The films had been taken at a distance of eight parsecs from the Sun eighty years before and, although they had been lying in the open ship on the black planet of star T they were in excellent condition. The hemispherical stereo-screen took the four members of Tantra’s crew back to where blue Vega shone high above them.
There were many sudden changes of subject — the screen was filled by the dazzlingly blue star which was followed by casual, minute-long pictures of life on board the ship. The 28-year-old commander of the expedition, unbelievably young for his post, worked at the computers while still younger astronomers made observations. The films showed obligatory daily sport and dances that the young people had brought to acrobatic perfection. A mocking voice announced that the biologist had maintained the championship all the way to Vega. That girl with short, flaxen hair, was demonstrating the most difficult exercises twisting her magnificently developed body into all sorts of improbable poses.
As they looked at the perfectly natural images with all the normal colour tones on the hemispherical screen, they forgot that these happy, vigorous young astronauts had long before been devoured by the foul monsters of the black planet.
The terse chronicle of expedition life soon passed. The light amplifiers in the projector began to hum; so brightly did the blue star glow that even this pale reproduction forced people to put on protective glasses. The star was almost three times our Sun in diameter and mass — colossal, greatly flattened and madly rotating with an equatorial speed of three hundred kilometres a second, a ball of indescribably luminous gas with a surface temperature of 11,000 °C. and a corona of rosy-pearl flame spreading millions of kilometres around it. It seemed as though Vega’s rays would crush everything they met in their path as they thrust out their mighty million-kilometre long spears into space. The planet nearest to the blue star was hidden in their glow, but no ship from Earth or from any of her neighbours on the Great Circle could plunge into that ocean of fire. The visual image was followed by a vocal report on observations that had been made and the almost phantom lines of stereometric drawings showed the positions of Vega’s first and second planets. Parus could not approach even the second planet whose orbit was a hundred million kilometres from the star.
Monstrous protuberances flew out of the depths of an ocean of transparent violet flame, the stellar atmosphere, and stretched like all-consuming arms into space. So great was Vega’s energy that the star emitted light of the strongest quanta, the violet and invisible parts of the spectrum. Even when human eyes were protected by a triple filter it aroused the horrible effect of an invisible but mortally dangerous phantom. They could see photon storms flashing past, those that had managed to overcome the star’s gravitation. Their distant reverberations shook and tossed Parus dangerously. The cosmic ray meters and instruments measuring other non-elastic radiations refused to function. Dangerous ionization began to grow, even inside the well-protected ship. They could only guess at the extent of the furious radial energy that poured out into the emptiness of space in a monstrous stream.
The commander of Parus navigated his ship cautiously towards the third planet — a big planet with but a thin layer of transparent atmosphere. It looked as though the fiery breath of the blue star had driven away the cover of light gases for they trailed in a weakly glowing tail behind the planet on her dark side. They recorded the destructive evaporation of fluorine, poisonous carbon monoxide, and the dead density of the inert gases — nothing terrestrial could have lived for a second in that atmosphere.
The great heat of the blue sun made inert mineral substances active. Sharp spears, ribs, vertical battlemented walls of stone, red like fresh wounds or black like empty pits, rose out of the bowels of the planet. On the plateaux of lava, swept by violent gales, there were fissures and abysses belching forth molten magma like streaks of blood-red fire.
Dense clouds of ash whirled high into the air, blindingly blue on the illuminated side and impenetrably black on the dark side. Streaks of lightning thousands of miles long struck in all directions, evidence of the electric saturation of the dead atmosphere.
The awful violet phantom of the huge sun, the black sky, half covered by the pearly corona, and below, on the planet, the crimson contrasting shadows on a wild chaos of rock, the fiery crevices, cracks and circles, the constant flashes of green lightning — all this had been picked up by the stereotelescopes and the electron films had recorded it with unimpassioned, inhuman precision.
Behind the machines, however, were the emotions of the travellers, the protest of reason against the senseless power of destruction and the piling up of dead matter, the consciousness of the hostility of this world of furious cosmic fire. The four viewers, hypnotized by the sight, exchanged glances of approval when a voice announced that Parus would move on to the fourth planet.
The human selection of events reduced the time factor and in a few seconds the outer planet of Vega appeared under the spaceship’s keel telescopes; in size it was comparable with Earth. Parus descended sharply, the crew had evidently decided to explore the last planet in the hope that they would find a world, if not beautiful, then at least fit to bear life.
Erg Noor caught himself mentally repeating those words — ”at least.” Most likely those who navigated Parus had similar ideas as they studied the planet’s surface through their telescopes.
“At least” — with those two syllables they bade farewell to the dream of the beautiful worlds of Vega, of the discovery of pearls of planets on the far side of outer space for the sake of which people of Earth had voluntarily agreed to forty-five years of imprisonment in a spaceship.
Carried away by the pictures passing before his eyes, Erg Noor did not think of that immediately. In the depths of the hemispherical screen he raced over the surface of he fantastically distant planet. To the great grief of the travellers, of those who were dead and those still living, the planet turned out to be like our nearest neighbour in he solar system, the planet Mars, which they had known since childhood. The same thin envelope of transparent as with a blackish-green, permanently cloudless sky, the same level surface of desert continents with chains of eroded mountains. The difference was that on Mars there was a searing cold night and very sharp changes in the daytime temperature. There were shallow swamps on Mars, like huge puddles, that had evaporated until they were almost dry, there were rare and scanty rains and hoarfrosts, faint life in the form of gangrenous plants and peculiar apathetic burrowing animals.
Here, however, the raging flames of the blue sun kept the temperature of the planet so high that it breathed heat like Earth’s hottest deserts. What little vapour there was rose to the upper layer of the atmosphere and the huge plains were overshadowed by vortices of hot currents in the constantly disturbed atmosphere. The planet rotated at high speed, like the others. The cold of night had broken the rocks up into a sea of sand; orange, violet, green, bluish or dazzlingly white patches of sand drowned parts of the planet that from a distance had the appearance of seas of imaginary vegetation. The chains of eroded mountains, higher than those on Mars but just as lifeless, were covered with a shining black or brown crust. The blue sun, with its powerful ultra-violet radiation, had destroyed the minerals and evaporated the lighter elements.
It seemed that the light, sandy plains were radiating flames. Erg Noor recalled that at the time when only a small part and not the majority of Earth’s population had been scientists, many artists and writers had dreamed of people on other planets who had adapted themselves to life at high temperatures. It was a poetic and beautiful notion, it increased faith in the power of the human race — people on the fire-breathing planets of the blue sun meeting their terrestrial brethren! Erg Noor, like many others, had been impressed by a picture he had seen in the museum of the eastern sector of the southern inhabited zone: a hazy horizon on a plain of crimson sand, a grey, burning-hot sky and under it faceless human figures in temperature suits throwing blue-black shadows of improbably clear definition. They stood at
the corner of some metal structure that was at white heat in dynamic poses that showed their amazement. Beside the structure stood an undraped female figure with her red hair hanging loose. Her light-coloured skin gleamed more brightly than the sand in the glaring light, blue and vermilion shadows stressed every line of her tall and graceful figure, the symbol of the victory of beautiful life over the forces of the Cosmos. Beautiful, that was the most important thing of all. For even the adaptation of animal life that reduced it to a formless devourer with but a faint spark of life in it, might be termed a victory.
It was a bold and quite unreal dream that contradicted the laws of biological development, laws that were far better known in the Great Circle Era than they had been when the picture was painted.
Erg Noor gave a shudder as the surface of the planet rushed towards him. The unknown pilot of Parus was bringing his ship down. Sand cones, black cliffs, deposits of some shining green crystals flashed past. The spaceship was flying in a regular spiral round the planet from pole to pole. There was not a sign of water or at least of the most primitive vegetable life. Again that “at least” how accommodating the human mind could be! Then came the nostalgia of loneliness, the feeling that the ship was lost in the dead distance, was in the power of the flaming blue star. Erg Noor could feel the hopes of those who took the film, who were watching the planet, could feel them as though they were his own. If there had only been at least the remains of some past life! How well known is this thought to all those who have flown to dead planets without water or atmosphere, who have searched in vain for ruins, for the remains of towns and buildings in the accidental shapes of the crevices, in the details of the lifeless rocks and in the precipices of mountains that had never known life.
The earth of that distant world, scorched, churned up by violent storms, without any trace of a shadow, flashed swiftly across the screen. Erg Noor, recognizing the collapse of an ancient dream, strove to imagine how such an incorrect conception of the planets of the blue sun could have arisen.
“Our terrestrial brothers will be disappointed when they know this,” said the biologist, softly, moving closer to the commander. "For many thousands of years millions of people on Earth have gazed at Vega. On summer evenings in the north all young people, all those who loved and dreamed, turned their eyes to the sky. In the summer Vega, bright and blue, stands almost in the zenith, how could one not admire it? Many centuries ago people knew quite a lot about the stars. But by some strange freak of thought they did not suspect that almost every slowly rotating star with a strong magnetic field had its planets in the same way as almost all planets have their satellites. They did not know of this law but when they were overtaken by bitter loneliness they dreamed of fellow-beings in other worlds, and, more than elsewhere, on Vega, the blue sun. I remember translations from some of the ancient languages of beautiful poems about semi-divine people from the blue star….”
“I dreamed about Vega after the Parus communication,” confessed Erg Noor, turning to Eon Thal, “and in my hope that my dream would come true I read my own meaning into that communication. Today it is obvious that thousands of years of longing for distant, beautiful worlds have impaired my vision and that of many clever and serious people.”
“How do you understand the Parus communication now?”
“Quite simply. ‘Vega’s four planets quite lifeless. Nothing more beautiful than our Earth, what happiness to return.’ “
“You’re right,” exclaimed the biologist, “why didn’t we think of it before?”
“Perhaps somebody did, but not we astronauts and not the Council. That is to our honour — bold dreams and not sceptical disappointment bring victory in life.”
The flight round the planet, as shown on the screen, was over. It was followed by the records made by the robot station that had been put out to study surface conditions on the planet. Next came a loud explosion as the geological bomb[20] was dropped. The huge cloud of mineral dust thrown up by the bomb explosion reached the keel of the spaceship where powerful suction pumps drew samples into the filtering side-channels of the vessel. Several samples of mineral dust from the sands and mountains of the scorched planet were put into silicolloid test-tubes and samples of the upper layers of the atmosphere were put into quartz containers. Parus set off on its long journey back home, a journey it was not fated to finish. Now the terrestrial sister ship of Parus was carrying back to the people of Earth everything that the lost travellers had won at the cost of such patient endeavour.
The remaining records — six reels of observations — were to be specially studied by Earth’s astronomers and the moat important details broadcast round the Great Circle.
Nobody wanted to see films about the later history of Parus, the hard struggle to repair the damaged ship and the battle with star T; nobody wanted to hear the last sound spool as their own experiences were still too fresh. They decided to leave the examination of the remainder until the time came for the whole crew to be awakened. Leaving the commander alone in the control tower the others went away for a brief rest.
Erg Noor’s dreams had collapsed and he no longer thought of them. He tried to estimate the value of those few pitiful crumbs of knowledge the two expeditions, his and Parus’, would bring back to mankind at such terrific cost. Or did they seem pitiful only on account of his disappointment?
For the first time Erg Noor began to think of beautiful Earth as an inexhaustible treasure-house of refined, cultured human beings who had an insatiable thirst for knowledge now that they had been relieved of the terrible worries and dangers that nature and primitive society had inflicted them with. The sufferings of the past, the searchings and failures, the mistakes and disappointments still remained in the Great Circle Era but they had been carried to a loftier plane of creative activity in science, art and building. Knowledge and creative labour had freed Earth from hunger, over-population, infectious diseases and harmful animals. The world no longer had to fear the exhaustion of fuel and useful chemical elements, premature death and debility had been eliminated. Those crumbs of knowledge that Tantra would bring home would also be a contribution to the mighty stream of knowledge that made for constant progress in the organization of society and the study of nature.
Erg Noor opened the safe that housed Tantra’s records and took out the box containing the piece of metal from the spiral spaceship on the black planet. The heavy piece of sky-blue metal lay flat on his palm. Although he had put off the analysis of this precious sample for the huge laboratories on Earth, he knew that neither on Earth not-on any of the planets of the solar system or neighbouring stars was any such metal to be found. The Universe was made up of similar simple elements that had long before been systematized in the Mendeleyev Table. Consequently no new element — no metal — could be discovered; but in the processes of the creation of elements, natural or artificial, countless isotope variations, possessing vastly different physical properties, could emerge. Then again, directed recrystallization changed the properties of elements to a great extent. Erg Noor was convinced that this piece of the hull of a spaceship from worlds inconceivably far away was a terrestrial metal whose atoms had been completely rearranged. This would be something, perhaps the most important thing after news of Zirda’s ruin, that he would take bade to Earth and the Great Circle.
The iron star was very close to Earth and a visit to its planet by a specially prepared expedition would not now, after the experience of Purus and Tantra, be particularly dangerous, no matter what multitude of black crosses and medusae there might be in that eternal darkness. They had been unfortunate in their opening of the spiral spaceship. If they had had time to ponder over the tiling they would have realized then that the gigantic spiral tube was part of the spaceship’s propulsion system.
In his mind the commander went over the events of hat fateful last day. He remembered Nisa spread over him like a shield after he had fallen unconscious near the roonster. Youthful emotions that combined the heroic loyalty of the anc
ient women of Earth and the frank and wise courage of the modern world had not had time to develop in her to the full….
Four Hyss appeared silently from behind him to relieve she commander at his post. Erg Noor went through the library-laboratory but did not go on to the central dormitory cabin; instead he opened the heavy side-bay door; The diffused light of an earthly day was reflected from the silicolloid cupboards containing drugs and instruments, from the X-ray, artificial respiration and blood-circulation apparatus. He drew back a heavy curtain that reached up to the ceiling and entered the semi-darkness of the sick-room. The faint illumination, like moonlight, acquired warmth in the rosy crystal of the silicolloid. Two tiratron stimulators were kept permanently switched on in case of sudden collapse; they clicked away almost soundlessly, keeping the paralyzed patient’s heart beating. In the rosy-silver light inside the hood Nisa was stretched out motionless and seemed as though she were sunk in calm, sweet slumber. A hundred generations of the healthy, clean and full life of her ancestors had produced the strong and supple lines of the female body that approached the acme of artistic perfection — the most beautiful creation of Earth’s powerful life.
Everything moves and develops in a spiral and Erg Noor could see in his imagination that magnificent spiral of the common ascent as applied to life and to human society. Only now did he realize with surprising clarity that the more difficult the conditions for the life and work of organisms as biological machines, the harder the path of social development, the tighter the spiral is twisted and the closer to each other are its turns, the slower the process and more standardized and similar are the forms that emerge. By the laws of dialectics, however, the more imperceptible the ascent, the more stable is that which has been achieved.
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