2010: Odyssey Two o-2 Read online

  2010: Odyssey Two

  ( Odyssey - 2 )

  Arthur Charles Clarke

  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...

  Arthur C. Clarke,

  2010: ODYSSEY TWO

  Author's Note

  The novel 2001: A Space Odyssey was written during the years 1964-8 and was published in July 1968, shortly after release of the movie. As I have described in The Lost Worlds of 2001, both projects proceeded simultaneously, with feedback in each direction. Thus I often had the strange experience of revising the manuscript after viewing rushes based upon an earlier version of the story – a stimulating, but rather expensive, way of writing a novel.

  As a result, there is a much closer parallel between book and movie than is usually the case, but there are also major differences. In the novel, the destination of the spaceship Discovery was Iapetus (or Japetus), most enigmatic of Saturn's many moons. The Saturnian system was reached via Jupiter: Discovery made a close approach to the giant planet, using its enormous gravitational field to produce a 'slingshot' effect and to accelerate it along the second lap of its journey. Exactly the same manoeuvre was used by the Voyager space probes in 1979, when they made the first detailed reconnaissance of the outer giants.

  In the movie, however, Stanley Kubrick wisely avoided confusion by setting the third confrontation between Man and Monolith among the moons of Jupiter. Saturn was dropped from the script entirely, though Douglas Trumbull later used the expertise he had acquired to film the ringed planet in his own production, Silent Running.

  No one could have imagined, back in the mid-sixties, that the exploration of the moons of Jupiter lay, not in the next century, but only fifteen years ahead. Nor had anyone dreamed of the wonders that would be found there – although we can be quite certain that the discoveries of the twin Voyagers will one day be surpassed by even more unexpected finds. When 2001 was written, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto were mere pinpoints of light in even the most powerful telescope; now they are worlds, each unique, and one of them – Io – is the most volcanically active body in the Solar System.

  Yet, all things considered, both movie and book stand up quite well in the light of these discoveries, and it is fascinating to compare the Jupiter sequences in the film with the actual movies from the Voyager cameras. But clearly, anything written today has to incorporate the results of the 1979 explorations: the moons of Jupiter are no longer uncharted territory.

  And there is another, more subtle, psychological factor to be taken into consideration. 2001 was written in an age that now lies beyond one of the Great Divides in human history; we are sundered from it forever by the moment when Neil Armstrong set foot upon the Moon. The date 20 July 1969 was still half a decade in the future when Stanley Kubrick and I started thinking about the 'proverbial good science-fiction movie' (his phrase). Now history and fiction have become inextricably intertwined.

  The Apollo astronauts had already seen the film when they left for the Moon. The crew of Apollo 8, who at Christmas 1968 became the first men ever to set eyes upon the Lunar Farside, told me that they had been tempted to radio back the discovery of a large black monolith: alas, discretion prevailed.

  And there were, later, almost uncanny instances of nature imitating art. Strangest of all was the saga of Apollo 13 in 1970.

  As a good opening, the Command Module, which houses the crew, had been christened Odyssey, Just before the explosion of the oxygen tank that caused the mission to be aborted, the crew had been playing Richard Strauss's Zarathustra theme, now universally identified with the movie. Immediately after the loss of power, Jack Swigert radioed back to Mission Control: 'Houston, we've had a problem.' The words that Hal used to astronaut Frank Poole on a similar occasion were: 'Sorry to interrupt the festivities, but we have a problem.'

  When the report of the Apollo 13 mission was later published, NASA Administrator Tom Paine sent me a copy, and noted under Swigert's words: 'Just as you always said it would be, Arthur.' I still get a very strange feeling when I contemplate this whole series of events – almost, indeed, as if I share a certain responsibility.

  Another resonance is less serious, but equally striking. One of the most technically brilliant sequences in the movie was that in which Frank Poole was shown running round and round the circular trick of the giant centrifuge, held in place by the 'artificial gravity' produced by its spin.

  Almost a decade later, the crew of the superbly successful Skylab realized that its designers had provided them with a similar geometry; a ring of storage cabinets formed a smooth, circular hand around the space station's interior. Skylab, however, was not spinning, but this did not.deter its ingenious occupants. They discovered that they could run around the track, just like mice in a squirrel cage, to produce a result visually indistinguishable from that shown in 2001. And they televised the whole exercise back to Earth (need I name the accompanying music?) with the comment:

  'Stanley Kubrick should see this.' As in due course he did, because I sent him the telecine recording. (I never got it back; Stanley uses a tame Black Hole as a filing system.)

  Yet another link between film and reality is the painting by Apollo-Soyuz Commander, Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, 'Near the Moon'. I first saw it in 1968, when 2001 was presented at the United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Immediately after the screening, Alexei pointed out to me that his concept (on page 32 of the Leonov-Sokolov book The Stars Are Awaiting Us, Moscow, 1967) shows exactly the same line-up as the movie's opening: the Earth rising beyond the Moon, and the Sun rising beyond them both. His autographed sketch of the painting now hangs on my office wall; for further details see Chapter 12.

  Perhaps this is the appropriate point to identify another and less well-known name appearing in these pages, that of Hsue-shen Tsien. In 1936, with the great Theodore von Karman and Frank J. Malina, Dr Tsien founded the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT) – the direct ancestor of Pasadena's famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He was also the first Goddard Professor at Caltech, and contributed greatly to American rocket research through the 1940s. Later, in one of the most disgraceful episodes of the McCarthy period, he was arrested on trumped-up security charges when he wished to return to his native country. For the last two decades, he has been one of the leaders of the Chinese rocket programme.

  Finally, there is the strange case of the 'Eye of Japetus' – Chapter 35 of 2001. Here I describe astronaut Bowman's discovery on the Saturnian moon of a curious feather 'a brilliant white oval, about four hundred miles long and two hundred wide... perfectly symmetrical... and so sharp-edged that it almost looked... painted on the face of the little moon.' As he came closer, Bowman convinced himself that 'the bright ellipse set against the dark background of the satellite was a huge empty eye staring at him as he approached...' Later, he noticed 'the tiny black dot at the exact centre', which turns out to be the Monolith (or one of its avatars).

  Well, when Voyager 1 transmitted the first photographs of Iapetus, they did indeed disclose a large, clear-cut white oval with a tiny black dot at the centre. Carl Sagan promptly sent me a print from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory with the cryptic annotation 'Thinking of you...' I do not know whether to be relieved or disappointed that Voyager 2 has left the matter still open.

  Inevitably, therefore, the story you are about to read is something much more complex than a straightforward sequel to the earlier novel – or the movie. Where these differ, I have followed the screen version; however, I have been more concerned with making this book self-consistent, and as accurate
as possible in the light of current knowledge.

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

  Arthur C. Clarke COLOMBO, SRI LANKA JANUARY 1982

  I – LEONOV

  1 – Meeting at the Focus

  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?'

  'We both have to deal with dinosaurs with brains in their tails. Some of mine will argue: Let the Russians risk their necks, hurrying out to Jupiter. We'll be there anyway a couple of years later – and what's the hurry?'

  For a moment there was silence on the antenna raft, except for a faint
creak from the immense supporting cables that held it suspended a hundred metres in the sky. Then Moisevitch continued, so quietly that Floyd had to strain to hear him: 'Has anyone checked Discovery's orbit lately?'

  'I really don't know – but I suppose so. Anyway, why bother? It's a perfectly stable one.'

  'Indeed. Let me tactlessly remind you of an embarrassing incident from the old NASA days. Your first space station – Skylab. It was supposed to stay up at least a decade, but you didn't do your calculations right. The air drag in the ionosphere was badly underestimated, and it came down years ahead of schedule. I'm sure you remember that little cliffhanger, even though you were a boy at the time.'

  'It was the year I graduated, and you know it. But Discovery doesn't go anywhere near Jupiter. Even at perigee – er, perijove – it's much too high to be affected by atmospheric drag.'

  'I've already said enough to get me exiled to my dacha again – and you might not be allowed to visit me next time. So just ask your tracking people to do their job more carefully, will you? And remind them that Jupiter has the biggest magnetosphere in the Solar System.'

  'I understand what you're driving at – many thanks. Anything else before we go down? I'm starting to freeze.'

  'Don't worry, old friend. As soon as you let all this filter through to Washington – wait a week or so until I'm clear -things are going to get very, very hot.'

  2 – The House of the Dolphins

  The dolphins swam into the dining room every evening, just before sunset. Only once since Floyd had occupied the Chancellor's residence had they broken their routine. That was the day of the '05 tsunami, which, fortunately, had lost most of its power before it reached Hilo. The next time his friends failed to turn up on schedule, Floyd would throw the family into the car and head for high ground, in the general direction of Mauna Kea.