Sputnik Caledonia

by Andrew Crumey

  Robert had already had enough accidents for one day – his head was still sore from his fall – but before the brigadier could say any more there was an abrupt interruption. ‘He’s here,’ said Rosalind, standing away from the door to let her colleague enter.

  ‘Professor Kaupff, at last,’ the brigadier, turning, said to the brisk figure who came in: an older man, in his sixties or even seventies, tall but stooped, slimly built and wearing a jacket and tie, and surprisingly youthful in his swiftness.

  ‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ Kaupff said to no one in particular, his voice having only a hint of the foreign accent his name might lead one to expect, masked by a convincing Scottish burr. ‘Can we begin?’

  ‘We’ve begun already, Professor,’ the brigadier said indulgently, clearly used to situations of this kind, and tolerant of his civilian colleague’s lack of military precision. ‘I’ve been explaining in general terms the work of the Installation; now I shall let you take over.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Kaupff, though when the brigadier retreated to the rear of the room it was not the vacated lectern to which Kaupff moved, but rather the blackboard, as if he might be about to pull a stick of chalk from his pocket. For a moment he stood thoughtfully with one finger on his lips while Rosalind, still at the open doorway, watched him with the admiring air of an acolyte, his attendance here evidently being an intrusion upon the profound intellectual labour that was his vocation. This man, Robert realized, was the father of the Bomb – though few outside the Installation had ever seen or heard of him.

  Kaupff faced his small audience, moved slowly towards them with his hands in his pockets, and smiled. ‘So these are our young recruits,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘What fine specimens you are.’

  There was an impish warmth in Kaupff’s voice that Robert found appealing; there was also something vaguely familiar about the old man’s appearance, though Robert knew he couldn’t possibly have seen him before; most probably there wasn’t a single photograph of him in the whole of the Republic. Kaupff approached Robert’s desk and looked down at him. ‘You, young man, how old are you?’

  ‘12.’

  The whole class erupted. What the hell had he just said, where had it come from? Mortified, Robert looked round and saw the smirking faces of his fellow volunteers – even the Party man was grinning – and although the laughter quickly ceased, their mockery was deafening. With his single inexplicable error, Robert had uncorked their anxiety and transformed it into mirth. ‘I’m sorry … I mean …’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Kaupff said calmly. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Nineteen, sir.’

  ‘You’re the one who slipped outside, aren’t you? And you were in hospital recently – I hear they nearly killed you.’ Robert looked in startled amazement at the old man standing over him, but Kaupff immediately clarified his remark, as if it were a gaffe like Robert’s. ‘Those doctors didn’t quite manage, eh?’ he said with heavy irony. ‘You bounced back.’ Then Kaupff looked at the other recruits spread around the room and said to them, ‘Only a short time ago this soldier was dangerously ill, he went to the very brink. His heart stopped – I’ve seen the report. We owe him our respect.’ He addressed Robert again. ‘Do you remember any of it?’

  ‘Not really, sir.’ His illness had started only days after he submitted his application for special duties, and at the time he thought it would mean being struck off the list so that he would have to find some other way of escaping the tedium of the regiment; but when his condition quickly deteriorated he found such mundane worries flowing out of him along with the sweat of his mysterious fever. Now, restored to health and ferried at once to the Installation, it was almost as if his illness was the reason he was here, for Robert could think of no other explanation why Kaupff should have singled him out. Nor could anything except residual weakness explain his foolish slip of the tongue – as foolish as his other slip outside.

  ‘Let us proceed,’ the professor announced. ‘Rosalind, would you please prepare the projector?’

  A moment later the lights were put out and the screen was illuminated by the lantern’s white beam. Rosalind, dimly moving in the pale reflected glow, was like a cinema usherette tending ice creams at a romantic matinee. Then with a snap the screen went dark again. It took a moment for Robert to realize that this was the first slide: a picture of blackness, pierced with small, randomly scattered points of light.

  ‘This photograph,’ Kaupff explained, ‘was taken twelve weeks ago by astronomers using one of the most powerful telescopes in the Republic. It shows a star field in the constellation of Cygnus, roughly one arc minute across, and if you can be bothered to count, you’ll find that there are one hundred and fifty-three stars. Next please, Rosalind.’ Again a snap, revealing a second picture that looked identical to the first. ‘Same telescope, same part of the sky, but taken one night later. I don’t suppose you’ll notice anything different, but the trained eye of an astronomer – together with sensitive photometric equipment – reveals a number of changes. Some of the stars are fractionally brighter, others fainter – this variability is perfectly normal, and is what the astronomers were monitoring as part of an ongoing survey. There is, however, one other modification here which is highly unusual. I told you that the first picture contained a hundred and fifty-three stars. This second has a hundred and fifty-four. I’m sure you can appreciate that the sudden appearance of a new star is not the sort of thing that happens all the time.’

  Professor Kaupff approached the screen and pointed with his arm towards the top right of the image. Briefly bathed in projected sky, his face and body bore pricks of light while he indicated the area of interest. ‘Let’s see an enlargement of this very small region. Rosalind …’ Obeying his prompt, she inserted a new slide in which the stars were far fewer in number and looked large and fuzzy. Kaupff retreated to allow his audience a complete view. ‘This is the original shot,’ he explained. ‘Notice the group of three stars close to the centre. But if we now look at what has happened on the following night – thank you, Rosalind …’

  It was there for all to see: the triangle had been joined by a fourth star. In fact it looked to Robert as though one of the stars had split like a fertilized embryo, creating two identical copies side by side, close enough together that they appeared to be touching.

  ‘There’s the evidence,’ Professor Kaupff said grandly. ‘One becomes two. Quite extraordinary. But our wise astronomers knew what they must be witnessing, and their suspicions were confirmed when they took a further image on the following night, which my assistant will now show us in the same enlarged form.’ This time the stellar group was again a triangle, the interloper having completely disappeared. ‘The star which appeared to split lies some six hundred light years from Earth. The star itself did not divide; what happened was that some other object passed in front of it, something small and dense, whose gravitational field bent the star’s light in a way predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. By a happy stroke of luck, the invisible object briefly covered the more distant star so exactly that its light was split in two, half of it bending one way around the object, and half the other. Seen from Earth, the effect is to create a double image – a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. Lights please, Rosalind.’ She switched off the projector, and soon the small audience were blinking in the restored illumination of the fluorescent strips overhead. ‘I expect the brigadier has told you that the work of the Installation encompasses far more than weapons research. Science, gentlemen, is the study of all that is real, and space lies within our remit. You have been brought here to assist in the most remarkable project ever sanctioned by the Central Committee. You are here to make history.’

  Whatever relaxation of tension might have been achieved by Robert’s foolishness was instantly undone; the recruits attended Kaupff’s words in rapt anticipation.

  ‘Scientific discovery has many aspects,’ he continued. ‘Some of it is purely intellectual, much
of it mechanical and routine. Our astronomers engaged a team of workers to study photographs of large areas of the sky in painstaking detail, in the hope of uncovering more instances of star-splitting, and their laborious efforts were rewarded by two more lensing events. Yet on each occasion it was a different star that was distorted.’

  Robert, like the other volunteers, was trying to work out what relevance any of this might have to a group of young soldiers. It sounded as if their special duties would consist of counting stars through a magnifying glass: history-making of an esoteric kind.

  ‘Let’s try and think about this scientifically,’ Kaupff proposed. ‘Or should I say – for it amounts to the same thing – dialectically. We have the splitting of one star, then of another that is nowhere near it in space, but which lies close to it in the sky as seen from Earth. Then, a little later, a third briefly alters. Moreover, the successive abnormalities form a line. What might be going on?’

  In the ensuing silence, it gradually became clear to the recruits that they were being asked to do something that was not part of their normal military service. They were being invited to think. Robert, having twice made himself ridiculous already, risked little in raising his hand. ‘Well?’ said Kaupff.

  ‘Perhaps they’re all connected,’ Robert suggested.

  ‘Indeed,’ Kaupff agreed warmly. ‘The fundamental law of nature which Marx and Engels discovered is that everything is connected to everything else. But can we be more precise?’

  Robert pondered briefly, then asked, ‘Could the same invisible object have caused all three stars to split?’

  Kaupff smiled and nodded. ‘That is exactly what our finest astronomers concluded – you have the wisdom of Meno’s slave.’ Neither Robert nor anybody else had any idea what was meant by this, but it sounded like a compliment. ‘An unseen object is moving across our sky, and from its pace we deduce that it is far closer to Earth than the background stars it occasionally occludes. It is within our own solar system, following a trajectory resembling that of a comet, falling very rapidly towards the Sun, which in a few weeks’ time it will sweep closely past. Then like a slingshot it will fly onwards, surpassing the orbit of Pluto in a matter of months. But this mysterious visitor is clearly no comet. What, then, is it?’

  Kaupff made another rhetorical pause, offering his audience a chance to muster their thoughts, but Robert felt as bewildered as the others. Rosalind calmly and deliberately studied their puzzled faces, her narrow eyes assessing each young man in turn with the self-satisfied expression of one who already has the required answer.

  ‘We know the object possesses considerable mass,’ Kaupff hinted, ‘since it is able to bend starlight.’

  One volunteer raised his hand. ‘Is there any risk of it hitting Earth?’

  ‘None,’ said Kaupff. ‘The object is in a highly elongated orbit, its plane of motion being at an oblique angle to Earth’s path. At its closest approach, in about five weeks’ time, it will be roughly one hundred million miles away – further than the Sun. It poses no danger; nor will its gravitational field perturb the solar system to any significant extent, though its mass is comparable to Mercury’s. For the short duration of its visit, the object is an unobtrusive tenth member of our solar system.’

  Now the historic nature of the discovery was apparent. One of the recruits exclaimed, ‘Our astronomers have discovered a new planet!’

  ‘What should it be called?’ another asked.

  ‘Can we send a rocket?’

  This last comment brought an icy silence as Kaupff glared at the stocky recruit, seated at the front, who had allowed himself to be too bold. Then he addressed the whole company again, his voice firm and clear. ‘The object is of planetary mass, but it is not what you or I or anyone else would consider a planet in the ordinary sense. We know how far it lies from Earth, and our astronomers know that at such a distance their telescopes should be able to resolve it, even if it were only a few miles across. Yet they see nothing. The strange new visitor to our solar system, whatever its origin, contains a world’s-worth of matter squeezed into the size of a small town.’

  It sounded almost like the Installation itself, and Robert imagined it tumbling through space, shrouded in pine needles, patrolled by dogs, lit only by the flicker of searchlights. Inside that world there might be another Robert, another Kaupff, another Rosalind.

  ‘For some time now,’ Kaupff continued, ‘astronomers have taken quite seriously the idea that under certain conditions, matter can become compressed to such an extremely high density that light itself is unable to escape. In the capitalist world, such hypothetical objects are referred to as black holes.’

  The phrase, thrilling and disturbing, made Robert shudder; and like the dials of some inscrutable machine, Rosalind’s coal-dark eyes appeared to register the effect. The refolding of her arms this time had a less defensive, more triumphant quality.

  ‘Of course we reject the term, with its colonialist implications, its unsavoury air of medieval clericalism, its sheer inaccuracy. The object is not a hole or void, not a gap in the universe – it’s not even completely black, but a very dull red. We follow the Soviet nomenclature and call it a frozen star. What to capitalists symbolizes a fate worse than death represents for us the highest form of astrophysical evolution. Our visitor is not a monster – it is a unique opportunity for socialist exploration.’

  Now in the mind of every volunteer the same revelation flashed. They were on a space mission. They had been brought to this closed Scottish town to become the Republic’s first cosmonauts.

  Rosalind began stalking around the room like a tiger, moving between the desks where the volunteers sat, while Kaupff continued. ‘Why should the object have arrived now, at this precise point in human history, when we are in a position to understand it?’ She came to a halt behind Robert, and as Kaupff spoke he directed his eyes at his female assistant, whom Robert could sense and even smell, for a whiff of unknown perfume had reached his nostrils. ‘All knowledge is historical knowledge,’ said Kaupff, lowering his eyes from Rosalind to Robert. ‘To understand the visitor we must know its past, the method of its formation; yet here we encounter a great mystery, since physics offers no natural mechanism for the production of a frozen star of planetary mass. What sent it on its rapid flight through space – why has it been captured by the Sun? We almost sense the guiding hand of some higher intelligence …’

  Robert could taste the air of another world. A creaking of floorboard behind him signalled Rosalind’s departure, and when he saw her walk towards the door at the front of the room, as if preparing to return to her scented alien domain, she again looked to him like a figure from cinema; not the humble usherette he’d previously pictured, but a star.

  ‘Science frowns upon mere speculation,’ said Kaupff, ‘yet our mission demands mental strength, intellectual courage and above all imagination, for no possibility can be excluded from our deliberations, nothing can be dismissed as too outlandish. Together we must lift the veil of Isis and penetrate the infinite unknown.’

  She was like the girl in a public-service film he used to see every Saturday morning, Robert remembered. A beautiful woman sits smoking in an armchair; she gets up to go to the kitchen, leaves her cigarette dangling over an ashtray, forgets about it …

  ‘Permission to speak, sir,’ said a volunteer.

  ‘Go on,’ Kaupff told him impatiently.

  ‘What would happen if a spaceship tried to land on the frozen star?’

  Kaupff touched his lips and assumed his earlier ruminative expression, then shook his head in answer to some unspoken internal remark. ‘A frozen star has no surface in the ordinary sense. It has an event horizon, and no one knows what might lie beyond.’

  Remember, the film always concluded, fire kills; the same message reiterated every week to an audience of short-trousered Pioneer Cadets peeling oranges and picking their noses between Workers Newsround and The Crazy Club; though to Robert it felt like a million years ago,
a billion light years away in another galaxy, because the vertigo that had made him slip outside and rendered his life momentarily weightless was reinforced by the strangeness of what he had learned, the awareness that a world is nothing but a marble slung through space by unseen forces, our existence a glimmer through flawed glass. As a child he had been terrorized by the safety film, but now, seeing Rosalind standing at the doorway, he was gripped by an irrational excitement at the retreating thought of it. The forested security cordon was a horizon he had crossed and the closed universe he had entered was one where everything could be reversed with the ease of a light switch.

  ‘Sir,’ the volunteer pursued, ‘can you tell us if there are any plans to send a space probe to the object?’

  Kaupff smiled. ‘Of course not.’ It took a moment for everyone to appreciate the delicate ambiguity of this statement, but already Kaupff was turning on his heels to walk out of the room, followed by Rosalind, who closed the door behind them. Even the brigadier appeared stunned by the sudden termination of the briefing; he returned to the lectern, a figure diminished by the ignorance he now knew himself to share with the recruits. ‘I expect you’ve all got lots of questions, but rest assured, you’ll be told everything at the appropriate time. At this point I formally hand you over to the jurisdiction of the Installation’s civilian authorities – you won’t be seeing me again unless one of you comes up on a charge, so mind and behave yourselves. Let’s get you to your quarters …’