30. The Impossible Stars
"Say it again, Dave," said Kimball. "I didn't hear you clearly."
"I said it's full of stars."
"Do I read you correctly-stars?"
"Yes-thousands of them. It's like looking at the Milky Way."
"Listen, Dave-I'm going to haul you up and have a look myself-okay?"
To Kimball's surprise, Bowman agreed at once to this change of plan. Usually it was very difficult to divert the skipper from any procedure he had decided upon: he was fond of quoting Napoleon's "Order plus counterorder equals disorder." But now, he seemed not only willing but anxious to change places.
The line came up effortlessly; Bowman was obviously using the jets to help. When the pod floated up over the edge of the slot, Kimball peered into the bay-window, and was relieved to see his friend smile back, though in a slightly dazed manner.
"Sure you're okay?" he asked.
Bowman nodded.
"Sure," he said. "Go down and look yourself."
As the flawlessly smooth walls drifted by him, unbroken by any markings, unscarred by age, Kimball could not help recalling Alice's fall down the rabbit hole. It was an uncomfortable memory, for that strange descent had led to an underworld where magic reigned, and the normal laws of nature were overthrown. For the first time, he began to wonder if this might be happening here.
From the very beginning, they had known that they were dealing with a science greater than man's. But they had not doubted-they dared not doubt-that it was a science that they could ultimately understand. As the light below grew in size and brilliance, Kimball felt the first, appalling intimations that this might not be true.
It was a thought to hold at arm's length, especially in surroundings such as these. He was coming to the end of the line, and was already far below the last reflected rays of the sun. It required an act of physical courage to put the binoculars to his eyes, and to stare steadfastly at the tunnel's glowing end.
Bowman was right. He could have been looking at the Milky Way. The field of the instrument was full of stars- thousands of them, shining in the black core of this tiny, frozen world.
Some facts are so incredible that they are believed at once, for no one could possibly have imagined them. Kimball never doubted the message of his eyes, and did not try to understand it. For the moment, he would merely record what he saw.
Almost at once, he noticed that the stars were moving. They were drifting out of the field on the left, while new ones appeared from the right. It was as if he was looking down a shaft drilled clear through Jupiter V, and observing the effects of its rotation as it turned on its axis every ten hours.
But this, of course, was impossible. They had mapped and surveyed the entire area of the satellite, deliberately searching for any other entrance, and had found nothing but unbroken rock and ammonia ice. Kimball was quite certain that there was no window at the antipodes through which stars could shine.
And then, rather belatedly-he was, after all, a communications engineer and not an astronomer-he noticed something that totally demolished this theory. Those stars were drifting to his left; if the movement had been due to Jupiter V's spin, it should have been in a direction almost at right angles. So the rotation of the little moon had nothing whatsoever to do with it....
That was quite enough for one man, on one visit.
"I'm coming up," he called Bowman. "We'd better talk this over with Vic-maybe he has an explanation."
When he had rejoined Bowman on the surface of the satellite, it seemed to him that the once incredible sight of Jupiter spanning the sky was as familiar and reassuring as a quiet country landscape back on Earth. Jupiter they understood-or where it still held mysteries, they were not such that sapped the mind. But the thing beneath their feet defied all reason and all logic.
They waited, lost in their own thoughts and saying nothing, merely listening for the first sound of Discovery's beacon as she came up over the horizon. Luckily for their peace of mind, she was exactly on time; still without a word, they jetted themselves up toward her and, ten minutes later, were jockeying themselves through the airlock.
Astronauts are somewhat addicted to harmless practical jokes; it is one of their ways of asserting superiority over the Universe, which has no sense of humor. Kaminski and Hunter might, for a moment, have thought that the others were pulling their legs, but their doubts lasted no more than seconds.
Two orbits later, they went down themselves, taking cameras with long-focus lenses to record the star-patterns at the bottom of the shaft. Within minutes, Kaminski had an additional piece of information. He timed the movement of the stars across the opening, and calculated that it took fifteen hours for a complete revolution-as against Jupiter V's ten. It seemed that, by some magic of space or time, they were looking out into a strange universe through a window in the surface of a world that turned upon its axis once in every fifteen hours.
Kaminski was almost half a mile down the shaft when with shocking abruptness, the window looked upon a different scene.
The Lost Worlds of 2001
Arthur C. Clarke's books
- Autumn The Human Condition
- Autumn The City
- 3001 The Final Odyssey
- The Garden of Rama(Rama III)
- The Light of Other Days
- Forward the Foundation
- The Stars Like Dust
- Desolate The Complete Trilogy
- Maniacs The Krittika Conflict
- Take the All-Mart!
- The Affinity Bridge
- The Age of Scorpio
- The Assault
- The Best of Kage Baker
- The Complete Atopia Chronicles
- The Curve of the Earth
- The Darwin Elevator
- The Eleventh Plague
- The Games
- The Great Betrayal
- The Greater Good
- The Grim Company
- The Heretic (General)
- The Last Horizon
- The Last Jedi
- The Legend of Earth
- The Lost Girl
- The Lucifer Sanction
- The Ruins of Arlandia
- The Savage Boy
- The Serene Invasion
- The Trilisk Supersedure
- Flying the Storm
- Saucer The Conquest
- The Outback Stars
- Cress(The Lunar Chronicles)
- The Apocalypse
- The Catalyst
- The Dead Sun(Star Force Series #9)
- The Exodus Towers #1
- The Exodus Towers #2
- The First Casualty
- The House of Hades(Heroes of Olympus, Book 4)
- The Martian War
- The MVP
- The Sea Without a Shore (ARC)
- Faster Than Light: Babel Among the Stars
- Linkage: The Narrows of Time
- Messengers from the Past
- The Catalyst
- The Fall of Awesome
- The Iron Dragon's Daughter
- The Mark of Athena,Heroes of Olympus, Book 3
- The Thousand Emperors
- The Return of the King
- THE LEGEND OF SIGURD AND GUDRúN
- The Children of Húrin
- The Two Towers
- The Silmarillion
- The Martian
- The Atlantis World (The Origin Mystery, Book 3)
- The Slow Regard of Silent Things
- A Fighter's Heart: One Man's Journey Through the World of Fighting
- Wild Cards 12 - Turn Of the Cards
- The Rogue Prince, or, A King's Brother
- Prince Lestat: The Vampire Chronicles
- The Atlantis Plague
- The Prometheus Project
- The Atlantis Gene: A Thriller
- The Princess and The Queen, Or, The Blacks and The Greens
- The Mystery Knight
- The Lost Soul (Fallen Soul Series, Book 1)
- Dunk and Egg 2 - The Sworn Sword
- The Glass Flower
- The Book of Life
- The Chronicles of Narnia(Complete Series)
- THE END OF ALL THINGS
- The Ghost Brigades
- The Human Division 0.5 - After the Coup
- The Last Colony
- The Shell Collector
- The Lost World
- Forgotten Promises (The Promises Series Book 2)
- The Romanov Cross: A Novel
- Ring in the Dead
- Autumn
- Trust
- Straight to You
- Hater
- Dog Blood
- 2061 Odyssey Three
- 2001 A Space Odyssey
- 2010 Odyssey Two
- Rama Revealed(Rama IV)
- Rendezvous With Rama