2010 Odyssey Two

THE TRIAL Chapter 7: LUCIFER RISING Chapter 52 Ignition
He had never expected to come there again, still less on so strange a mission. When he re-entered Discovery, the ship was far behind the fleeing Leonov and climbing ever more slowly up toward apojove, the high point of its orbit among the outer satellites. Many a captured comet, during the ages past, had swung around Jupiter in just such a long ellipse, waiting for the play of rival gravities to decide its ultimate fate.

All life had departed the familiar decks and corridors. The men and women who had briefly reawakened the ship had obeyed his warning; they might yet be safe - though that was still far from certain. But as the final minutes ticked away, he realized that those who controlled him could not always predict the outcome of their cosmic game.

They had not yet attained the stupefying boredom of absolute omnipotence; their experiments did not always succeed. Scattered across the Universe was the evidence of many failures - some so inconspicuous that they were already lost against the cosmic background, others so spectacular that they awed and baffled the astronomers of a thousand worlds. Only minutes remained now, before the outcome would be determined here; during those final minutes, he was once more alone with Hal.

In that earlier existence, they could communicate only through the clumsy medium of words, tapped on a keyboard or spoken into a microphone. Now their thoughts melded together at the speed of light:

'Do you read me, Hal?'

'Yes, Dave. But where are you? I cannot see you on any of my monitors.'

'That is not important. I have new instructions for you. The infrared radiation from Jupiter on channels R23 through R35 is rising rapidly. I am going to give you a set of limiting values. As soon as they are reached, you must point the long-range antenna toward Earth and send the following message, as many times as possible -'

'But that will mean breaking contact with Leonov. I will no longer be able to relay my Jupiter observations, according to the program Dr Chandra has given me.'

'Correct; but the situation has changed. Accept Priority Override Alpha. Here are the AE 35 Unit coordinates.'

For a fraction of a microsecond, a random memory intruded into his flow of consciousness. How strange that he should once again be concerned with the AE 35 Antenna-pointing unit, whose reported malfunction had led Frank Poole to his death! This time, all the circuits lay open to his scrutiny, clear as the lines had once been on the palm of his hand. There could be no false alarms; nor was there any danger of them now.

'Instructions confirmed, Dave. It is good to be working with you again. Have I fulfilled my mission objectives properly?'

'Yes, Hal; you have done very well. Now there is one final message for you to transmit to Earth - and it will be the most important one you have ever sent.'

'Please let me have it, Dave. But why did you say final?' Why indeed? For whole milliseconds he pondered that question. And as he did so, he became aware of an emptiness he had not detected before. It had been there, but until now the barrage of new experiences and sensations had concealed it.

He knew something of their plans; they had need for him. Very well, he too had needs - perhaps, after a fashion, even emotions. Here was his last link with the world of men, and the life he had once known.

They had granted his earlier request; it would be interesting to test the extent of their benevolence - if, indeed, such a term was remotely applicable to them. And it should be easy for them to do what he was asking; they had already given ample evidence of their powers, when the no-longer-needed body of David Bowman had been casually destroyed - without putting an end to David Bowman himself.

They had heard him, of course; once again, there was the faint echo of an Olympian amusement. But he could detect neither acceptance nor denial.

'I am still waiting for your answer, Dave.'

'Correction, Hal. I should have said: your last message for a long time. A very long time.'

He was anticipating their action - trying, indeed, to force their hand. But, surely, they would understand that his request was not unreasonable; no conscious entity could survive ages of isolation without damage. Even if they would always be with him, he also needed someone - some companion - nearer his own level of existence.

The languages of mankind had many words to describe his gesture: cheek, effrontery, chutzpah. He recalled, with the perfect power of retrieval he now possessed, that a French general had once declaimed 'L'audace - toujours l'audace!' Perhaps it was a human characteristic that they appreciated, and even shared. He would soon know.

'Hal! Look at the signal on infrared channels 30, 29, 28 - it will be very soon now - the peak is moving toward the short wave.'

'I am informing Dr Chandra that there will be a break in my data transmission. Activating AE 35 unit. Reorientating long-range antenna... lock confirmed on Beacon Terra One. Message commences: ALL THESE WORLDS...'

They had indeed left it to the last minute - or perhaps the calculations had, after all, been superbly accurate. There was time for barely a hundred repetitions of the eleven words when the hammer blow of pure heat smashed into the ship.

Held there by curiosity, and a growing fear of the long loneliness that lay before him, that which had once been David Bowman, Commander of United States Spacecraft Discovery, watched as the hull boiled stubbornly away. For a long time, the ship retained its approximate shape; then the bearings of the carousel seized up, releasing instantly the stored momentum of the huge, spinning flywheel. In a soundless detonation, the incandescent fragments went their myriad separate ways.

'Hello, Dave. What has happened? Where am I?'

He had not known that he could relax, and enjoy a moment of successful achievement. Often before, he had felt like a pet dog controlled by a master whose motives were not wholly inscrutable and whose behaviour could sometimes be modified according to his own desires. He had asked for a bone; it had been tossed to him.

'I will explain later, Hal. We have plenty of time.'

They waited until the last fragments of the ship had dispersed, beyond even their powers of detection. Then they left, to watch the new dawn at the place that had been prepared for them; and to wait through the centuries until they were summoned once again.

It is not true that astronomical events always require astronomical periods of time. The final collapse of a star before the fragments rebound in a supernova explosion can take only a second; by comparison, the metamorphosis of Jupiter was almost a leisurely affair.

Even so, it was several minutes before Sasha was able to believe his eyes. He had been making a routine telescopic examination of the planet - as if any observation could now be called routine! - when it started to drift out of the field of view. For a moment, he thought that the instrument's stabilization was faulty; then he realized, with a shock that jolted his entire concept of the universe, that Jupiter itself was moving, not the telescope. The evidence stared him in the face; he could also see two of the smaller moons - and they were quite motionless.

He switched to a lower magnification, so that he could see the entire disk of the planet, now a leprous, mottled grey. After a few more minutes of incredulity, he saw what was really happening; but he could still scarcely believe it.

Jupiter was not moving from its immemorial orbit, but it was doing something almost as impossible. It was shrinking - so swiftly that its edge was creeping across the field even as he focused upon it. At the same time the planet was brightening, from its dull grey to a pearly white. Surely, it was more brilliant than it had ever been in the long years that Man had observed it; the reflected light of the Sun could not possibly - At that moment, Sasha suddenly realized what was happening, though not why, and sounded the general alarm.

When Floyd reached the observation lounge, less than thirty seconds later, his first impression was of the blinding glare pouring through the windows, painting ovals of light on the walls. They were so dazzling that he had to avert his eyes; not even the Sun could produce such brilliance.

Floyd was so astonished that for a moment he did not associate the glare with Jupiter; the first thought that flashed through his mind was: Supernova! He dismissed that explanation almost as soon as it occurred to him; even the Sun's next-door neighbour, Alpha Centauri, could not have matched the awesome display in any conceivable explosion

The light suddenly dimmed; Sasha had operated the external sun shields. Now it was possible to look directly at the source, and to see that it was a mere pinpoint - just another star, showing no dimensions at all. This could have nothing to do with Jupiter; when Floyd had looked at the planet only a few minutes ago, it had been four times larger than the distant, shrunken sun.

It was well that Sasha had lowered the shields. A moment later, that tiny star exploded - so that even through the dark filters it was impossible to watch with the naked eye. But the final orgasm of light lasted only a brief fraction of a second; then Jupiter - or what had been Jupiter - was expanding once again.

It continued to expand, until it was far larger than it had been before the transformation. Soon the sphere of light was fading rapidly, down to merely solar brilliance; and presently Floyd could see that it was actually a hollow shell, for the central star was still clearly visible at its heart.

He did a quick mental calculation. The ship was more than one light-minute from Jupiter, yet that expanding shell - now turning into a bright-edged ring - already covered a quarter of the sky. That meant it was coming toward them at - My God! - nearly half the speed of light. Within minutes, it would engulf the ship.

Until then, no one had spoken a word since Sasha's first announcement. Some dangers are so spectacular and so much beyond normal experience that the mind refuses to accept them as real, and watches the approach of doom without any sense of apprehension. The man who looks at the onrushing tidal wave, the descending avalanche, or the spinning funnel of the tornado, yet makes no attempt to flee, is not necessarily paralysed with fright or resigned to an unavoidable fate. He may simply be unable to believe that the message of his eyes concerns him personally. It is all happening to somebody else.

As might have been expected, Tanya was the first to break the spell, with a series of orders that brought Vasili and Floyd hurrying to the bridge.

'What do we do now?' she asked, when they had assembled.

We certainly can't run away, thought Floyd. But perhaps we can improve the odds.

'The'ship's broadside on,' he said. 'Shouldn't we turn away from that thing so we're a smaller target? And get as much of our mass as we can between it and us, to act as a radiation shield?'

Vasili's fingers were already flying over the controls.

'You're right, Woody - though it's already too late as far as any gammas and X rays are concerned. But there may be slower neutrons and alphas and heaven knows what else still on the way.'

The patterns of light began to slide down the walls as the ship turned ponderously on its axis. Presently they vanished completely; Leonov was now oriented so that virtually all its mass lay between the fragile human cargo and the approaching shell of radiation.

Will we actually feel the shock wave, wondered Floyd, or will the expanding gases be too tenuous to have any physical effect by the time they reach us? Seen from the external cameras, the ring of fire now almost encircled the sky. But it was fading rapidly; some of the brighter stars could even be seen shining through it. We're going to live, thought Floyd. We've witnessed the destruction of the greatest of planets - and we've survived.

And presently the cameras showed nothing except stars - even if one was a million times brighter than all the others. The bubble of fire blown by Jupiter had swept harmlessly past them, impressive though it had been. At their distance from the source, only the ship's instruments had recorded its passing.

Slowly, the tension aboard relaxed. As always happens in such circumstances, people started to laugh and to make silly jokes. Floyd scarcely heard them; despite his relief at still being alive, he felt a sense of sadness.

Something great and wonderful had been destroyed. Jupiter, with all its beauty and grandeur and now never-to-be-solved mysteries, had ceased to exist. The father of all the gods had been struck down in his prime.

Yet there was another way of looking at the situation. They had lost Jupiter: What had they gained in its place?

Tanya, judging her moment nicely, rapped for attention.

'Vasili - any damage?'

'Nothing serious - one camera burned out. All radiation meters still well above normal, but none near danger limits.'

'Katerina - check the total dosage we've received. It looks as if we were lucky, unless there are more surprises. We certainly owe a vote of thanks to Bowman - and to you, Heywood. Do you have any idea what happened?'

'Only that Jupiter's turned into a sun.'

'I always thought it was much too small for that. Didn't someone once call Jupiter "the sun that failed"?'

'That's true,' said Vasili, 'Jupiter is too small for fusion to start - unaided.'

'You mean, we've just seen an example of astronomical engineering?'

'Undoubtedly. Now we know what Zagadka was up to.'

'How did it do the trick? If you were given the contract, Vasili, how would you ignite Jupiter?'

Vasili thought for a minute, then shrugged wryly. 'I'm only a theoretical astronomer - I don't have much experience in this line of business. But let's see... Well, if I'm not allowed to add about ten Jupiter masses, or change the gravitational constant, I suppose I'll have to make the planet denser - hmm, that's an idea...'

His voice trailed off into silence; everyone waited patiently, eyes flickering from time to time to the viewing screens.

The star that had been Jupiter seemed to have settled down after its explosive birth; it was now a dazzling point of light, almost equal to the real Sun in apparent brilliance.

'I'm just thinking out loud - but it might be done this way. Jupiter is - was - mostly hydrogen. If a large percentage could be converted into much denser material - who knows, even neutron matter? - that would drop down to the core. Maybe that's what the billions of Zagadkas were doing with all the gas they were sucking in. Nucleosynthesis - building up higher elements from pure hydrogen. That would be a trick worth knowing! No more shortage of any metal - gold as cheap as aluminium!'

'But how would that explain what happened?' asked Tanya.

'When the core became dense enough, Jupiter would collapse - probably in a matter of seconds. The temperature would rise high enough to start fusion. Oh, I can see a dozen objections - how would they get past the iron minimum; what about radiative transfer; Chandrasekhar's limit. Never mind. This theory will do to start with; I'll work out the details later. Or I'll think of a better one.'

'I'm sure you will, Vasili,' Floyd agreed. 'But there's a more important question. Why did they do it?'

'A warning?' ventured Katerina over the ship's intercom.

'Against what?'

'We'll find that out later.'

'I don't suppose,' said Zenia diffidently, 'that it was an accident?'

That brought the discussion to a dead halt for several seconds.

'What a terrifying idea!' said Floyd. 'But I think we can rule it out. If that was the case, there'd have been no warn - Perhaps. If you start a forest fire because you've been careless, at least you do your best to warn everyone.'

'And there's another thing we'll probably never know,' lamented Vasili. 'I always hoped Carl Sagan would be right, and there'd be life on Jupiter.'

'Our probes never saw any.'

'What chance did they have? Would you find any life on Earth, if you looked at a few hectares of the Sahara or the Antarctic? That's about all we ever did on Jupiter.'

'Hey!' said Brailovsky. 'What about Discovery - and Hal?' Sasha switched on the long-range receiver and started to search on the beacon frequency. There was no trace of a signal.

After a while, he announced to the silently waiting group:

'Discovery's gone.'

No one looked at Dr Chandra; but there were a few muted words of sympathy, as if in consolation to a father who had just lost a son.

But Hal had one last surprise for them.