Andromeda (A Space-Age Tale) вк-1

by Ivan Yefremov

  “In a year and four months I’ll find myself something to do in Central Asia,” said Darr Veter, pleased at the happy faces of the two youngsters.

  “It’s a good thing you’re not Director of the Outer Stations any more,” exclaimed Diss Ken, “I never thought I’d be working with such a mentor!..” The lad suddenly blushed so furiously that his forehead was covered with tiny beads of perspiration and Thor even moved away from him with an expression of reproach. Darr Veter hurried to help Grom Orme’s son over his faux pas. “Have you got plenty of time?”

  “No, we were given three hours off and we brought a man here who is ill with a fever he caught in our swamps.” “Is there still fever here? I thought….” “It’s very rare and only occurs in the swamps,” put in Diss, very hurriedly, “that’s what we’re here for!”

  “So we still have two hours left. Let’s go into the town, you’ll probably want to go to News House.”

  “Oh, no. We’d like you to… answer our questions — we have got them ready and you know how important it is when we are selecting our life’s work.”

  Darr Veter gave his consent and the three of them went to the Guest Hall and sat in one of its cool rooms fanned with an artificial sea breeze.

  Two hours later another coach took Darr Veter farther on his way; tired out he dozed on a sofa on the lower deck. He woke up when the train stopped in the City of Chemists. A huge structure in the form of a star with ten glazed glass-covered radial buildings stretching from it rose up over an extensive coal-field. The coal that was extracted here was processed into medicines, vitamins, hormones, artificial silk and fur. The waste products went for the manufacture of sugar. In one of the rays of the Star the rare metals germanium and vanadium were extracted from the coal — there was no end to the things that could be got out of that valuable black mineral!

  One of Darr Veter’s old friends who worked as a chemist in the fur ray came to the station to meet him. Once, long before, there had been three happy young mechanics working on the fruit-gathering machines in Indonesia. Now one of them was a chemist in charge of a laboratory in a big factory, the second had remained a fruit-grower and had invented a valuable new pollination process and the third, Darr Veter, was once more returning to Mother Earth, only deeper down this time, into the mines. The friends spent no more than ten minutes together, but even such a meeting was much pleasanter than meetings on the TVP.

  He had not much farther to go. The Director of the latitudinal air lines listened to his persuasion with the friendly helpfulness that was typical of the Great Circle Era. Darr Veter flew across the ocean and arrived on the western section of the Spiral Way south of the seventeenth branch, at the dead end of which he transferred to a hydroplane to continue his journey.

  High mountains came right down to the sea. The gentler slops at the foot were terraced with white stone to hold the soil and were planted with rows of southern pines and Widdringtonia in alternate avenues of bronze and bluish-green needles. High up the bare rocks, there were clefts to be seen in which waterfalls sent up clouds of water dust. Buildings painted bright orange or yellow with bluish-grey roofs stretched at intervals along the terraces.

  Jutting out into sea there was an artificial sand-bank at the end of which stood a wave-washed tower. It stood at the edge of the continental shelf which in those parts ended in a submarine cliff a good thousand metres deep. From the tower an extremely thick concrete pipe, strong enough to withstand the pressure in the depths of the ocean, led down vertically. At the bottom the pipe rested on the summit of a submarine mountain that consisted almost entirely of pure rutile or titanium dioxide. The processing of the ore was done under the water, inside the mountain. All that reached the surface was slabs of pure titanium and waste products that spread far into sea, turning the water a muddy yellow. The hydroplane tossed on the yellow waves in front of the landing stage on the southern side of the tower, and Darr Veter waited his opportunity to jump on to the spray-soaked platform. He went upstairs to the railed gallery where several people, not on duty, gathered to welcome the newcomer. Darr Veter had imagined the mine to be in complete isolation but the people who met him were not at all the anchorites his own mood had led him to expect. The faces that greeted him were happy even if they were somewhat tired from their exacting work. There five men and three women — so women worked there, too!

  Before ten days had passed Darr Veter had settled down to his new job.

  The mine had its own power plant — in the depths of the abandoned workings on the mainland there was an old nuclear power station type E, or type 2, as it used to be called, which did not have a harmful fall-out and was, therefore, useful for local stations.

  A most involved complex of machines was housed in the stone belly of the submarine mountain and moved forward as it bit into the friable reddish-brown mineral. The most difficult work was at the bottom of the installation where the ore was automatically extracted and crushed. The machine received signals from the central control post in the upper storey where all the data on the work of the cutting and crushing apparatus, on the changing hardness and viscosity of the extracted rock as well as information from the flotation tables were accumulated. Depending on the changing metal content in the ore, the crushing and washing arrangements were accelerated or decelerated. The work had to be done by mechanics as the entire control could not be passed over to cybernetic machines owing to the small area protected from the sea.

  Darr Veter was given the job of mechanic, testing and setting the lower assembly. He spent his daily tours of duty in semi-dark rooms, packed with indicator dials, where the pump of the air conditioning system could scarcely cope with the overwhelming heat made worse by the increased pressure due to the inevitable leakage of compressed air.

  After work Darr Veter and his young assistant would make their way to the top, stand for a long time on the balcony breathing in the fresh air, then take a bath, eat and go each to his own room in one of the houses at the pithead. Darr Veter had tried to renew his study of the new cochlear branch of mathematics but, as time went on, he began to fall asleep more and more quickly, waking up only in time for work. As the months passed he began to feel better. He seemed to have forgotten his former contact with the Cosmos. Like all other workers at the titanium mines he got pleasure out of seeing off the rafts that transported the ingots of titanium. Since the polar ice-caps had been reduced, storms all over the planet had decreased in violence so that many cargoes could be transported on sea-going rafts, either pulled by tugs or self-propelled. The staff of the mines changed but Darr Veter, with two other mining enthusiasts, stayed for another term.

  Nothing goes on for ever in this changing world and in the mine the ore crushing and washing assembly had to atop work for an overhaul. It was then that Darr Veter made his first visit to the mine chamber beyond the tunnelling shield where he had to wear a special suit to protect him from the heat and pressure and from sudden streams of poisonous gas that burst out of cracks in the rocks. The brilliantly illuminated brown rutile walls gleamed with a special diamond-like lustre of their own and gave off flashing red lights like the infuriated glower of eyes hidden in the mineral. It was exceptionally quiet in the chamber. The hydro-electric spark rock-drill and the huge discs radiating ultra-short waves stood motionless for the first time in many months. Geophysicists who had only just arrived, were busy under the shields setting up their instruments, so as to take advantage of the stoppage to check the contours of the mineral deposit.

  On the surface it was autumn, a period of calm, hot days in the south. Darr Veter went up into the mountains and felt very strongly the loneliness of those masses of stone that had stood poised between sea and sky for thousands of years. The dry grass rustled and from down below came the faint sounds of the surf beating against the shore. His tired body asked for rest but his brain grasped hungrily at impressions of the world that came fresh to him after long, arduous labour underground.

  The former Director of the Out
er Stations, breathing deeply the odour of heated rocks and desert grasses, recalled the little island in a distant sea where the golden horse had been hidden. And he had faith in his intuitive feeling that there was much that was good still ahead of him, and that the better and stronger he himself was the more of the good there would be.

  Sow a fault and reap a habit.

  Sow a habit and reap a character.

  Sow a character and reap your fate… was the way the old saw went. Yes, he thought to himself, man’s greatest fight is against egoism. This is a fight that cannot be fought by sentimental rules and pretty but helpless morals but by the dialectic realization that egoism is not the outcome of some forces of evil but is a natural instinct of primitive man that played an important role in his life as a savage and had been his means of self-preservation. This is why strong, outstanding individuals often have egoism highly developed and find it difficult to combat. The victory over egoism is, however, essential, probably the most important thing in modern society. This accounts for the time and effort that are expended on the upbringing of young people and the care with which the structure of every person’s heredity is studied. In the great mixture of races and peoples that forms the single family of our planet today, the most unexpected traits of character belonging to distant ancestors suddenly emerge out of the depths of heredity. There are the most amazing deviations of a psychology acquired at the time of the great calamities in the Era of Disunity, when engineers were not careful enough in their use of nuclear energy and did great hereditary harm to many people. There was a time when genealogies were drawn up for predatory conquerors who called themselves noble and high born; this was done to enable them to place themselves and their families above all others. Today we understand the great importance of genealogy in life — in the selection of a profession, for medical treatment, etc. Darr Veter had formerly possessed a long genealogy, but today such things are no longer necessary. The study of ancestors has been replaced by the direct analysis of the structure of heredity mechanisms which is much more important in view of greater longevity. Ever since the Era of Common Labour people have been living to the age of 170 and now it is clear that even 300 is not the limit….

  The rattle of stones awakened Darr Veter out of his complicated and vague reverie. Coming down the valley from above were two people, an operator from the electro-smelting section, a reticent and bashful young woman and an excellent pianist, and an engineer from the surface workings, lively and small in stature. They were both flushed from their rapid walk, greeted Darr Veter and would have passed on, but he stopped them in response to something he suddenly remembered.

  “I’ve been wanting to ask you a long time,’’ lie said, turning to the young woman. “Can you play something for me — the 13th Blue Cosmic Symphony in F-Minor. You’ve often played for us but you’ve never played that even once.”

  “Do you mean Zieg Zohr’s Cosmic?” she asked and when Darr Veter answered with a nod of confirmation she burst out laughing.

  “There aren’t many people on the planet who could play that piece for you. A solar piano with a triple keyboard is not enough and it hasn’t been transposed yet… and probably never will be. Why don’t you ask the House of Higher Music to play a recording for you? Our receiver is universal and has power enough!”

  “I don’t know how,” muttered Darr Veter, “before, I never….”

  “I’ll do it for you this evening,” she said and, holding out her hand to her companion, continued her way down the valley.

  For the rest of the day Darr Veter could not rid himself of the feeling that something important was going to happen. It was probably the same feeling that had come over Mven Mass on his first night’s work at the observatory. With a peculiar impatience he waited for eleven o’clock, the time the House of Higher Music had appointed for the transmission of the symphony.

  The electro-smelting operator undertook the role of Master of Ceremonies and seated Darr Veter and other music lovers in the focus of the hemispherical screen and opposite the sound reproducer in the music room. She turned out the lights, explaining that with them on it would be difficult to follow the colour scheme of the symphony that could only be properly performed in a special hall and must, in this transmission, of necessity be confined to the limits of the screen.

  The screen flickered faintly in the darkness and the noise of the sea could just be heard. Somewhere, incredibly far away, a low note sounded, a note so rich in tone that it seemed almost tangible. It grew in volume, shattering the room and the hearts of the listeners and then suddenly became softer, rose to a higher note and was broken and scattered in a million crystal fragments. Tiny orange sparks appeared in the dark atmosphere. It was like that flash of primordial lightning whose discharge on Earth, millions of centuries ago, had fused simple carbon compounds to form the more intricate molecules, the basis of organic matter and life.

  A wave of alarming and dissonant sounds flooded the room, a thousand-voiced chorus of will-power, yearning and despair to complement which vague shadows of purple and vermillion came in hurried flashes and died away again.

  In the movement of the short and strongly vibrant notes a circular arrangement could be felt and was accompanied by’ an irregular spiral of whirling grey fire in the heights. Suddenly the whirling chorus of sounds was severed by long notes, proud and resonant, filled with impetuous force.

  The vague fiery outlines of space were pierced by clear lines of blue fiery arrows that flew into the bottomless void beyond the edges of the spiral and were drowned in the darkness of horror and silence.

  Darkness and silence — on this note ended the first movement of the symphony.

  The audience, slightly staggered, did not have time to pronounce a single word before the music began again. Extensive cascades of powerful sounds were accompanied by dazzling opalescences that covered the whole spectrum; they fell, weakening as they grew lower, and glowing fire died away to their melancholy rhythm. Again something narrow and vehement broke through the falling cascades and again blue lights began their rhythmic, dancing ascent.

  Astounded, Darr Veter caught in the blue sounds an urge towards ever more complicated rhythms and forms and thought that the primitive struggle of life against entropy could not be better expressed. Steps, dams, filters holding back the cascades that were falling to lower levels of energy…. To retain them for one moment and in that moment to live! So, so and so — there they were, those first splashes of the complicated organization of matter.

  Blue arrows resolved into a round dance of geometric figures, crystal and lattice forms that grew more complicated to the accompaniment of various combinations of minor tercets, fell apart, were again combined and then suddenly dissolved in the grey twilight.

  The third movement began with the measured tread of bass notes in time with which blue lanterns were lit and extinguished as they moved off into the void of infinite space and time. The surge of tramping basses increased, their rhythm grew faster until they merged into a broken, ominous melody. The blue lights were like flowers swaying on thin stems of fire — they bowed their heads sadly under the flood of low, thundering and blasting notes and were extinguished in the distance. But the lines of lights or lanterns became denser and their stems were thicker. Then two fiery strips marked a road leading into immeasurable blackness and the resonant golden voices of life floated into the immenseness of the Universe, warming with a glorious warmth gloomy, indifferent, ever-moving pattenr. The dark road changed to a river, a gigantic stream of blue flames in which splashes of multicoloured fire made pattern that was constantly changing and becoming more intricate.

  The higher combinations of rounded, regular curves and spherical surfaces were of a beauty equal to that of the contradictory quartal chords, in the succession of which a complicated resonant melody increased rapidly, whirling more powerfully and expansively in the rhythmical advance of the low rumble of time.

  Darr Veter’s head was in a whirl and he could
no longer follow all the shades of music and colour and was able to grasp only the general outline of the gigantic idea. The blue ocean of high notes, pure as crystal, glowed with a beaming, unusually powerful, joyful and clear colour. The tone rose higher and higher and the melody itself began rotating furiously in an ascending spiral until it broke off in flight, in a blinding flash of fire.

  The symphony was over and Darr Veter realized what he had been missing all these long months. He needed work that was closer to the Cosmos, closer to the tirelessly unwinding spiral of human urge forward into the future. He went straight from the music room to the telephone room and from there called the Central Employment Bureau of the northern living zone. The young clerk who had sent him to work in the mines was pleased when he recognized him.

  “They called for you from the Astronautical Council this morning,” he said, “but I could not get in touch with you. I’ll put you through now.”

  The screen grew blank and then the light came on again and Mir Ohm, the senior of the four secretaries of the Council, appeared. His face wore a very serious look and, Darr Veter thought, a look mingled with sadness.

  “There has been a great catastrophe! Satellite 57 has perished! The Council is calling you for a most difficult job. I’ll send an ion-powered planetship for you. Be ready to leave!”

  Darr Veter stood motionless in amazement in front of the already empty screen.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  RED WAVES

  The wide verandah of the observatory was open to the winds that brought the perfume of flowering plants from the hot African cost across the sea, a perfume that aroused an urgent yearning in a man’s soul. Mven Mass could not compose himself into the state of clarity and firmness, when no doubts remained, that was essential on the eve of a decisive experiment. Renn Bose had reported from Tibet that the Corr Yule installation had been reconstructed and was ready. The four observers on Satellite 57 had willingly agreed to risk their lives if that would help in carrying out an experiment such as Earth had never before known.