge. We'll wait for the
astronomers before we make the final decision -after the fifth circle we'll
wake up everybody but in the meantime...." The commander rubbed his temples
and yawned.
"The effect of the sporamin is wearing off," exclaimed Nisa, "you can
go to sleep!"
"Good, I'll be all right here, in this chair. Suppose a miracle happens
... just one sound from them!"
There was something in Erg Noor's voice that sent Nisa's heart
palpitating with her love for him. She wanted to take that stubborn head of
his, press it to her breast and stroke the dark hair with its prematurely
grey threads.
Nisa got up, placed the reference sheets carefully together and turned
out the light, leaving only a dull green glow that illuminated the
instrument panels and the clocks. The spaceship was travelling quite quietly
in a complete vacuum as it described its gigantic curve. The auburn-haired
navigator silently took her place at the "brain" of the giant ship. The
instruments, tuned to a particular note, hummed softly; the slightest
disorder made them sing false. Today, however, the quiet humming kept on the
right note. On rare occasions she heard soft blows, like the sounds of a
gong-that was the auxiliary planet motor switching in to keep the ship truly
on her curve. The powerful anameson motors were silent. The peace of a long
night hung over the sleepy ship as though no serious danger threatened her
and her inhabitants. At any moment the long-awaited call signal would be
heard in the loudspeaker and the two ships would begin to check their
unbelievably rapid flight, would draw closer on parallel courses and would
at last so equalize their speeds that they would be as good as lying still
beside each other. A wide tubular gallery would connect the two ships and
Tantra would regain her tremendous strength.
Deep down in her heart Nisa was calm, she had faith in her commander.
Five years of travel had not seemed either long or tiring. Especially since
Nisa had begun to love.... But even before that the absorbingly interesting
observations, the electronic recordings of books, music and films gave her
every opportunity to increase her fund of knowledge and not feel the loss of
beautiful Earth, that tiny speck of dust lost in the depths of the infinity
of darkness. Her fellow-travellers were people of great erudition and then,
when her nerves were exhausted by a surfeit of impressions or lengthy,
strenuous work, there was continued sleep. Sleep was maintained by attuning
the patient to hypnotic oscillations and, after certain preliminary medical
treatment, big stretches of time were lost in forgetfulness and passed
without leaving a trace. Nisa was happy because she was near the man she
loved. The only thing that troubled her was the thought that others were
having a harder time, especially Erg Noor. If only she could ... no, what
could a young and still very green astronavigator do, compared with such a
man! Perhaps her tenderness, her constant fund of good will, her ardent
desire to give up everything in order to make easier that tremendous labour
would help.