2061 Odyssey Three

chapter 19 At the End of the Tunnel

In a small, self-contained universe where everyone knows everyone else, there can be no greater shock than encountering a total stranger.

Heywood Floyd was floating gently along the corridor to the main lounge when he had this disturbing experience. He stared in amazement at the interloper, wondering how a stowaway had managed to avoid detection for so long. The other man looked back at him with a combination of embarrassment and bravado, obviously waiting for Floyd to speak first.

'Well, Victor!' he said at last. 'Sorry I didn't recognize you. So you've made the supreme sacrifice, for the cause of science - or should I say your public?'

'Yes,' Willis answered grumpily. 'I did manage to squeeze into one helmet - but the damn bristles made so many scratching noises no-one could hear a word I said.'

'When are you going out?'

'Just as soon as Cliff comes back - he's gone caving with Bill Chant.'

The first flybys of the comet, in 1986, had suggested that it was considerably less dense than water -which could only mean that it was either made of very porous material, or was riddled with cavities. Both explanations turned out to be correct.

At first, the ever-cautious Captain Smith flatly forbade any cave-exploring. He finally relented when Dr Pendrill reminded him that his chief assistant Dr Chant was an experienced speleologist - indeed, that was one of the very reasons he had been chosen for the mission.

'Cave-ins are impossible, in this low gravity,' Pendrill had told the reluctant Captain. 'So there's no danger of being trapped.'

'What about being lost?'

'Chant would regard that suggestion as a professional insult. He's been twenty kilometres inside Mammoth Cave. Anyway, he'll play out a guideline.'

'Communications?'

'The line's got fibre optics in it. And his suit radio will probably work most of the way.'

'Umm. Where does he want to go in?'

'The best place is that extinct geyser at the base of Etna Junior. It's been dead for at least a thousand years.'

'So I suppose it should keep quiet for another couple of days. Very well - does anyone else want to go?'

'Cliff Greenburg has volunteered - he's done a good deal of underwater cave-exploring, in the Bahamas.'

'I tried it once - that was enough. Tell Cliff he's much too valuable. He can go in as far as he can still see the entrance - and no further. And if he loses contact with Chant, he's not to go after him, without my authority.'

Which, the Captain added to himself, I would be very reluctant to give...

Dr Chant knew all the old jokes about speleologists wanting to return to the womb, and was quite sure he could refute them.

'That must be a damn noisy place, with all its thumpings and bumpings and gurglings,' he argued. 'I love caves because they're so peaceful and timeless. You know that nothing has changed for a hundred thousand years, except that the stalactites have grown a bit thicker.'

But now, as he drifted deeper into Halley, playing out the thin, but virtually unbreakable thread that linked him to Clifford Greenburg, he realized that this was no longer true. As yet, he had no scientific proof, but his geologist's instincts told him that this subterranean world had been born only yesterday, on the time-scale of the Universe. It was younger than some of the cities of man.

The tunnel through which he was gliding in long, shallow leaps was about four metres in diameter, and his virtual weightlessness brought back vivid memories of cave-diving on Earth. The low gravity contributed to the illusion; it was exactly as if he was carrying slightly too much weight, and so kept drifting gently downwards. Only the absence of all resistance reminded him that he was moving through vacuum, not water.

'You're just getting out of sight,' said Greenburg, fifty metres in from the entrance. 'Radio link still fine. What's the scenery like?'

'Very hard to say - I can't identify any formations, so I don't have the vocabulary to describe them. It's not any kind of rock - it crumbles when I touch it - I feel as if I'm exploring a giant Gruyere cheese.'

'You mean it's organic?'

'Yes - nothing to do with life, of course - but perfect raw material for it. All sorts of hydrocarbons - the chemists will have fun with these samples. Can you still see me?'

'Only the glow of your light, and that's fading fast.'

'Ah - here's some genuine rock - doesn't look as if it belongs here - probably an intrusion - ah - I've struck gold!'

'You're joking!'

'It fooled a lot of people in the old West - iron pyrites. Common on the outer satellites, of course, but don't ask me what it's doing here...'

'Visual contact lost. You're two hundred metres in.'

'I'm passing through a distinct layer - looks like meteoric debris - something exciting must have happened back then - I hope we can date it - wow!'

'Don't do that sort of thing to me!'

'Sorry - quite took my breath away - there's a big chamber ahead - last thing I expected - let me swing the beam around...

'Almost spherical - thirty, forty metres across. And - I don't believe it - Halley is full of surprises - stalactites, stalagmites.'

'What's so surprising about that?'

'No free water, no limestone here, of course - and such low gravity. Looks like some kind of wax. Just a minute while I get good video coverage... fantastic shapes... sort of thing a dripping candle makes... that's odd...'

'Now what?'

Dr Chant's voice had shown a sudden alteration in tone, which Greenburg had instantly detected.

'Some of the columns have been broken. They're lying on the floor. It's almost as if...'

'Go on!'

'... as if something has - blundered - into them.'

'That's crazy. Could an earthquake have snapped them?'

'No earthquakes here - only microseisms from the geysers. Perhaps there was a big blow-out at some time. Anyway, it was centuries ago. There's a film of this wax stuff over the fallen columns - several millimetres thick.'

Dr Chant was slowly recovering his composure. He was not a highly imaginative man - spelunking eliminates such men rather quickly - but the very feel of the place had triggered some disturbing memory. And those fallen columns looked altogether too much like the bars of a cage, broken by some monster in an attempt to escape.

Of course, that was perfectly absurd - but Dr Chant had learned never to ignore any premonition, any danger signal, until he had traced it to its origin. That caution had saved his life more than once; he would not go beyond this chamber until he had identified the source of his fear. And he was honest enough to admit that 'fear' was the correct word.

'Bill - are you all right? What's happening?'

'Still filming. Some of these shapes remind me of Indian temple sculpture. Almost erotic.'

He was deliberately turning his mind away from the direct confrontation of his fears, hoping thereby to sneak up on them unawares, by a kind of averted mental vision. Meanwhile the purely mechanical acts of recording and collecting samples occupied most of his attention.

There was nothing wrong, he reminded himself, with healthy fear; only when it escalated into panic did it become a killer. He had known panic twice in his life (once on a mountainside, once underwater) and still shuddered at the memory of its clammy touch. Yet - thankfully - he was far from it now, and for a reason which, though he did not understand it, he found curiously reassuring. There was an element of comedy in the situation.

And presently he started to laugh - not with hysteria, but with relief.

'Did you ever see those old Star Wars movies?' he asked Greenburg.

'Of course - half a dozen times.'

'Well, I know what's been bothering me. There was a sequence when Luke's spaceship dives into an asteroid - and runs into a gigantic snake-creature that lurks inside its caverns.'

'Not Luke's ship - Hans Solo's Millennium Falcon. And I always wondered how that poor beast managed to eke out a living. It must have grown very hungry, waiting for the occasional titbit from space. And Princess Leia wouldn't have been more than an hors-d'oeuvre, anyway.'

'Which I certainly don't intend to provide,' said Dr Chant, now completely at ease. 'Even if there is life here - which would be marvellous - the food chain would be very short. So I'd be surprised to find anything bigger than a mouse. Or, more likely, a mushroom... Now let's see - where do we go from here... There are two exits on the other side of the chamber... the one on the right is bigger... I'll take that...'

'How much more line have you got?'

'Oh, a good half-kilometre. Here we go... I'm in the middle of the chamber... damn, bounced off the wall... now I've got a hand-hold... going in head-first... smooth walls, real rock for a change... that's a pity..

'What's the problem?'

'Can't go any further. More stalactites... too close together for me to get through... and too thick to break without explosives. And that would be a shame... the colours are beautiful... first real greens and blues I've seen on Halley. Just a minute while I get them on video...

Dr Chant braced himself against the wall of the narrow tunnel, and aimed the camera. With his gloved fingers be reached for the HI-INTENSITY switch, but missed it and cut off the main lights completely.

'Lousy design,' he muttered. 'Third time I've done that.'

He did not immediately correct his mistake, because he had always enjoyed that silence and total darkness which can be experienced only in the deepest caves. The gentle background noises of his life-support equipment robbed him of the silence, but at least...

What was that? From beyond the portcullis of stalactites blocking further progress he could see a faint glow, like the first light of dawn. As his eyes grew adapted to the darkness, it appeared to grow brighter, and he could detect a hint of green. Now he could even see the outlines of the barrier ahead.

'What's happening?' said Greenburg anxiously.

'Nothing - just observing.'

And thinking, he might have added. There were four possible explanations.

Sunlight could be filtering down through some natural light duct - ice, crystal, whatever. But at this depth? Unlikely.

Radioactivity? He hadn't bothered to bring a counter; there were virtually no heavy elements here. But it would be worth coming back to check.

Some phosphorescent mineral - that was the one he'd put his money on. But there was a fourth possibility - the most unlikely, and most exciting, of all.

Dr Chant had never forgotten a moonless - and Luciferless - night on the shores of the Indian Ocean, when he had been walking beneath brilliant stars along a sandy beach. The sea was very calm, but from time to time a languid wave would collapse at his feet - and detonate in an explosion of light.

He had walked out into the shallows (he could still remember the feel of the water round his ankles, like a warm bath) and with every step he took there had been another burst of light. He could even trigger it by clapping his hands close to the surface.

Could similar bioluminescent organisms have evolved, here in the heart of Halley's Comet? He would love to think so. It seemed a pity to vandalize something so exquisite as this natural work of art - with the glow behind it, the barrier now reminded him of an altar screen he had once seen in some cathedral - but he would have to go back and get some explosives. Meanwhile, there was the other corridor...

'I can't get any further along this route,' he told Greenburg, 'so I'll try the other. Coming back to the junction - setting the reel on rewind.' He did not mention the mysterious glow, which had vanished as soon as he switched on his lights again.

Greenburg did not reply immediately, which was unusual; probably he was talking to the ship. Chant did not worry; he would repeat his message as soon as he had got under way again.

He did not bother, because there was a brief acknowledgement from Greenburg.

'Fine, Cliff - thought I'd lost you for a minute. Back at the chamber - now going into the other tunnel - hope there's nothing blocking that.'

This time, Greenburg replied at once.

'Sorry, Bill. Come back to the ship. There's an emergency - no, not here - everything's fine with Universe. But we may have to return to Earth at once.'

It was only a few weeks before Dr Chant discovered a very plausible explanation for the broken columns. As the comet blasted its substance away into space at each perihelion passage, its mass distribution continually altered. And so, every few thousand years, its spin became unstable, and it would change the direction of its axis - quite violently, like a top that is about to fall over as it loses energy. When that occurred, the resulting cometquake could reach a respectable five on the Richter scale.

But he never solved the mystery of the luminous glow. Though the problem was swiftly overshadowed by the drama that was now unfolding, the sense of a missed opportunity would continue to haunt him for the rest of his life.

Though he was occasionally tempted, he never mentioned it to any of his colleagues. But he did leave a sealed note for the next expedition, to be opened in 2133.