3001 The Final Odyssey

chapter 26 Tsienville
In the final moments, as he came in over the coast at a sedate hundred kilometres an hour, Poole wondered if there might be some last-minute intervention. But nothing untoward happened, even when he moved slowly along the black, forbidding face of the Great Wall.

It was the inevitable name for the Europa Monolith as, unlike its little brothers on Earth and Moon, it was lying horizontally, and was more than twenty kilometres long. Although it was literally billions of times greater in volume than TMA ZERO and TMA ONE, its proportions were exactly the same - that intriguing ratio 1:4:9, inspirer of so much numerological nonsense over the centuries.

As the vertical face was almost ten kilometres high, one plausible theory maintained that among its other functions the Great Wall served as a wind-break, protecting Tsienville from the ferocious gales that occasionally roared in from the Sea of Galilee. They were much less frequent now that the climate had stabilized, but a thousand years earlier they would have been a severe discouragement to any life-forms emerging from the ocean.

Though he had fully intended to do so, Poole had never found time to visit the Tycho Monolith - still Top Secret when he had left for Jupiter - and Earth's gravity made its twin at Olduvai inaccessible to him. But he had seen their images so often that they were much more familiar than the proverbial back of the hand (and how many people, he had often wondered, would recognize the backs of their hands?). Apart from the enormous difference in scale, there was absolutely no way of distinguishing the Great Wall from TMA ONE and TMA ZERO - or, for that matter, the 'Big Brother' Monolith that Discovery and the Leonov had encountered orbiting Jupiter.

According to some theories, perhaps crazy enough to be true, there was only one archetypal Monolith, and all the others - whatever their size - were merely projections or images of it. Poole recalled these ideas when he noticed the spotless, unsullied smoothness of the Great Wall's towering ebon face. Surely, after so many centuries in such a hostile environment, it should have collected a few patches of grime! Yet it looked as immaculate as if an army of window-cleaners had just polished every square centimetre.

Then he recalled that although everyone who had ever come to view TMA ONE and TMA ZERO felt an irresistible urge to touch their apparently pristine surfaces, no one had ever succeeded. Fingers - diamond drills - laser knives - all skittered across the Monoliths as if they were coated by an impenetrable film. Or as if - and this was another popular theory - they were not quite in this universe, but somehow separated from it by an utterly impassable fraction of a millimetre.

He made one complete, leisurely circuit of the Great Wall, which remained totally indifferent to his progress. Then he brought the shuttle - still on manual, in case Ganymede Control made any further attempts to 'rescue' him - to the outer limits of Tsienville, and hovered there looking for the best place to land.

The scene through Falcon's small panoramic window was wholly familiar to him; he had examined it so often in Ganymede recordings, never imagining that one day he would be observing it in reality. The Europs, it seemed, had no idea of town planning; hundreds of hemispherical structures were scattered apparently at random over an area about a kilometre across. Some were so small that even human children would feel cramped in them; though others were big enough to hold a large family, none was more than five metres high.

And they were all made from the same material, which gleamed a ghostly white in the double daylight. On Earth, the Esquimaux had found the identical answer to the challenge of their own frigid, materials-poor environment; Tsienville's igloos were also made of ice.

In lieu of streets, there were canals - as best suited creatures who were still amphibious, and apparently returned to the water to sleep. Also, it was believed, to feed and to mate, though neither hypothesis had been proved.

Tsienville had been called 'Venice, made of ice', and Poole had to agree that it was an apt description. However, there were no Venetians in sight; the place looked as if it had been deserted for years.

And here was another mystery; despite the fact that Lucifer was fifty times brighter than the distant Sun, and was a permanent fixture in the sky, the Europs still seemed locked to an ancient rhythm of night and day. They returned to the ocean at sunset, and emerged with the rising of the Sun - despite the fact that the level of illumination had changed by only a few per cent. Perhaps there was a parallel on Earth, where the life cycles of many creatures were controlled as much by the feeble Moon as the far more brilliant Sun.

It would be sunrise in another hour, and then the inhabitants of Tsienville would return to land and go about their leisurely affairs - as by human standards, they certainly were. The sulphur-based biochemistry that powered the Europs was not as efficient as the oxygen-driven one that energized the vast majority of terrestrial animals. Even a sloth could outrun a Europ, so it was difficult to regard them as potentially dangerous. That was the Good News; the Bad News was that even with the best intentions on both sides, attempts at communication would be extremely slow - perhaps intolerably tedious.

It was about time, Poole decided, that he reported back to Ganymede Control. They must be getting very anxious, and he wondered how his co-conspirator, Captain Chandler, was dealing with the situation.

'Falcon calling Ganymede. As you can doubtless see, I have - er - been brought to rest just above Tsienville. There is no sign of hostility, and as it's still solar night here all the Europs are underwater. Will call you again as soon as I'm on the ground.'

Dim would have been proud of him, Poole thought, as he brought Falcon down gently as a snowflake on a smooth patch of ice. He was taking no chances with its stability, and set the inertial drive to cancel all but a fraction of the shuttle's weight - just enough, he hoped, to prevent it being blown away by any wind.

He was on Europa - the first human in a thousand years. Had Armstrong and Aldrin felt this sense of elation, when Eagle touched down on the Moon? Probably they were too busy checking their Lunar Module's primitive and totally unintelligent systems. Falcon, of course, was doing all this automatically. The little cabin was now very quiet, apart from the inevitable - and reassuring - murmur of well-tempered electronics. It gave Poole a considerable shock when Chandler's voice, obviously pre-recorded, interrupted his thoughts.

'So you made it! Congratulations! As you know, we're scheduled to return to the Belt week after next, but that should give you plenty of time.'

'After five days, Falcon knows what to do. She'll find her way home, with or without you. So good luck!'

MISS PRINGLE

ACTIVATE CRYPTO PROGRAM

STORE

Hello, Dim - thanks for that cheerful message! I feel rather silly using this program - as if I'm a secret agent in one of the spy melodramas that used to be so popular before I was born. Still, it will allow some privacy, which may be useful. Hope Miss Pringle has downloaded it properly... of course, Miss P, I'm only joking!

By the way, I'm getting a barrage of requests from all the news media in the Solar System. Please try to hold them off - or divert them to Dr Ted. He'll enjoy handling them...

Since Ganymede has me on camera all the time, I won't waste breath telling you what I'm seeing. If all goes well, we should have some action in a few minutes - and we'll know if it really was a good idea to let the Europs find me already sitting here peacefully, waiting to greet them when they come to the surface...

Whatever happens, it won't be as big a surprise to me as it was to Dr Chang and his colleagues, when they landed here a thousand years ago! I played his famous last message again, just before leaving Ganymede. I must confess it gave me an eerie feeling - couldn't help wondering if something like that could possibly happen again... wouldn't like to immortalize myself the way poor Chang did...

Of course, I can always lift off if something starts going wrong... and here's an interesting thought that's just occurred to me... I wonder if the Europs have any history - any kind of records... any memory of what happened just a few kilometres from here, a thousand years ago?