All the forces of society that had formerly been expended on the creation of war machines, on the maintenance of huge armies that did no useful labour and on propaganda and its trumpery, were channelled into improving man’s way of life and promoting scientific knowledge.
At a sign from Veda Kong, Darr Veter pressed a button and a huge globe rose up beside her.
“We began,” continued the beautiful historian, “with the complete redistribution of Earth’s surface into dewelling and industrial zones.
“The brown stripes running between thirty and forty degrees of North and South latitude represent an unbroken chain of urban settlements built on the shores of warm seas with a mild climate and no winters. Mankind no longer spends huge quantities of energy warming houses in winter and making himself clumsy clothing. The greatest concentration of people is around the cradle of human civilization, the Mediterranean Sea. The subtropical belt was doubled in breadth after the ice on the polar caps had been melted. To the north of the zone of habitation lie prairies and meadows where countless herds of domestic animals graze. The production of foodstuffs and trees for timber is confined to the tropical belt where it is a thousand times more profitable than in the colder climatic zones. Ever since the discovery was made that carbohydrates, the sugars, could be obtained artificially from sunlight and carbonic acid, agriculture has no longer had to produce all man’s food. Practically speaking, there is no limit to the quantities of sugars, fats and vitamins that we can produce. For the production of albumins alone we have huge land areas and huge fields of seaweed at our disposal. Mankind has been freed from the fear of hunger that had been hanging over it for tens of thousands of years.
“One of man’s greatest pleasures is travel, an urge to move from place to place that we have inherited from our distant forefathers, the wandering hunters and gatherers of scanty food. Today the entire planet is encircled by the Spiral Way whose gigantic bridges link all the continents.” Veda ran her finger along a silver thread and turned the globe round. “Electric trains move along the Spiral Way all the time and hundreds of thousands of people can leave the inhabited zone very speedily for the prairies, open fields, mountains or forests.
“At last the planned organization of life put an end to the murderous race for higher speeds, the construction of faster and faster vehicles. Trains on the Spiral Way proceed at 200 kilometres an hour. Only on rare occasions do we use aircraft with a speed of thousands of kilometres an hour.
“A few centuries ago we made extensive improvements to the surface of our planet. The energy of the atomic nucleus had been discovered long before, in the Fission Age, when man learned to liberate a tiny part of its energy to produce a burst of heat but with the harmful radiation of the fall-out. It was soon realized that this meant danger to life on the planet and nuclear power possibilities were greatly curtailed. Almost at the same time astronomers studying the physics of distant stars discovered two new ways of obtaining nuclear energy, Q and F, that were more effective than the old methods and involved no harmful radiation.
“These two methods are now in use on Earth although our spaceships use another form of nuclear energy, the anameson fuel, that became known to us from our observations of the great stars of the Galaxy through the Great Circle.
“It was decided to destroy all the stocks of thermo-’nuclear materials that had been accumulating a long time — radioactive isotopes of uranium, thorium, hydrogen, cobalt and lithium — as soon as a method of ejecting them beyond Earth’s atmosphere had been devised.
“In the Age of Realignment artificial suns were made and ‘hung’ over the north and south polar regions. These greatly reduced the size of the polar ice-caps that had been formed during the ice ages of the Quaternary Period and brought about extensive climatic changes. The level of the oceans was raised by seven metres, the cold fronts receded sharply and the ring of trade winds that had dried up the deserts on the outskirts of the tropic zone became much weaker. Hurricanes and, in general, stormy weather manifestations ceased almost completely.
“The warm steppelands spread almost as far as the sixtieth parallels north and south and beyond them the grasslands and forests of the temperate zone passed the seventieth parallels.
“Three-quarters of the Antarctic Continent was freed from ice and proved a treasure-house of minerals that were invaluable because resources on the other continents had been almost completely exhausted by the reckless destruction of metals in the universal wars of the past. The Spiral Way was completed by carrying it across the Antarctic.
“Before this radical change in climate had been achieved canals had been dug and mountain chains had had passages cut through them to balance out the circulation of air and water on the planet. Even the high mountain deserts of Asia had been irrigated by constantly operating dielectric pumps.
“The potential output of foodstuffs had grown very considerably and new lands had become habitable.
“The frail and dangerous old planetships, poor as they were, enabled us to reach the other planets of our system. Earth was encircled by a belt of artificial satellites from which scientists were able to make a close study of the Cosmos. And then, eight hundred and eight years ago, there occurred an event of such great importance that it marked a new era in the history of mankind — the Era of the Great Circle.
“For a long time the human intellect had laboured over the transmission of images, sounds and energy over great distances. Hundreds of thousands of the most talented scientists worked in a special organization that still bears the name of the Academy of Direct Radiation. They evolved methods for the directed transmission of energy over great distances without any form of conductor. This became possible when ways were found to concentrate the stream of energy in non-divergent rays. The clusters of parallel rays then transmitted provided constant communication with the artificial satellites, and, therefore, with the Cosmos. Long, long ago, towards the end of the Era of Disunity, our scientists established the fact that powerful radiation streams were pouring on to Earth from the Cosmos. Calls from the Cosmos and the transmission round the Great Circle of the Universe were reaching us together with radiation from the other constellations and galaxies. At that time we did not understand them although we had learned to receive the mysterious signals which we, at that time, thought to be natural radiation.
“Kam Amat, an Indian scientist, got the idea of conducting experiments from the satellites with television receivers and with infinite patience tried all possible wavelength combinations over a period of dozens of years.
“Kam Amat caught a transmission from the planetary system of the binary star that had long been known as 61 Cygni. There appeared on the screen a man, who was not like us but was undoubtedly a man, and he pointed to an inscription made in the symbols of the Great Circle. Another ninety years passed before the inscription was read and today it is inscribed in our language, the language of Earth, on a monument to Kam Amat: ‘Greetings to you, our brothers, who are joining our family. Separated by space and time we are united by intellect in the Circle of Great Power.’
“The language of symbols, drawings and maps used by the Great Circle proved easy to assimilate at the level of development then reached by man. In two hundred years we were able to use translation machines to converse with the planetary systems of the nearest stars and to receive and transmit whole pictures of the varied life of different worlds. We recently received an answer from the fourteen planets of Deneb, a first magnitude star and tremendous centre of life in the Cygnus; it is 122 parsecs distant from us and radiates as much light as 4,800 of our suns. Intellectual development there has proceeded on different lines but has reached a very high level.
“Strange pictures and symbols come from immeasurable distances, from the ancient worlds, from the globular clusters of our Galaxy and from the huge inhabited area around the Galactic Centre, but we do not understand them, and have not yet deciphered them. They have been recorded by the memory machines and passed on to
the Academy of the Bounds of Knowledge, an institution that works on problems that our science can as yet only hint at. We are trying to understand ideas that are far from us, millions of years ahead of us, ideas that differ very greatly from ours due to life there having followed different paths of development.”
Veda Kong turned away from the screen into which she had been staring as though hypnotized and cast an inquiring glance at Darr Veter. He smiled and nodded his head in approval. Veda proudly raised her head, stretched out her arms to those invisible and unknown beings who would receive her words and her image thirteen years later.
“Such is our history, such is the difficult, devious and lengthy ascent we have made to the heights of knowledge. We appeal to you — join us in the Great Circle to carry to the ends of the tremendous Universe the gigantic power of the intellect!”
Veda’s voice had a triumphant sound to it, as though it were filled with the strength of all the generations of the people of Earth who had reached such heights that they now aspired to send their thoughts beyond the bounds of their own Galaxy to other stellar islands in the Universe….
The bronze gong sounded as Darr Veter turned over the lever that switched off the stream of transmitted energy. The screen went dark. The luminescent column of the conductor channel remained on the transparent panel on the right.
Veda, tired and subdued, curled up in the depths of her armchair. Darr Veter turned the control desk over to Mven Mass and leaned over his shoulder to watch him at work. The absolute silence was broken only by the faint clicks of switches opening and closing.
Suddenly the screen in the gold frame disappeared and its place was taken by unbelievable depths of space. It was the first time that Veda Kong had seen this marvel and she gasped loudly. Even those well acquainted with the method of the complex interference of light waves by means of which this exceptional expanse and depth of vision was achieved, found the spectacle amazing.
The dark surface of another planet was advancing from the distance, growing in size with every second. It belonged to an extraordinarily rare system of binary stars in which two suns so balanced each other that their planet had a regular orbit and life was able to emerge on it. The two suns, orange and crimson, were smaller than ours, and they lit up the ice of a frozen sea that appeared crimson in colour. A huge, squat building standing on the edge of a chain of flat-topped black hills, was visible through a mysterious violet haze. The centre of vision was focussed on a platform on the roof and then seemed to penetrate the building until the watchers saw a grey-skinned man with round eyes like those of an owl surrounded by a fringe of silvery down. He was very tall and exceedingly thin with tentacle-like limbs. The man jerked his head ridiculously as though he were making a hurried bow; turned listless, lens-like eyes to the screen and opened a lipless mouth that was covered, by a flap of soft flesh that looked like a nose.
“Zaph Phthet, Director of External Relations of 61 Cygni. Today we are transmitting for yellow star STL 3388 + 04 JF…. We are transmitting for…”-’ came the gentle, melodious voice of the translation machine.
Darr Veter and Junius Antus exchanged glances and Mven Mass squeezed Darr Veter’s wrist for a second. That was the galactic call sign of Earth, or rather, of the entire solar system, that observers in other worlds had formerly regarded as one big planet rotating round the Sun once in 59 terrestrial years. Once in that period Jupiter and Saturn are in opposition which displaces the Sun in the visible sky of other systems sufficiently for astronomers on the nearer stars to observe. Our astronomers made the same mistake in respect of many planetary systems that a number of stars had long been known to possess.
Junius Antus checked up on the tuning of his memory machine with greater celerity than he had shown at the beginning of the transmission and also checked the watchful accuracy indicators.
The unchanging voice of the electron translator continued:
“We have received a transmission from star…” again a long string of figures and staccato sounds, “by chance and not during the Great Circle transmission times. They have not deciphered the language of the Circle and are wasting energy transmitting during the hours of silence. We answered them during their transmission period and the result will be known in three-tenths of a second….” The voice broke off. The signal lamps continued to burn with the exception of the green electric eye that had gone out.
“We get these unexplained interruptions in transmission, perhaps due to the passage of the astronauts’ legendary neutral fields between us,” Junius Antus explained to Veda.
“Three-tenths of a galactic second — that means waiting six hundred years,” muttered Darr Veter, morosely. “A lot of good that will do us!”
“As far as I can understand they are in communication with Epsilon Tucanae in the southern sky that is ninety parsecs away from us and close to the limit of our regular communications. So far we haven’t established contact with anything farther away than Deneb,” Mven Mass remarked.
“But we receive the Galactic Centre and the globular clusters, don’t we?” asked Veda Kong.
“Irregularly, quite by chance, or through the memory machines of other members of the Great Circle that form a circuit stretching through the Galaxy,” answered Mven Mass.
“Communications sent out thousands and even tens of thousands of years ago do not get lost in space but eventually reach us,” said Junius Antus.
“So that means we get a picture of the life and knowledge of the peoples of other, distant worlds, with great delay, for the Central Zone of the Galaxy, for example, a delay of about twenty thousand years?”
“Yes, it doesn’t matter whether they are the records of the memory machines of other, nearer worlds, or whether they are received by our stations, we see the distant worlds as they were a very long time ago. We see people that have long been dead and forgotten in their own worlds.”
“How is it that we are helpless in this field when we have achieved such great power over nature?” Veda Kong asked, petulantly. “Why can’t we find some other means of contacting distant worlds, something not connected with waves or photon ray equipment?”
“How well I understand you, Veda!” exclaimed Mven Mass.
“The Academy of the Bounds of Knowledge is engaged on projects to overcome space, time and gravity,” Darr Veter put in. “They are working on the fundamentals of the Cosmos, but they have not yet got even as far as the experimental stage and cannot….”
The green eye suddenly flashed on again and Veda once more felt giddy as the screen opened out into endless space.
The sharply outlined edges of the image showed that it was the record of a memory machine and not a transmission received directly.
At first the onlookers saw the surface of a planet, obviously as seen from an outer station, a satellite. The huge, pale violet sun, spectral in the terrific heat it generated, deluged the cloud envelope of the planet’s atmosphere with its penetrating rays.
“Yes, that’s it, the luminary of the planet is Epsilon Tucanae, a high temperature star, class B”, 78 times as bright as our Sun,” whispered Mven Mass. Darr Veter and Junius Antus nodded in agreement.
The spectacle changed, the scene grew narrower and seemed to be descending to the very soil of the unknown world.
The rounded domes of hills that looked as though they had been cast from bronze rose high above the surrounding country. An unknown stone or metal glowed like fire in the amazingly white light of the blue sun. Even in the imperfect apparatus used for transmission the unknown world gleamed triumphantly, with a sort of victorious magnificence.
The reflected rays produced a silver pink corona around the contours of the copper-coloured hills and lay in a wide path on the slowly moving waves of a violet sea. The water, of a deep amethyst colour, seemed heavy and glowed from within with red lights that looked like an accumulation of living eyes. The waves washed the massive pedestal of a gigantic statue that stood in splendid isolation far from the coast. It was a
female figure carved from dark-red stone, the head thrown back and the arms extended in ecstasy towards the naming depths of the sky. She could easily have been a daughter of Earth, the resemblance she bore to our people was no less astounding than the amazing beauty of the carving. Her body was the fulfilment of an earthly sculptor’s dream; it combined great strength with inspiration in every line. The polished red stone of the statue emitted the flames of an unknown and, consequently, mysterious and attractive life.
The five people of Earth gazed in silence at that astounding new world. The only sound was a prolonged sigh that escaped the lips of Mven Mass whose every nerve had been strained in joyful anticipation from his first glance at the statue.
On the sea-coast opposite the statue, carved silver towers marked the beginning of a wide, white staircase that swept boldly over a thicket of stately trees with turquoise leaves.
“They ought to ring!” Darr Veter whispered in Veda’s ear, pointing to the towers and she nodded her head in agreement.
The camera of the new planet continued its consistent and soundless journey into the country.
For a second the five people saw white walls with wide cornices through which led a portal of blue stone; the screen carried them into a high room filled with strong light. The dull, pearl-coloured, grooved walls lent unusual clarity to everything in the hall. The attention of the Earth-dwellers was attracted to a group of people standing before a polished emerald panel.
The flame-red colour of their skin was similar to that of the statue in the sea. It was not an unusual colour for Earth — coloured photographs that had been preserved from ancient days recorded some tribes of Indians in Central America whose skin was almost the same colour, perhaps just a little lighter.
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