Explorers of Space

by Anthology

  Home, she thought: four walls of an apartment above a banging city street. Books and television. She might present a paper at the next scientific meeting, but no one would invite her to the parties afterward.

  Am I that horrible? she wondered. I know I’m not anything to look at, but I try to be nice and interesting. Maybe I try too hard.

  —You do not with me. Lucifer said.

  “You’re different,” she told him.

  Mazundar blinked. “Beg pardon?”

  “Nothing,” she said in haste.

  “I have wondered about an item.” Mazundar said in an effort at conversation. “Presumably Lucifer will go quite near the supernova. Can you still maintain contact with him? The time dilation effect, will that not change the frequency of his thoughts too much?”

  “What time dilation?” she forced a chuckle. “I’m no physicist. Only a little librarian who turned out to have a wild talent.”

  “You were not told? Why, I assumed everybody was. An intense gravitational field affects time just as a high velocity does. Roughly speaking, processes take place more slowly than they do in clear space. That is why light from a massive star is somewhat reddened. And our supernova core retains almost three solar masses. Furthermore, it has acquired such a density that its attraction at the surface is, ah, incredibly high. Thus by our clocks it will take infinite time to shrink to the Schwarzschild radius; but an observer on the star itself would experience this whole shrinkage in a fairly short period.”

  “Schwarzschild radius? Be so good as to explain.” Eloise realized that Lucifer had spoken through her.

  “If I can without mathematics. You see, this mass we are to study is so great and so concentrated that no force exceeds the gravitational. Nothing can counterbalance. Therefore the process will continue until no energy can escape. The star will have vanished out of the universe. In fact, theoretically the contraction will proceed to zero volume. Of course, as I said, that will take forever as far as we are concerned. And the theory neglects quantum-mechanical considerations, which come into play toward the end. Those are still not very well understood. I hope, from this expedition, to acquire more knowledge.” Mazundar shrugged. “At any rate, Miss Waggoner. I was wondering if the frequency shift involved would not prevent our friend from communicating with us when he is near the star.”

  “I doubt that.” Still Lucifer spoke, she was his instrument and never had she known how good it was to be used by one who cared. “Telepathy is not a wave phenomenon. Since it transmits instantaneously, it cannot be. Nor does it appear limited by distance. Rather, it is a resonance. Being attuned, we two may well be able to continue thus across the entire breadth of the cosmos; and I am not aware of any material phenomenon which could interfere.”

  “I see.” Mazundar gave her a long look. “Thank you,” he said uncomfortably. “Ah . . . I must get to my own station. Good luck.” He bustled off without stopping for an answer.

  Eloise’ didn’t notice. Her mind was become a torch and a song. “Lucifer!” she cried aloud. “Is that true?”

  —I believe so. My entire people are telepaths, hence we have more knowledge of such matters than yours do. Our experience leads us to think there is no limit.

  “You can always be with me? You always will?”

  —If you so wish, I am gladdened.

  The comet body curvetted and danced, the brain of fire laughed low.—Yes, Eloise, I would like very much to remain with you. No one else has ever—Joy. Joy. Joy.

  They named you better than they knew, Lucifer, she wanted to say, and perhaps she did. They thought it was a joke; they thought by calling you after the devil they could make you safely small like themselves. But Lucifer isn’t the devil’s real name. It means only Light Bearer. One Latin prayer even addresses Christ as Lucifer. Forgive me, God, I can’t help remembering that. Do You mind? He isn’t Christian, but I think he doesn’t need to be, I think he must never have felt sin, Lucifer, Lucifer.

  She sent the music soaring for as long as she was permitted.

  The ship jumped. In one shift of world line parameters she crossed twenty-five light-years to destruction.

  Each knew it in his own way, save for Eloise, who also lived it with Lucifer.

  She felt the shock and heard the outraged metal scream, she smelled the ozone and scorch and tumbled through the infinite falling that is weightlessness. Dazed, she fumbled at the intercom. Words crackled through: . . unit blown . . . back EMF surge . . . how should I know how to fix the blasted thing? . . . stand by, stand by . . Over all hooted the emergency siren.

  Terror rose in her, until she gripped the crucifix around her neck and the mind of Lucifier. Then she laughed in the pride of this might.

  He had whipped clear of the ship immediately on arrival. Now he floated in the same orbit. Everywhere around, the nebula filled space with unrestful rainbows. To him, Raven was not the metal cylinder which human eyes would have seen, but a lambency, the shield screen reflecting a whole spectrum. Ahead lay the supernova core, tiny at this remove but alight, alight.

  —Have no fears (he caressed her). I comprehend. Turbulence is extensive, so soon after the detonation. We emerged in a region where the plasma is especially dense. Unprotected for the moment before the guardian field was reestablished, your main generator outside the hull was short-circuited. But you are safe. You can make repairs. And I, I am in an ocean of energy. Never was I so alive. Come, swim these tides with me.

  Captain Szili’s voice yanked her back. “Waggoner! Tell that Aurigean to get busy. We’ve spotted a radiation source on an intercept orbit, and it may be too much for our screen.” He specified coordinates. “What is it?”

  For the first time, Eloise felt alarm in Lucifer. He curved about and streaked from the ship.

  Presently his thought came to her, no less vivid. She lacked words for the terrible splendor she viewed with him: a million-kilometer ball of ionized gas where luminance blazed and electric discharges leaped, booming through the haze around the star’s exposed heart. The thing could not have made any sound, for space here was still almost a vacuum by Earth’s parochial standards; but she heard it thunder, and felt the fury that spat from it.

  She said for him: “A mass of expelled material. It must have lost radial velocity to friction and static gradients, been drawn into a cometary orbit, held together for a while by internal potentials. As if this sun were trying yet to bring planets to birth—”

  “It’ll strike us before we’re in shape to accelerate,” Szili said, “and overload our shield. If you know any prayers, use them.”

  “Lucifer!” she called; for she did not want to die, when he must remain.

  —I think I can deflect it enough, he told her with a grimness she had not hitherto met in him.—My own fields, to mesh with its; and free energy to drink; and an unstable configuration; yet, perhaps I can help you. But help me, Eloise. Fight by my side.

  His brightness moved toward the juggernaut shape.

  She felt how its chaotic electromagnetism clawed at his. She felt him tossed and torn. The pain was hers. He battled to keep his own cohesion, and the combat was hers. They locked together, Aurigean and gas cloud. The forces that shaped him grappled as arms might; he poured power from his core, hauling that vast tenuous mass with him down the magnetic torrent which streamed from the sun; he gulped atoms and thrust them backward until the jet splashed across the heaven.

  She sat in her cubicle, lending him what will to live and prevail she could, and beat her fists bloody on the desk.

  The hours brawled past.

  In the end, she could scarcely catch the message that flickered out of his exhaustion:—Victory.

  “Yours,” she wept.

  —Ours.

  Through instruments, men saw the luminous death pass them by. A cheer lifted.

  “Come back,” Eloise begged.

  —I cannot. I am too spent. We are merged, the cloud and I, and are tumbling in toward the star. (Like a hurt hand re
aching forth to comfort her:) Do not be afraid for me. As we get closer, I will draw fresh strength from its glow, fresh substance from the nebula. I will need a while to spiral out against that pull. But how can I fail to come back to you, Eloise? Wait for me. Rest. Sleep.

  Her shipmates led her to sickbay. Lucifer sent her dreams of fire flowers and mirth and the suns that were his home.

  But she woke at last, screaming. The medic had to put her under heavy sedation.

  He had not really understood what it would mean to confront something so violent that space and time themselves were twisted thereby.

  His speed increased appallingly. That was in his own measure; from Raven they saw him fall through several days. The properties of matter were changed. He could not push hard enough or fast enough to escape.

  Radiation, stripped nuclei, particles born and destroyed and born again, sleeted and shouted through him. His substance was peeled away, layer by layer. The supernova core was a white delirium before him. It shrank as he approached, ever smaller, denser, so brilliant that brilliance ceased to have meaning. Finally the gravitational forces laid their full grip upon him.

  —Eloise! he shrieked in the agony of his disintegration—Oh, Eloise, help me!

  The star swallowed him up. He was stretched infinitely long, compressed infinitely thin, and vanished with it from existence.

  The ship prowled the farther reaches. Much might yet be learned.

  Captain Szili visited Eloise in sickbay. Physically she was recovering.

  “I’d call him a man,” he declared through the machine mumble, “except that’s not praise enough. We weren’t even his kin, and he died to save us.”

  She regarded him from eyes more dry than seemed natural. He could just make out her answer. “He is a man. Doesn’t he have an immortal soul too?”

  “Well, uh, yes, if you believe in souls, yes, I’d agree.”

  She shook here head. “But why can’t he go to his rest?”

  He glanced about for the medic and found they were alone in the narrow metal room. “What do you mean?” He made himself pat her hand. “I know, he was a good friend of yours. Still, his must have been a merciful death. Quick, clean; I wouldn’t mind going out like that.”

  “For him . . . yes, I suppose so. It has to be. But—” She could not continue. Suddenly she covered her ears. “Stop! Please!”

  Szili made soothing noises and left. In the corridor he encountered Mazundar. “How is she?” the physicist asked.

  The captain scowled. “Not good. I hope she doesn’t crack entirely before we can get her to a psychiatrist.”

  “Why, what is wrong?”

  “She thinks she can hear him.”

  Mazundar smote fist into palm. “I hoped otherwise,” he breathed.

  Szili braced himself and waited.

  “She does,” Mazundar said. “Obviously she does.”

  “But that’s impossible! He’s dead!”

  “Remember the time dilation,” Mazundar replied. “He fell from the sky and perished swiftly, yes. But in supernova time. Not the same as ours. To us, the final stellar collapse takes an infinite number of years. And telepathy has no distance limits.” The physicist started walking fast away from that cabin. “He will always be with her.”

  JUPITER FIVE

  Arthur C. Clarke

  One of the many virtues of the motion picture 2001 was the quiet, unspectacular way that it showed us, through a myriad of tiny touches, what the texture of life a generation from now is likely to be. Everything had been thought through with care, from the technology of airlocks to the tone of advertisements. Arthur C. Clarke was co-author of that movie’s screenplay, and most of those little touches were his; for that genius with small imaginative detail is a hallmark of this man whose name has become virtually synonymous with science fiction. It is displayed throughout his classic novel Childhood’s End and in all his other work, up to his latest novel, Rendezvous with Rama; and it is apparent on every page of the ingenious story of Jovian exploration you are about to read.

  PROFESSOR FORSTER is such a small man that a special space-suit had to be made for him. But what he lacked in physical size he more than made up—as is so often the case—in sheer drive and determination. When I met him, he’d spent twenty years pursuing a dream. What is more to the point, he had persuaded a whole succession of hardheaded businessmen, World Council delegates, and administrators of scientific trusts to underwrite his expenses and to fit out a ship for him. Despite everything that happened later, I still think that was his most remarkable achievement.

  The Arnold Toynbee had a crew of six aboard when we left Earth. Besides the Professor and Charles Aston, his chief assistant, there was the usual pilot-navigator-engineer triumvirate and two graduate students—Bill Hawkins and myself. Neither of us had ever gone into space before, and we were still so excited over the whole thing that we didn’t care in the least whether we got back to Earth before the next term started. We had a strong suspicion that our tutor had very similar views. The reference he had produced for us was a masterpiece of ambiguity, but as the number of people who could even begin to read Martian script could be counted, if I may coin a phrase, on the fingers of one hand, we’d got the job.

  As we were going to Jupiter, and not to Mars, the purpose of this particular qualification seemed a little obscure, though, knowing something about the Professor’s theories, we had some pretty shrewd suspicions. They were partly confirmed when we were ten days out from Earth.

  The Professor looked at us very thoughtfully when we answered his summons. Even under zero g he always managed to preserve his dignity, while the best we could do was to cling to the nearest handhold and float around like drifting seaweed. I got the impression—though I may of course be wrong—that he was thinking: What have I done to deserve this? as he looked from Bill to me and back again. Then he gave a sort of “It’s too late to do anything about it now” sigh and began to speak in that slow, patient way he always does when he has something to explain. At least, he always uses it when he’s speaking to us, but it’s just occurred to me—oh, never mind.

  “Since we left Earth,” he said, “I’ve not had much chance of telling you the purpose of this expedition. Perhaps you’ve guessed it already.”

  “I think I have,” said Bill.

  “Well, go on,” replied the Professor, a peculiar gleam in his eye. I did my best to stop Bill, but have you ever tried to kick anyone when you’re in free fall?

  “You want to find some proof—I mean, some more proof—of your diffusion theory of extraterrestrial culture.”

  “And have you any idea why I’m going to Jupiter to look for it?”

  “Well, not exactly. I suppose you hope to find something on one of the moons.”

  “Brilliant, Bill, brilliant. There are fifteen known satellites, and their total area is about half that of Earth. Where would you start looking if you had a couple of weeks to spare? I’d rather like to know.”

  Bill glanced doubtfully at the Professor, as if he almost suspected him of sarcasm.

  “I don’t know much about astronomy,” he said. “But there are four big moons, aren’t there? I’d start on those.”

  “For your information, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto are each about as big as Africa. Would you work through them in alphabetical order?”

  “No,” Bill replied promptly. “I’d start on the one nearest Jupiter and go outward.”

  “I don’t think we’ll waste any more time pursuing your logical processes,” sighed the Professor. He was obviously impatient to begin his set speech. “Anyway, you’re quite wrong. We’re not going to the big moons at all. They’re been photographically surveyed from space and large areas have been explored on the surface. They’ve got nothing of archaeological interest. We’re going to a place that’s never been visited before.”

  “Not to Jupiter!” I gasped.

  “Heavens no, nothing as drastic as that! But we’re going nearer to him th
an anyone else has ever been.”

  He paused thoughtfully.

  “It’s a curious thing, you know—or you probably don’t—that it’s nearly as difficult to travel between Jupiter’s satellites as it is to go between the planets, although the distances are so much smaller. This is because Jupiter’s got such a terrific gravitational field and his moons are traveling so quickly. The innermost moon’s moving almost as fast as Earth, and the journey to it from Ganymede costs almost as much fuel as the trip from Earth to Venus, even though it takes only a day and a half.

  “And it’s that journey which we’re going to make. No one’s ever done it before because nobody could think of any good reason for the expense. Jupiter Five is only thirty kilometers in diameter, so it couldn’t possibly be of much interest. Even some of the outer satellites, which are far easier to reach, haven’t been visited because it hardly seemed worthwhile to waste the rocket fuel.”

  “Then why are we going to waste it?” I asked impatiently. The whole thing sounded like a complete wild-goose chase, though as long as it proved interesting, and involved no actual danger, I didn’t greatly mind.

  Perhaps I ought to confess—though I’m tempted to say nothing, as a good many others have done—that at this time I didn’t believe a word of Professor Forster’s theories. Of course I realize that he was a very brilliant man in his field, but I did draw the line at some of his more fantastic ideas. After all, the evidence was so slight and the conclusions so revolutionary that one could hardly help being skeptical.

  Perhaps you can still remember the astonishment when the first Martian expedition found the remains not of one ancient civilization, but of two. Both had been highly advanced, but both had perished more than five million years ago. The reason was unknown (and still is). It did not seem to be warfare, as the two cultures appear to have lived amicably together. One of the races had been insectlike, the other vaguely reptilian. The insects seem to have been the genuine, original Martians. The reptile-people—usually referred to as “Culture X”—had arrived on the scene later.