2010 Odyssey Two

THE TRIAL Chapter 7: LUCIFER RISING Chapter 53 A Gift of Worlds
The radio message beamed to Earth must have left Discovery only minutes before the blast of radiation engulfed the ship. It was in plain text and merely repeated over and over again:

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS - EXCEPT EUROPA.

ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.

There were about a hundred repetitions; then the letters became garbled, and the transmission ceased.

'I begin to understand,' said Floyd, when the message had been relayed by an awed and anxious Mission Control.

'That's quite a parting present - a new sun, and the planets around it.'

'But why only three?' asked Tanya.

'Let's not be greedy,' Floyd replied. 'I can think of one very good reason. We know there's life on Europa. Bowman - or his friends, whoever they may be - want us to leave it alone.'

'That makes good sense in another way,' said Vasili. 'I've been doing some calculations. Assuming that Sol 2 has settled down and will continue to radiate at its present level, Europa should have a nice tropical climate - when the ice has melted. Which it's doing pretty quickly right now.'

'What about the other moons?'

'Ganymede will be quite pleasant - the dayside will be temperate. Callisto will be very cold; though if there's much outgassing, the new atmosphere may make it habitable. But Io will be even worse than it is now, I expect.'

'No great loss. It was hell even before this happened.'

'Don't write off Io,' said Curnow. 'I know a lot of Texarab oilmen who'd love to tackle it, just on general principles. There must be something valuable, in a place as nasty as that. And by the way, I've just had a rather disturbing thought.'

'Anything that disturbs you must be serious,' said Vasili. 'What is it?'

'Why did Hal send that message to Earth, and not to us? We were much closer.'

There was a rather long silence; then Floyd said thoughtfully: 'I see what you mean. Perhaps he wanted to make certain it was received on Earth.'

'But he knew we would relay it - oh!' Tanya's eyes widened, as if she had just become aware of something unpleasant.

'You've lost me,' complained Vasili.

'I think this is what Walter's driving at,' said Floyd. 'It's all very well to feel grateful to Bowman - or whatever gave that warning. But that's all they did. We could still have been killed.'

'But we weren't,' answered Tanya. 'We saved ourselves - by our own efforts. And perhaps that was the whole idea. If we hadn't - we wouldn't have been worth saving. You know, survival of the fittest. Darwinian selection. Eliminating the genes for stupidity.'

'I've an unpleasant feeling you're right,' said Curnow. 'And if we'd stuck to our launch date, and not used Discovery as a booster, would it, or they, have done anything to save us? That wouldn't have required much extra effort for an intelligence that could blow up Jupiter.'

There was an uneasy silence, broken at last by Heywood Floyd.

'On the whole,' he said, 'I'm very glad that's one question we'll never get answered.'