Chapter 29 Alone

Like a tiny complicated toy, the ship floated in space. There was no sign of any life on board. In fact, there were two signs that all life had ended — the airlock doors were wide open, and coming out from them was a cloud of rubbish that was already several kilometres long.

But there was still power on board. A faint blue light was shining from the windows. And now, at last, there was movement.

A long object covered in cloth came out of the airlock and floated away. A moment later it was followed by another — and then a third.

Half an hour passed, and then one of the space vehicles came out through the airlock. It moved slowly round the ship and landed near the base of the antenna. A space-suited figure got out of it, worked there for a few minutes, then returned to the vehicle. After a time the vehicle made its way back to the airlock and re-entered the ship.

Nothing happened for over an hour. Then the airlock doors closed and, a little later, the full lighting system came on. Then the great bowl of the antenna began to move, turning round to face the back of the ship.

Inside Discovery, David Bowman carefully pointed the antenna towards Earth.There was no automatic control now, but he could hold it steady for a few minutes. It would be over an hour before his words reached Earth, and another hour before any reply could reach him.

It was difficult to imagine what answer Earth could possibly send, except a sympathetic ' Goodbye'.

Chapter 30 The Secret

Heywood Floyd looked very tired, but he was doing his best to give confidence to the lonely man on the other side of the Solar System.

' First of all, Dr Bowman,' he began, ' we must congratulate you on the way you handled an extremely difficult situation. We believe we know the cause of your HAL 9000s problem, but we'll discuss that later. For the moment, we want to give you every possible assistance, so that you can complete your mission.

' And now I must tell you its real purpose. We were going to tell you all the facts as you approached Saturn, but things have changed. You need to know now.

' Two years ago we discovered the first proof of intelligent life outside the Earth. An object made of black material, three metres high, was found buried in the crater Tycho. Here it is.'

A photograph of TMA-1, with men in spacesuits standing beside it, appeared on the screen. Bowman leaned forwards in open-mouthed surprise. Like everybody else interested in space, he had half-expected something like this all his life.

Heywood Floyd reappeared on the screen.

'The most amazing thing about this object is its age. Everything we know about it suggests that it is three million years old. You would expect, then, that it is completely lifeless. However, soon after lunar sunrise, it gave out a very powerful radio signal. We were able to follow this with great accuracy. It was aimed exactly at Saturn.

'When we thought later about what happened, we decided that the object was either powered by the Sun, or at least started up by the Sun. We felt this because it sent its signal immediately after sunrise, when it was in daylight for the first time in three million years.

'The question now is why a sun-powered object was buried ten metres underground. We've examined dozens of theories, and the favourite one is the simplest. It is also the most worrying.

'You hide a sun-powered object in darkness only if you want to know when it is brought out into the light. In other words, the object may be some kind of alarm bell. And we have made it ring ...

'We don't know whether the creatures that put it there still exist. If they do, they may be dangerous. Whether they are or not, we need to make preparations. But we cannot do anything until we know more about them.

'Your mission, then, is much more than a voyage of discovery. You are going into what may be a dangerous area to find out what you can. It may seem unbelievable that any life-forms could exist on Saturn. But life may be possible on one or more of its moons. We are particularly interested in its eighth moon,Japetus, and we may ask you to look closely at it.

' At the moment, we do not know whether to hope or fear. We do not know if, out on the moons of Saturn, you will meet with good or evil — or only with ruins a thousand times older than Troy.'³