rget  you're  an  engineer  --  and  enjoy
yourself.'
     He  was certainly enjoying himself  now, though his pleasure  was mixed
with an almost overwhelming sense of  nostalgia. For he was flying, or so it
seemed,  at an altitude of about  two  kilometres, above the spectacular and
unforgotten landscape of his youth.  Of  course, the perspective was  false,
since  the  Aviary  was  only half  a kilometre  high, but the  illusion was
perfect.
     He circled Meteor Crater, remembering how he had scrambled up its sides
during his earlier astronaut training. How incredible that anyone could ever
have doubted its origin, and the accuracy  of  its  name!  Yet well into the
twentieth century, distinguished geologists had argued that it was volcanic:
not until the coming of the Space Age was it -- reluctantly -- accepted that
all planets were still under continual bombardment.
     Poole was  quite sure that  his comfortable  cruising speed  was nearer
twenty than two hundred kilometres an hour, yet he had been allowed to reach
Flagstaff in less than fifteen minutes. And there  were the whitely-gleaming
domes of the Lowell Observatory, which he had visited so often as a boy, and
whose  friendly staff had undoubtedly been  responsible  for  his  choice of
career. He had sometimes  wondered  what his profession might have been, had
he not been born in Arizona, near the very spot where the most long-enduring
and  influential  of  Martian  fantasies  had been  created.  Perhaps it was
imagination, but Poole thought he could just see Lowell's unique tomb, close
to the great telescope, which had fuelled his dreams.
     From  what year,  and  what season, had this  image  been  captured? He
guessed it had come from the spy satellites which had watched over the world
of the early twenty-first century.  It could not be much  later than his own
time,  for  the layout of the  city was just as he remembered. Perhaps if he
went low enough he would even see himself...
     But he knew that  was absurd;  he  had already discovered that this was
the nearest he  could get. If he flew  any closer,  the image would start to
breakup, revealing its basic pixels. It was better to keep his distance, and
not destroy the beautiful illusion.
     And there  --  it was incredible! --  was the little park  where he had
played with his junior and high-school friends. The City Fathers were always
arguing  about its  maintenance,  as the water supply became  more and  more
critical. Well, at least it had survived to this time -- whenever that might
be.
     And then  another memory brought  tears to his eyes. Along those narrow
paths, whenever he could get home from Houston  or the Moon, he  had  walked
with his beloved Rhodesian Ridgeback, throwing  sticks for him to  retrieve,
as man and dog had done from time immemorial.
     Poole had hoped, with all his heart, that Rikki would still be there to
greet him when he returned from Jupiter, and had left him in the care of his
younger  brother Martin.  He  almost  lost control, and sank several  metres
before regaining stability, as he once more faced the bitter truth that both
Rikki and Martin had been dust for centuries.
     When he could see properly again, he noticed that the dark  band of the
Grand Canyon was just visible on the far horizon. He was debating whether to
head for it -- he was growing a little tired -- when he became aware that he
was  not  alone in  the sky.  Something  else was  approaching,  and it  was
certainly not a human flyer.  Although  it was  difficult to judge distances
here, it seemed much too large for that.
     Well, he thought, I'm  not particularly surprised to meet a pterodactyl
here -- indeed, it's just the sort of thing I'd expect. I hope it's friendly
-- or that I can outfly it if it isn't. Oh, no!
     A pterodactyl was  not a bad guess: maybe eight points out of ten. What
was approaching him now, with slow flaps of  its great leathery wings, was a
dragon straight out of Fairyland. And, to complete the picture, there was  a
beautiful  lady  riding  on  its  back.  At  least,  Poole  assumed  she was
beautiful. The traditional image was rather spoiled by one  trifling detail:
much of  her  face  was concealed by a large pair of  aviator's goggles that
might have come straight from the open cockpit of a World War I biplane.
     Poole hovered  in mid-air,  like  a swimmer treading  water, until  the
oncoming monster came close enough for him to hear the flapping of its great
wings. Even when it was  less  than twenty metres away, he could not  decide
whether it was a machine or a bio-construct: probably both.
     And then he forgot about the dragon, for the rider removed her goggles.
     The trouble with cliche?s, some philosopher  remarked, probably  with a
yawn, is that they are so boringly true.
     But 'love at first sight' is never boring.

     Danil could provide no information, but then Poole had not expected any
from him. His ubiquitous  escort -- he  certainly would not pass muster as a
classic valet -- seemed  so limited  in his  functions  that Poole sometimes
wondered if  he was  mentally handicapped, unlikely  though that  seemed. He
understood  the functioning  of all the  household  appliances, carried  out
simple orders  with speed and efficiency, and knew his way  about the Tower.
But that was all; it was impossible to have an intelligent conversation with
him, and any  polite queries about his family were met with a look of  blank
incomprehension. Poole had even wondered if he too was a bio-robot.
     Indra, however, gave him the answer he needed right away.
     'Oh, you've met the Dragon Lady!'
     'Is that what you call her? What's her real name -- and can you  get me
her Ident? We were hardly in a position to touch palms.'
     'Of course -- no problemo.'
     'Where did you pick up that?'
     Indra looked uncharacteristically confused.
     'I've no idea -- some  old  book or  movie.  Is it  a  good  figure  of
speech?'
     'Not if you're over fifteen.'
     'I'll try  to remember. Now tell me what happened -- unless you want to
make me jealous.'
     They  were now  such  good friends that they  could discuss any subject
with  perfect  frankness. Indeed, they had laughingly  lamented their  total
lack of romantic interest in each other  -- though Indra had once commented,
'I guess that if we were both marooned on a desert asteroid, with no hope of
rescue, we could come to some arrangement.'
     'First, you tell me who she is.'
     'Her name's Aurora McAuley; among many other things, she's President of
the  Society  for Creative  Anachronisms.  And  if  you  thought  Draco  was
impressive, wait until you see some of their  other -- ah -- creations. Like
Moby Dick --  and a whole zooful  of  dinosaurs  Mother Nature never thought
of.'
     This is too good to be true, thought Poole.
     I am the biggest anachronism on Planet Earth.

     12 Frustration

     Until now,  he  had almost  forgotten that conversation with the  Space
Agency psychologist.
     'You may be gone from  Earth for at  least three years. If  you like, I
can  give you  a  harmless anaphrodisiac implant  that  will  last  out  the
mission. I promise we'll more than make it up, when you get home.'
     'No thanks,' Poole had answered, trying to keep his face straight  when
he continued, 'I think I can handle it.'
     Nevertheless, he had become suspicious after the third  or  fourth week
-- and so had Dave Bowman.
     'I've  noticed  it too,'  Dave said  'I  bet  those  damn  doctors  put
something in our diet...'
     Whatever that something was  -- if indeed it had ever existed -- it was
certainly long past its  shelf-life. Until now, Poole had  been too busy  to
get involved in any emotional entanglements,  and had politely  turned  down
generous offers  from several young  (and not so young) ladies.  He  was not
sure whether it was his physique or his fame  that appealed to them: perhaps
it was nothing more than simple  curiosity  about  a man who,  for  all they
knew, might be an ancestor from twenty or thirty generations in the past.
     To Poole's delight, Mistress McAuley's  Ident conveyed  the information
that she was  currently  between lovers,  and he  wasted no  further time in
contacting  her. Within  twenty-four hours he  was pillion-riding, with  his
arms enjoyably around  her  waist. He had also learned why aviator's goggles
were a good idea, for Draco was entirely robotic, and could easily cruise at
a  hundred klicks. Poole doubted if any real  dragons had ever attained such
speeds.
     He was not surprised that the  ever-changing landscapes below them were
straight out of legend. Ali Baba had waved angrily at them, as they overtook
his flying carpet, shouting 'Can't you see where you're going!'  Yet he must
be a long way from Baghdad, because the dreaming spires over which  they now
circled could only be Oxford.
     Aurora confirmed his guess as she pointed  down: 'That's the pub -- the
inn -- where Lewis and Tolkien used to meet their friends, the Inklings. And
look at the river -- that boat just coming out from the bridge -- do you see
the two little girls and the clergyman in it?'
     'Yes,'  he shouted  back  against the  gentle  sussuration  of  Draco's
slipstream. 'And I suppose one of them is Alice.'
     Aurora turned and smiled at him over her shoulder: she seemed genuinely
delighted.
     'Quite  correct:  she's an accurate replica, based  on  the  Reverend's
photos. I was afraid  you wouldn't know. So many people stopped reading soon
after your time.'
     Poole felt a glow of satisfaction.
     I believe  I've passed  another test, he told himself smugly. Riding on
Draco  must have been the  first.  How many  more, I  wonder? Fighting  with
broadswords?
     But there were no more, and the answer to the immemorial 'Your place or
mine?' was -- Poole's.

     The  next   morning,  shaken  and  mortified,  he  contacted  Professor
Anderson.
     'Everything  was  going splendidly,' he lamented,  'when  she  suddenly
became hysterical and pushed  me  away.  I was afraid  I'd  hurt her somehow
--'Then  she called the roomlight -- we'd been in darkness -- and jumped out
of bed. I guess I was just staring like a fool...' He laughed ruefully. 'She
was certainly worth staring at.'
     'I'm sure of it. Go on.'
     'After a few minutes she relaxed and said something I'll never be  able
to forget.'
     Anderson waited patiently for Poole to compose himself. 'She said: "I'm
really  sorry, Frank.  We could have had a good time. But I didn't know that
you'd been -- mutilated."
     The  professor  looked  baffled,  but  only  for  a  moment. 'Oh  --  I
understand. I'm sorry too, Frank -- perhaps I should have warned you. In  my
thirty years of practice, I've only seen half a dozen cases -- all for valid
medical reasons, which certainly didn't apply to you...'
     'Circumcision  made a lot  of  sense in primitive times -- and even  in
your century  --  as a defence  against  some  unpleasant  -- even  fatal --
diseases in backward countries with poor hygiene.  But  otherwise  there was
absolutely no excuse for it -- and several arguments against, as you've just
discovered!'
     'I checked the records after I'd examined you the first time, and found
that  by mid-twenty-first century there had  been so many malpractice  suits
that  the  American  Medical Association  had  been forced  to  ban  it. The
arguments among the contemporary doctors are very entertaining.'
     'I'm sure they are,' said Poole morosely.
     'In some countries  it continued for another century: then some unknown
genius coined a slogan  -- please excuse the  vulgarity -- "God designed us:
circumcision is blasphemy". That more or less ended the practice. But if you
want,  it would be  easy to arrange a transplant  --  you wouldn't be making
medical history, by any means.'
     'I don't think it would work. Afraid I'd start laughing every time.'
     'That's the spirit -- you're already getting over it.'
     Somewhat to his surprise,  Poole realized that Anderson's prognosis was
correct. He even found himself already laughing.
     'Now what, Frank?'
     'Aurora's  "Society for  Creative  Anachronisms". I'd  hoped  it  would
improve  my chances.  Just my luck to have found one anachronism she doesn't
appreciate.'

     13 Stranger in a Strange Time

     Indra was not quite as sympathetic as he had hoped: perhaps, after all,
there  was  some  sexual jealousy  in  their relationship.  And -- much more
serious -- what they wryly labelled  the Dragon Debacle  led to their  first
real argument.
     It began innocently enough, when Indra complained:
     'People  are  always  asking  me why I've  devoted my  life  to  such a
horrible period of history, and it's not much of an answer to say that there
were even worse ones.'
     'Then why are you interested in my century?'
     'Because it marks the transition between barbarism and civilization.'
     'Thank you. Just call me Conan.'
     'Conan? The only one I know is the man who invented Sherlock Holmes.'
     'Never  mind  --  sorry I interrupted. Of course,  we in the  so-called
developed  countries  thought  we  were  civilized.  At   least  war  wasn't
respectable  any more, and the United Nations  was always  doing its best to
stop the wars that did break out.'
     'Not very successfully: I'd give it about three out of ten. But what we
find incredible  is the way that people -- right up to  the early 2000s!  --
calmly  accepted behaviour we  would consider atrocious. And believed in the
most mind-boggled --'
     'Boggling.'
     '- nonsense, which surely any  rational  person  would dismiss  out  of
hand.'
     'Examples, please.'
     'Well, your really  trivial loss started me doing some research,  and I
was appalled by what I found. Did you know that every year in some countries
thousands  of little  girls  were  hideously  mutilated  to  preserve  their
virginity? Many of them died -- but the authorities turned a blind eye.'
     'I  agree that was  terrible --  but what  could my government do about
it?'
     'A great deal -- if  it wished. But that would have offended the people
who supplied  it  with oil  and bought its  weapons, like the landmines that
killed and maimed civilians by the thousand.'
     'You don't  understand, Indra.  Often we  had  no  choice:  we couldn't
reform the whole world. And didn't somebody once say "Politics is the art of
the possible"?'
     'Quite true -- which is why only second-rate minds go  into  it. Genius
likes to challenge the impossible.'
     'Well, I'm glad you have a good supply of genius, so you can put things
right.'
     'Do  I detect a hint of  sarcasm? Thanks to  our  computers, we can run
political experiments in  cyberspace  before trying  them  out in  practice.
Lenin  was unlucky; he was born a hundred years too soon.  Russian communism
might have worked -- at least for a while --  if it had had  microchips. And
had managed to avoid Stalin.'
     Poole was constantly amazed  by Indra's knowledge of his age -- as well
as by her  ignorance of so much that he took for  granted. In a way,  he had
the reverse problem.  Even  if  he  lived the  hundred years  that  had been
confidently promised  him, he could never  learn enough to feel  at home. In
any conversation,  there would  always be references  he did not understand,
and jokes that would go over his head. Worse still, he would always  feel on
the  verge of  some "faux pas"  -- about to create some social disaster that
would embarrass even the best of his new friends...
     Such  as  the  occasion  when  he was lunching, fortunately in  his own
quarters, with Indra and Professor Anderson. The meals that emerged from the
autochef were always perfectly acceptable, having been designed to match his
physiological  requirements. But they were  certainly nothing to get excited
about, and would have been the despair of a twenty-first-century gourmet.
     Then, one day, an unusually  tasty  dish appeared,  which brought  back
vivid memories of the deer-hunts and barbecues of his youth. However,  there
was something unfamiliar about both flavour and texture, so Poole  asked the
obvious question.
     Anderson merely smiled, but for  a few seconds  Indra  looked as if she
was  about to be sick. Then she  recovered  and said: 'You tell him -- after
we've finished eating.'
     Now what  have I done wrong? Poole asked himself. Half an  hour  later,
with Indra rather pointedly absorbed in  a video display at the other end of
the room, his knowledge of the Third Millennium made another major advance.
     'Corpse-food was on the way out even in your time,' Anderson explained.
'Raising animals to -- ugh -- eat  them became  economically  impossible.  I
don't know how many acres of land it took to feed  one cow, but at least ten
humans could survive on the plants it produced. And probably a hundred, with
hydroponic techniques.
     'But what finished the whole horrible business was not economics -- but
disease. It started first with cattle, then spread to  other food animals --
a kind  of  virus,  I  believe,  that  affected  the  brain,  and  caused  a
particularly nasty death. Although a cure was eventually found,  it  was too
late to  turn  back  the clock --  and anyway, synthetic foods were  now far
cheaper, and you could get them in any flavour you liked.'
     Remembering weeks of satisfying but  unexciting meals, Poole had strong
reservations  about this.  For why, he  wondered, did he  still have wistful
dreams of spare-ribs and cordon bleu steaks?
     Other dreams were  far more disturbing, and  he  was afraid that before
long  he  would  have  to  ask  Anderson  for  medical  assistance.  Despite
everything that was being done to make him feel at home, the strangeness and
sheer complexity of this new world were  beginning to overwhelm  him. During
sleep, as if in an  unconscious effort to escape, he often reverted  to  his
earlier life: but when he awoke, that only made matters worse.
     He  had travelled across to America Tower and  looked  down, in reality
and not in simulation, on the landscape  of his youth -- and it had not been
a good idea. With  optical  aid, when the atmosphere was  clear, he'd got so
close  that he could see  individual  human beings  as they went about their
affairs, sometimes along streets that he remembered...
     And always, at the back of  his mind, was the knowledge that down there
had once  lived everyone he  had ever loved, Mother, Father  (before he  had
gone off with  that Other Woman),  dear Uncle  George and Aunt  Lil, brother
Martin -- and,  not  least,  a succession of dogs,  beginning with  the warm
puppies of his earliest childhood and culminating in Rikki.
     Above all, there was the memory -- and mystery -- of Helena...
     It  had  begun  as  a  casual  affair,  in  the  early   days  of   his
astrotraining, but had become  more and  more serious as  the years went by.
Just before he had left for Jupiter, they had  planned to make it  permanent
when he returned.
     And if he  did  not, Helena wished to have his child. He still recalled
the blend of solemnity and hilarity  with which they  had made the necessary
arrangements...
     Now,  a thousand years  later, despite  all his  efforts,  he  had been
unable to find if Helena had kept her promise. Just  as there were  now gaps
in his  own memory, so there were also in the collective records of Mankind.
The worst was that created by the devastating electromagnetic pulse from the
2304 asteroid impact, which  had  wiped out several per cent  of the world's
information banks, despite all  backups and safety systems. Poole could  not
help wondering if, among all the exabytes that were irretrievably lost, were
the records of his own children: even now,  his descendants of the thirtieth
generation might be walking the Earth; but he would never know.
     It  helped a little  to have  discovered  that --  unlike Aurora --some
ladies  of  this  era  did not  consider  him  to be damaged  goods. On  the
contrary: they  often found his alteration quite exciting, but this slightly
bizarre  reaction  made  it  impossible  for  Poole to establish  any  close
relationship. Nor was he anxious to do so; all that he really needed was the
occasional healthy, mindless exercise.
     Mindless  -- that  was the trouble. He no  longer had  arty  purpose in
life. And the weight of too many memories was upon him; echoing the title of
a famous book he had read in his  youth,  he often said  to himself, 'I am a
Stranger in a Strange Time.'
     There were even occasions when he looked  down at  the beautiful planet
on which -- if  he obeyed  doctor's orders -- he could never walk again, and
wondered what it would be like to make a second acquaintance with the vacuum
of  space.  Though  it was not  easy to  get  through  the  airlocks without
triggering  some alarm, it  had been done:  every few years, some determined
suicide made a brief meteoric display in the Earth's atmosphere.
     Perhaps  it was  just as  well  that deliverance was on its way, from a
completely unexpected direction.

        x x x
     'Nice to meet you, Commander Poole -- for the second time.'
     'I'm sorry -- don't recall -- but then I see so many people.'
     'No need to apologize. First time was out round Neptune.'
     'Captain Chandler -- delighted to see you! Can I get something from the
autochef?'
     'Anything with over twenty per cent alcohol will be fine.'
     'And  what are you  doing  back on Earth? They told me you  never  come
inside Mars orbit.'
     'Almost true --  though I was born here,  I think it's a  dirty, smelly
place -- too many people -- creeping up to a billion again!'
     'More than  ten billion in my time. By the  way,  did you get my "Thank
you" message?'
     'Yes --  and I know I  should have contacted you. But I  waited until I
headed sunwards again. So here I am. Your good health!'
     As the Captain disposed of his drink with impressive speed, Poole tried
to analyse his visitor. Beards -- even small goatees like Chandler's -- were
very rare in this society, and he had never known an astronaut who wore one:
they  did not co-exist comfortably  with space-helmets. Of course, a Captain
might go for years between EVs, and in any case most  outside jobs were done
by robots; but there was  always the risk of the unexpected, when  one might
have to get suited in a hurry. It was obvious that Chandler was something of
an eccentric, and Poole's heart warmed to him.
     'You've not answered my question. If you don't like Earth, what are you
doing here?'
     'Oh,  mostly  contacting  old  friends  --  it's  wonderful  to  forget
hour-long delays,  and to have real-time conversations! But of course that's
not the  reason.  My  old rust-bucket  is  having a  refit,  up  at  the Rim
shipyard. And the armour  has  to be replaced; when it  gets  down to a  few
centimetres thick, I don't sleep too well.'
     'Armour?'
     'Dust shield. Not such a problem in your time, was it? But it's a dirty
environment  out  round  Jupiter,  and  our normal cruise speed  is  several
thousand klicks  -- a second! So there's a continuous gentle pattering, like
raindrops on the roof.'
     'You're joking!'
     'Course I am. If we really could  hear anything, we'd be dead. Luckily,
this sort of unpleasantness is very rare -- last serious accident was twenty
years  ago.  We know all the main comet streams,  where most of the junk is,
and are careful  to  avoid them  -- except when we're  matching velocity  to
round up ice.
     'But why don't you come aboard and have a  look around, before  we take
off for Jupiter?'
     'I'd be delighted... did you say Jupiter?'
     'Well, Ganymede,  of  course --  Anubis City. We've  a lot  of business
there, and several of us have families we haven't seen for months.'
     Poole scarcely heard him.
     Suddenly -- unexpectedly --  and perhaps none too  soon, he had found a
reason for living.
     Commander  Frank  Poole  was the sort  of man who hated to  leave a job
undone -- and  a few specks of  cosmic  dust,  even  moving  at  a  thousand
kilometres a second, were not likely to discourage him.
     He had unfinished business at the world once known as Jupiter.

        II GOLIATH

     14 A Farewell to Earth

     'Anything you want  within reason,' he  had been told.  Frank Poole was
not  sure  if  his  hosts would consider  that returning to  Jupiter  was  a
reasonable request; indeed, he was not quite sure himself, and was beginning
to have second thoughts.
     He had already  committed  himself to scores  of engagements,  weeks in
advance. Most of them  he  would be happy to  miss,  but there were some  he
would be  sorry to forgo. In particular, he hated  to disappoint the  senior
class from his old high school -- how  astonishing that it still existed! --
when they planned to visit him next month.
     However, he was relieved --  and a  little surprised -- when both Indra
and  Professor Anderson agreed that  it was an excellent idea. For the first
time, he  realized  that they  had been  concerned  with his  mental health;
perhaps a holiday from Earth would be the best possible cure.
     And,  most important of all, Captain Chandler  was delighted. 'You  can
have  my cabin,' he promised. 'I'll kick the First Mate out of hers.'  There
were times when  Poole wondered if Chandler, with his beard and swagger, was
not  another anachronism.  He could  easily  picture  him on the bridge of a
battered three-master, with Skull and Crossbones flying overhead.
     Once his decision had been made, events moved with surprising speed. He
had accumulated very few possessions, and fewer still that he needed to take
with him. The most important was Miss Pringle, his  electronic alter ego and
secretary, now the  storehouse of  both his  lives, and  the  small stack of
terabyte memories that went with her.
     Miss Pringle was not much larger than the hand-held personal assistants
of  his  own  age, and usually lived,  like  the  Old West's Colt  45, in  a
quick-draw holster at  his waist. She could communicate with him by audio or
Braincap, and  her  prime  duty  was to act as an information filter  and  a
buffer to the  outside world.  Like  any good  secretary,  she knew  when to
reply, in the appropriate format: 'I'll put you through now' or -- much more
frequently: 'I'm  sorry -- Mr  Poole is engaged. Please record your  message
and he will get back to you as soon as possible.' Usually, this was never.
     There were very few farewells to be made: though realtime conversations
would be impossible owing  to the sluggish velocity of radio waves, he would
be  in  constant touch with Indra and Joseph -- the  only genuine friends he
had made.
     Somewhat  to  his  surprise,  Poole  realized  that  he would miss  his
enigmatic but useful 'valet', because he would now  have  to handle  all the
small  chores of  everyday life by himself.  Danil  bowed slightly when they
parted, but otherwise showed no sign of emotion, as they took the  long ride
up  to  the outer  curve of the  world-circling  wheel, thirty-six  thousand
kilometres above central Africa.

     'I'm  not sure, Dim, that you'll appreciate the comparison. But do  you
know what Goliath reminds me of?'
     They  were now such good  friends that  Poole  could use  the Captain's
nickname -- but only when no one else was around.
     'Something unflattering, I assume.'
     'Not really. But when I was a  boy, I  came across a whole pile  of old
science-fiction  magazines that  my Uncle  George had abandoned --  "pulps",
they were called, after the cheap paper they were printed on... most of them
were  already  falling  to  bits. They had wonderful garish  covers, showing
strange planets and monsters -- and, of course, spaceships!
     'As I grew older, I realized how ridiculous those spaceships were. They
were  usually rocket-driven  --  but  there was never any sign of propellant
tanks! Some of  them had rows of windows from stem to stem,  just like ocean
liners.  There  was  one  favourite  of  mine  with a  huge  glass dome -- a
space-going conservatory...
     'Well,  those old artists had the last laugh:  too bad they could never
know. Goliath looks  more like their dreams than  the  flying fuel-tanks  we
used to launch from the Cape.
     Your Inertial Drive still seems too good to be true -- no visible means
of support, unlimited range and speed -- sometimes I think I'm the one who's
dreaming!'
     Chandler laughed and pointed to the view outside.
     'Does that look like a dream?'
     It was the first  time that Poole had seen a genuine horizon  since  he
had come to Star City, and it was not quite as far away as he  had expected.
After  all, he was on the outer rim of  a wheel  seven times the diameter of
Earth,  so surely the view across the  roof of  this artificial world should
extend for several hundred kilometres...
     He used to be good at  mental arithmetic --  a rare achievement even in
his  time, and  probably  much rarer  now. The  formula to give  the horizon
distance was a simple one:  the square root of  twice your height  times the
radius -- the sort of thing you never forgot, even if you wanted to...
     Let's see -- we're about 8 metres up -- so root 16 -- this is easy!  --
say big R  is 40,000 -- knock off those three zeros to make it all klicks --
4 times root 40 -- hmm -- just over 25...
     Well,  twenty-five kilometres was a fair  distance,  and  certainly  no
spaceport  on  Earth had ever seemed this huge.  Even knowing perfectly well
what to  expect, it was uncanny to watch vessels many  times the size of his
long-lost  Discovery  lifting  off,  not only  with no  sound, but  with  no
apparent means of propulsion. Though Poole missed the flame and  fury of the
old-time countdowns, he  had to admit that this was cleaner,  more efficient
-- and far safer.
     Strangest  of  all, though, was  to  sit  up here  on the Rim,  in  the
Geostationary Orbit itself -- and to  feel weight! Just metres away, outside
the window  of  the tiny  observation lounge,  servicing robots  and  a  few
spacesuited humans were gliding gently about their business; yet here inside
Goliath the inertial field was maintaining standard Mars-gee.
     'Sure you don't want to  change your mind, Frank?' Captain Chandler had
asked jokingly,  as  he left  for  the  bridge. 'Still  ten  minutes  before
lift-off.'
     'Wouldn't be  very popular if I did, would I? No -- as they used to say
back in the old days -- we have commit. Ready or not, here I come.'
     Poole felt the  need to be alone when  the  drive went on, and the tiny
crew --  only four men and  three women -- respected his wish.  Perhaps they
guessed  how he must be feeling,  to leave Earth  for the  second time  in a
thousand years -- and, once again, to face an unknown destiny.
     Jupiter-Lucifer was on the  other  side  of  the  Sun,  and the  almost
straight line  of  Goliath's orbit  would  take  them  close to Venus. Poole
looked  forward to seeing, with his  own  unaided  eyes, if  Earth's  sister
planet  was now beginning to live up to that description, after centuries of
terraforming.
     From  a thousand kilometres up, Star City  looked like a gigantic metal
band   around  Earth's  Equator,  dotted  with  gantries,  pressure   domes,
scaffolding holding half-completed ships, antennas, and other more enigmatic
structures.  It was diminishing  swiftly  as  Goliath headed  sunwards,  and
presently Poole could  see  how  incomplete it was:  there  were  huge  gaps
spanned only by a spider's web of scaffolding, which would probably never be
completely enclosed.
     And now they were falling below the plane of the ring; it was midwinter
in the  northern  hemisphere, so the slim halo of Star  City was inclined at
over twenty degrees  to the Sun. Already  Poole  could see  the American and
Asian  towers, as shining  threads stretching  outwards and away, beyond the
blue haze of the atmosphere.
     He was barely  conscious of time as  Goliath gained speed,  moving more
swiftly  than  any comet  that  had ever  fallen  sunwards from interstellar
space. The Earth, almost full, still spanned his field of view, and he could
now  see the full length of the  Africa Tower which had been his home in the
life he was now leaving --  perhaps, he could not help thinking, leaving for
ever.
     When they were fifty thousand kilometres out, he  was  able to view the
whole of  Star City, as a narrow ellipse enclosing the Earth. Though the far
side was barely  visible, as a  hair-line of light against the stars, it was
awe-inspiring  to think  that the human race had now set  this sign upon the
heavens.
     Then Poole remembered  the rings  of  Saturn, infinitely more glorious.
The astronautical engineers still had a long, long way  to  go, before  they
could match the achievements of Nature.
     Or, if that was the right word, Deus.

     15 Transit of Venus

     When he woke the  next  morning, they were  already at  Venus. But  the
huge, dazzling crescent of the still cloud-wrapped planet was  not the  most
striking object in the sky:
     Goliath was floating  above an endless expanse of crinkled silver foil,
flashing in the sunlight with  ever-changing  patterns as the  ship  drifted
across it.
     Poole remembered that  in his own age there had been an artist  who had
wrapped  whole buildings in plastic  sheets: how  he  would have loved  this
opportunity to  package billions of  tons of ice in a glittering envelope...
Only in this way could the core of a comet be protected from evaporation  on
its decades-long journey sunwards.
     'You're in luck, Frank,' Chandler had told him. 'This is something I've
never  seen  myself. It should  be  spectacular. Impact due  in just over an
hour. We've given it a little nudge, to make sure it comes down in the right
place. Don't want anyone to get hurt.'
     Poole looked at him in astonishment.
     'You mean -- there are already people on Venus?'
     'About fifty mad  scientists, near the South Pole.  Of course,  they're
well dug in, but we should shake them up a bit -- even though Ground Zero is
on  the other  side of the planet. Or I should say "Atmosphere Zero"  --  it
will be days before anything except the shockwave gets down to the surface.'
     As  the  cosmic  iceberg,  sparkling  and flashing  in  its  protective
envelope,  dwindled  away  towards Venus,  Poole  was struck with  a sudden,
poignant memory. The Christmas trees of his childhood  had been adorned with
just such ornaments, delicate bubbles of coloured glass. And the  comparison
was not completely ludicrous: for many families on Earth, this was still the
right  season for gifts, and Goliath was bringing a present beyond price  to
another world.
     The  radar  image of  the tortured  Venusian  landscape  --  its  weird
volcanoes, pancake domes, and  narrow, sinuous canyons -- dominated the main
screen of Goliath's control centre, but Poole preferred  the evidence of his
own eyes.  Although the unbroken  sea  of  clouds that  covered  the  planet
revealed nothing of the inferno beneath, he wanted to see  what would happen
when the stolen comet struck. In a matter of seconds, the myriad of  tons of
frozen  hydrates that had been gathering  speed for decades on the  downhill
run from Neptune would deliver all their energy...
     The  initial flash was  even brighter than he had expected. How strange
that a missile made of ice could generate temperatures that must  be in  the
tens of thousands of degrees! Though the filters of the view-port would have
absorbed all  the  dangerous shorter wave-lengths, the  fierce blue  of  the
fireball proclaimed that it was hotter than the Sun.
     It was cooling rapidly as it expanded -- through yellow, orange, red...
The shockwave would now  be spreading outwards  at the velocity  of sound --
and what a sound  that must be! -- so in a few minutes  there should be some
visible indication of its passage across the face of Venus.
     And there it  was! Only a tiny black ring -- like an insignificant puff
of smoke, giving no hint of the cyclonic fury that must  be blasting its way
outwards from the  point of impact.  As Poole watched,  it  slowly expanded,
though owing to its scale  there was no sense of visible movement: he had to
wait for  a full  minute before he could be  quite sure  that  it  had grown
larger.
     After a quarter of  an hour, however, it was the most prominent marking
on the planet. Though much fainter -- a dirty grey, rather than black -- the
shockwave was now a ragged  circle more  than a thousand  kilometres across.
Poole guessed that it had lost its original symmetry while sweeping over the
great mountain ranges that lay beneath it.
     Captain  Chandler's  voice  sounded  briskly  over  the ship's  address
system.
     'Putting  you through  to  Aphrodite  Base.  Glad  to say  they're  not
shouting for help --'
     '- shook us up a bit, but just what we expected. Monitors indicate some
rain  already  over the  Nokomis Mountains --  it will  soon  evaporate, but
that's  a beginning. And there seems to  have been a  flash-flood  in Hecate
Chasm -- too good to be true, but we're checking. There was a temporary lake
of boiling water there after the last delivery --'
     I don't envy  them, Poole told himself  -- but I certainly admire them.
They  prove  that  the  spirit  of  adventure  still exists  in this perhaps
too-comfortable and too-well-adjusted society.
     '- and thanks again for  bringing  this little  load down in  the right
place. With any luck -- and if we can get that sun-screen up into sync orbit
-- we'll have some permanent seas before long. And  then we can plant  coral
reefs, to make lime and pull the excess CO2 out of  the atmosphere -- hope I
live to see it!'
     I  hope you  do, thought Poole in silent admiration. He had often dived
in  the tropical seas of Earth, admiring weird  and colourful  creatures  so
bizarre that it was hard  to believe anything stranger would be found,  even
on the planets of other suns.
     'Package  delivered  on time, and receipt acknowledged,'  said  Captain
Chandler  with  obvious satisfaction.  'Goodbye Venus -- Ganymede,  here  we
come.'

        MISS PRINGLE
        FILE WALLACE
     Hello,  Indra.  Yes,  you  were  quite  right.  I  do  miss  our little
arguments. Chandler and I  get along fine,  and at first the crew treated me
-- this will amuse you -- rather like a holy relic. But they're beginning to
accept me, and have even started to pull my leg (do you know that idiom?).
     It's  annoying  not to  be able to have  a  real conversation  -- we've
crossed the orbit of Mars, so radio round-trip is already over an  hour. But
there's one advantage -- you won't be able to interrupt me...
     Even though it will take us only a week to reach Jupiter, I thought I'd
have  time  to relax. Not  a  bit  of it: my fingers started to itch,  and I
couldn't resist going back to school. So I've begun basic training, all over
again,  in one of Goliath's  minishuttles. Maybe  Dim  will actually  let me
solo...
     It's  not much bigger than  Discovery's pods  -- but what a difference!
First of all, of course, it  doesn't  use rockets: I can't  get used to  the
luxury of  the inertial drive, and unlimited range. Could fly back to  Earth
if I had to  -- though I'd probably get -- remember the phrase I  used once,
and you guessed its meaning? -- 'stir crazy'.
     The biggest difference, though, is the control system. It's  been a big
challenge for me to get used  to hands-off operation -- and the computer has
had to  learn to  recognize my voice commands.  At first it was asking every
five minutes 'Do you really mean that?' I know it would be better to use the
Braincap -- but  I'm  still not  completely confident  with that gadget. Not
sure if I'll ever get used to something reading my mind.
     By the way, the shuttle's called  Falcon. It's a nice name -- and I was
disappointed to find that no one aboard  knew that it  goes all the way back
to the Apollo missions, when we first landed on the Moon...
     Uh-huh --  there  was a  lot more  I wanted to say, but the  skipper is
calling. Back to the classroom -- love and out.
        STORE
        TRANSMIT

     Hello Frank  -- Indra  calling -- if that's  right  word!  -- on my new
Thoughtwriter  --  old one had  nervous  breakdown  ha ha  --  so be lots of
mistakes -- no time to edit before I send. Hope you can make sense.
     COMSET! Channel one oh three -- record from twelve thirty -- correction
-- thirteen thirty. Sorry...
     Hope I can get old  unit fixed -- knew  all my short-cuts and abbrieves
-- maybe should get psychoanalysed like in your time -- never understood how
that Fraudian -- mean Freudian ha ha -- nonsense lasted as long as it did --
Reminds me -- came across late Twentieth defin other day -- may amuse you --
something  like  this   --  quote  --Psychoanalysis  --  contagious  disease
originating  Vienna  circa 1900  -- now  extinct  in  Europe but  occasional
outbreaks among rich Americans. Unquote. Funny?
     Sorry again -- trouble  with Thoughtwriters  -- hard to stick  to point
--xz 12? w 888 5***** js98l2yebdc DAMN... STOP BACKUP
     Did I do something wrong then? Will try again.  You mentioned  Danil...
sorry we always evaded  your questions about him --  knew you were  curious,
but we had very good reason -- remember you once called him a non-person?...
not bad guess...!
     Once you  asked  me about  crime nowadays -- I said  any  such interest
pathological  --  maybe   prompted  by  the  endless  sickening   television
programmes of your  time --  never  able  to  watch  more  than  few minutes
myself... disgusting!
        DOOR ACKNOWLEDGE! OH, HELLO MELINDA EXCUSE SIT DOWN NEARLY FINISHED...
     Yes -- crime. Always some... Society's irreducible noise level. What to
do?
     Your  solution  --  prisons.  State-sponsored perversion  factories  --
costing ten times average family income to hold one inmate! Utterly crazy...
Obviously  something very  wrong with people who  shouted  loudest  for more
prisons --  They should  be  psychoanalysed! But let's  be fair -- really no
alternative before electronic monitoring and control perfected -- you should
see  the joyful crowds smashing the prison  walls  then  -- nothing like  it
since Berlin fifty years earlier!
     Yes -- Danil. I don't know what his crime was -- wouldn't tell you if I
did -- but presume his psych profile suggested he'd make a good  -- what was
the  word?  -- ballet -- no, valet. Very hard to get people for some jobs --
don't  know  how  we'd manage if  crime  level zero!  Anyway hope he's  soon
decontrolled and back in normal society
        SORRY MELINDA NEARLY FINISHED
     That's  it, Frank  -- regards  to Dimitrj  -- you must  be  halfway  to
Ganymede now -- wonder if they'll ever repeal Einstein so we can talk across
space in real-time!
     Hope this machine soon gets used to me. Otherwise be looking round  for
genuine antique  twentieth century word  processor... Would  you believe  --
once  even mastered that  QWERTYIYUIOP nonsense, which you took a couple  of
hundred years to get rid of?
     Love and good-bye.

        x x x

     Hello Frank --  here  I am again. Still  waiting  acknowledgement of my
last...
     Strange you should be heading towards  Ganymede, and my  old friend Ted
Khan. But  perhaps it's  not such a coincidence: he  was  drawn by the  same
enigma that you were...
     First I must  tell you  something about him. His parents played a dirty
trick, giving him the name Theodore. That  shortens --  don't ever  call him
that! -- to Theo. See what I mean?
     Can't help wondering if that's what drives  him. Don't know anyone else
who's developed such an  interest in religion  -- no, obsession. Better warn
you; he can be quite a bore.
     By the way, how am I doing? I miss  my old  Thinkwriter, but seem to be
getting  this  machine  under control. Haven't made any bad --  what did you
call  them? -- bloopers -- glitches -- fluffs -- so far at least -- Not sure
I should  tell you  this,  in case  you accidentally blurt  it  out, but  my
private nickname for Ted is 'The Last Jesuit'. You must know something about
them -- the Order was still very active in your time.
     Amazing  people  -- often great scientists -- superb scholars  -- did a
tremendous amount  of  good as  well  as much harm. One of history's supreme
ironies --  sincere and  brilliant seekers of knowledge and truth, yet their
whole philosophy hopelessly distorted by superstition...
     Xuedn2k3jn deer 2leidj dwpp
     Damn. Got emotional and lost control.  One, two, three, four...  now is
the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party... that's better.
     Anyway, Ted has that same brand of high-minded determination; don't get
into any arguments with him -- he'll go over you like a steam-roller.
     By the  way what were steam-rollers? Used for pressing clothes? Can see
how that could be very uncomfortable...
     Trouble with Thinkwriters... too easy  to  go off in all directions, no
matter  how hard  you try to discipline yourself... something to be said for
keyboards after all... sure I've said that before...
     Ted Khan... Ted Khan... Ted Khan
     He's  still famous  back on  Earth  for  at  least two of his  sayings:
'Civilization and Religion  are incompatible' and  'Faith is  believing what
you know isn't true'. Actually, I don't  think the last one is  original; if
it is, that's the nearest  he ever got  to  a joke. He never cracked a smile
when I  tried  one  of  my favourites  on  him -- hope you haven't  heard it
before. It obviously dates from your time.
     The Dean's complaining to his Faculty. 'Why do you scientists need such
expensive equipment? Why can't  you be like the Maths Department, which only
needs  a  blackboard and  a  waste-paper  basket?  Better  still,  like  the
Department  of Philosophy.  That doesn't even need  a wastepaper  basket...'
Well, perhaps Ted had heard it before... I expect most philosophers have...
     Anyway, give  him my regards --  and  don't, repeat don't, get into any
arguments with him!

     Love and best wishes from Africa Tower.
        TRANSCRIBE STORE
        TRANSMIT POOLE

     16 The Captain's Table

     The arrival  of  such a  distinguished  passenger had caused  a certain
disruption in the tight little world of Goliath, but the crew had adapted to
it with good humour. Every day, at 18.00 hours, all  personnel gathered  for
dinner in the wardroom, which in zero-gee could hold at  least thirty people
in comfort, if spread uniformly around the walls. However, most of the  time
the  ship's working areas  were  held at  lunar gravity,  so  there  was  an
undeniable floor -- and more than eight bodies made a crowd.
     The semi-circular table that unfolded around the auto-chef at mealtimes
could just seat the entire seven-person crew, with the Captain at  the place
of honour. One extra created such insuperable problems that somebody now had
to eat alone for every meal. After  much good-natured debate, it was decided
to make  the choice in alphabetical order -- not of proper names, which were
hardly ever used, but of nicknames. It had taken Poole some time to get used
to   them:  'Bolts'   (structural  engineering);  'Chips'   (computers   and
communications);  'First'  (First  Mate);  'Life'  (medical and life-support
systems);   'Props'  (propulsion  and   power);  and  'Stars'   (orbits  and
navigation).
     During the ten-day  voyage,  as  he listened to  the stories, jokes and
complaints of  his  temporary shipmates, Poole learned  more about the solar
system than  during his months on Earth. All aboard were obviously delighted
to have a  new and perhaps naïve listener as an attentive  one-man audience,
but Poole was seldom taken in by their more imaginative stories.
     Yet sometimes it was hard to know where to draw the line. No one really
believed   in  the  Golden  Asteroid,  which   was  usually  regarded  as  a
twenty-fourth-century hoax. But  what about  the Mercurian plasmoids,  which
had  been reported by  at least a dozen reliable  witnesses during  the last
five hundred years?
     The simplest explanation was  that they were related to ball-lightning,
responsible for so many 'Unidentified Flying  Object'  reports  on Earth and
Mars. But  some observers swore that they had shown purposefulness  --  even
inquisitiveness  -- when they were encountered at close  quarters. Nonsense,
answered the sceptics -- merely electrostatic attraction!
     Inevitably, this led to  discussions about life  in the  Universe,  and
Poole  found  himself  -- not  for the  first time  --defending his  own era
against its extremes of credulity and scepticism. Although  the  'Aliens are
among  us' mania had already subsided when he was a boy, even as late as the
2020s the  Space Agency  was still plagued  by lunatics who  claimed to have
been contacted  --  or  abducted  --  by  visitors from other worlds.  Their
delusions  had been reinforced by  sensational media  exploitation,  and the
whole syndrome was  later enshrined in the medical literature  as 'Adamski's
Disease'.
     The discovery of TMA ONE  had, paradoxically, put an  end to this sorry
nonsense,  by  demonstrating  that  though  there  was  indeed  intelligence
elsewhere,  it had apparently not  concerned itself with Mankind for several
million  years.  TMA  ONE  had  also  convincingly  refuted  the  handful of
scientists who  argued  that life  above  the  bacterial level  was  such an
improbable phenomenon that the human race was alone in this Galaxy -- if not
the Cosmos.
     Goliath's crew was more  interested in the technology than the politics
and  economics  of  Poole's  era,  and  were particularly fascinated by  the
revolution  that  had  taken place in  his  own  lifetime -- the  end of the
fossil-fuel age, triggered by the harnessing of vacuum energy. They found it
hard to imagine  the smog-choked cities of the twentieth  century,  and  the
waste, greed and appalling environmental disasters of the Oil Age.
     'Don't blame  me,' said Poole, fighting back gamely after one  round of
criticism. 'Anyway, see what a mess the twenty-first century made.'
     There was a chorus of 'What do you mean?'s around the table.
     'Well, as soon as the so-called Age  of Infinite  Power  got under way,
and  everyone had thousands of kilowatts of cheap, clean energy to play with
-- you know what happened!'
     'Oh, you mean the Thermal Crisis. But that was fixed.'
     'Eventually -- after you'd covered  half the Earth with  reflectors  to
bounce the  Sun's  heat  back into space.  Otherwise  it would have  been as
parboiled as Venus by now.'
     The crew's knowledge of Third Millennium  history  was  so surprisingly
limited that Poole --  thanks to the intensive education he had received  in
Star City -- could often amaze  them with details  of events centuries after
his own time. However, he was flattered to discover how well-acquainted they
were with Discovery's  log, it had become  one of the classic records of the
Space Age. They looked on it as he might have regarded  a Viking saga; often
he had to remind himself that he  was midway in time between Goliath and the
first ships to cross the western ocean...
     'On your Day 86,' Stars reminded him, at dinner  on the fifth  evening,
'you  passed within two  thousand kay  of asteroid 7794 --  and shot a probe
into it. Do you remember?"
     'Of course  I do,' Poole  answered rather brusquely 'To me, it happened
less than a year ago'
     'Um, sorry. Well, tomorrow we'll be even closer to 13,445. Like to have
a look?' With autoguidance and freeze-frame,  we should have a window all of
ten milliseconds wide.'
     A hundredth  of  a  second! That  few minutes  in Discovery  had seemed
hectic enough, but now everything would happen fifty times faster.
     'How large is it?' Poole asked.
     'Thirty  by  twenty  by  fifteen metres,'  Stars replied. 'Looks like a
battered brick.'
     'Sorry  we don't  have a slug to fire at it,' said Props. 'Did you ever
wonder if 7794 would hit back?'
     'Never occurred to us. But it did give the astronomers a lot  of useful
information,  so  it  was worth the risk... Anyway, a  hundredth of a second
hardly seems worth the bother. Thanks all the same.'
     'I understand. When you've seen one asteroid, you've seen them --'
     'Not true, Chips. When I was on Eros --'
     'As you've told  us at least a dozen times --, Poole's  mind  tuned out
the discussion, so that it was a  background of meaningless  noise. He was a
thousand years  in the past,  recalling  the only  excitement of Discovery's
mission before the final disaster. Though he and Bowman were perfectly aware
that  7794 was  merely  a lifeless,  airless chunk  of  rock, that knowledge
scarcely affected  their  feelings. It was the  only solid matter they would
meet this side of Jupiter, and they  had stared at  it  with the emotions of
sailors on a long sea voyage, skirting a coast on which they could not land.
     It was turning slowly end over  end, and  there were mottled patches of
light  and  shade distributed  at random  over  its  surface.  Sometimes  it
sparkled like a distant  window,  as planes or  outcroppings  of crystalline
material flashed in the Sun...
     He  remembered, also, the  mounting tension as  they  waited  to see if
their aim had been accurate. It was not easy to hit such a small target, two
thousand kilometres away, moving at a relative velocity of twenty kilometres
a second.
     Then, against  the  darkened portion of the asteroid, there had  been a
sudden, dazzling explosion of light.  The  tiny  slug -- pure Uranium 238 --
had impacted at meteoric speed:  in a fraction of a second,  all its kinetic
energy  had  been transformed  into  heat. A puff  of  incandescent  gas had
erupted  briefly  into  space, and  Discovery's cameras were  recording  the
rapidly  fading  spectral lines,  looking  for  the  tell-tale signatures of
glowing atoms. A few hours later, back on Earth, the astronomers learned for
the  first time the  composition of an asteroid's crust. There were no major
surprises, but several bottles of champagne changed hands.
     Captain  Chandler  himself  took  little  part  in the very  democratic
discussions  around his semi-circular table:  he seemed  content to  let his
crew relax and express their feelings in this informal atmosphere. There was
only one unspoken rule: no  serious business at mealtimes. If there were any
technical or operational problems, they had to be dealt with elsewhere.
     Poole had been  surprised --  and a  little shocked -- to discover that
the crew's knowledge of Goliath's systems was very superficial. Often he had
asked questions which should have been easily  answered, only to be referred
to the ship's own memory banks. After a while, however, he realized that the
sort  of  in-depth  training  he had  received  in  his  days was no  longer
possible: far too many complex systems were involved for any man or  woman's
mind  to  master. The  various specialists merely had  to  know  what  their
equipment  did, not how.  Reliability depended on  redundancy  and automatic
checking, and human intervention was much more likely to do harm than good.
     Fortunately none was required on this voyage: it had been as uneventful
as any skipper  could have hoped, when the new  sun of Lucifer dominated the
sky ahead.

        III THE WORLDS OF GALILEO

     (Extract, text only, Tourist's Guide to Outer Solar System, v 219.3)

     Even today, the giant  satellites  of what was  once Jupiter present us
with  major mysteries. Why are four  worlds, orbiting  the same primary  and
very similar in size, so different in most other respects?
     Only in the  case of Io, the innermost satellite, is there a convincing
explanation.  It  is  so  close  to  Jupiter  that  the  gravitational tides
constantly kneading its interior generate  colossal quantities of heat -- so
much, indeed, that Io's surface is semi-molten. It is the  most volcanically
active  world in the Solar System; maps of Io have a half-life of only a few
decades.
     Though  no  permanent human bases have ever been established in such an
unstable  environment,  there  have  been  numerous  landings  and there  is
continuous  robot monitoring. (For  the  tragic fate of the 2571 Expedition,
see Beagle 5.)
     Europa,  second  in  distance  from Jupiter,  was  originally  entirely
covered in ice, and showed few surface features except a complicated network
of cracks. The tidal forces which  dominate Io were much less powerful here,
but produced enough heat to give Europa a global ocean  of liquid  water, in
which many strange life-forms have evolved.
     In 2010 the Chinese ship Tsien touched down on Europa on one of the few
outcrops of solid rock protruding through the  crust of ice. In doing  so it
disturbed a creature of the Europan  abyss and was destroyed (see Spacecraft
Tsien, Galaxy, Universe).
     Since  the  conversion  of Jupiter into  the mini-sun Lucifer  in 2061,
virtually all of Europa's ice-cover has melted, and extensive  vulcanism has
created several small islands.
     As is well-known, there have  been  no landings on Europa for almost  a
thousand years, but the satellite is under continuous surveillance.
     Ganymede, largest moon in  the Solar System (diameter 5260 kilometres),
has also  been affected  by  the creation of a new sun, and  its  equatorial
regions are warm  enough to sustain  terrestrial life-forms, though  it does
not yet  have a  breathable atmosphere. Most  of its population is  actively
engaged  in  terraforming and  scientific research; the main  settlement  is
Anubis (pop 41,000), near the South Pole.
     Callisto is again  wholly different.  Its entire surface  is covered by
impact craters of all sizes, so numerous that they  overlap. The bombardment
must have  continued  for millions  of years,  for  the  newer craters  have
completely obliterated  the  earlier  ones.  There  is no permanent  base on
Callisto, but several automatic stations have been established there.

     17 Ganymede

     It was unusual for Frank Poole to oversleep, but he had been kept awake
by strange dreams.  Past and present were inextricably  mixed;  sometimes he
was on Discovery, sometimes in the  Africa  Tower -- and sometimes he  was a
boy again, among friends he had thought long-forgotten.
     Where am I? he asked  himself as he struggled up to consciousness, like
a swimmer trying to get back to  the surface. There was a small window  just
above his bed, covered by a curtain not thick enough to completely block the
light from outside. There had been a time, around the mid-twentieth century,
when  aircraft  had  been  slow  enough  to  feature  First  Class  sleeping
accommodation:  Poole had  never sampled this  nostalgic luxury,  which some
tourist organizations  had  still  advertised in  his own day, but he  could
easily imagine that he was doing so now.
     He drew  the  curtain and looked out. No, he  had not  awakened  in the
skies of  Earth,  though the landscape unrolling  below was  not unlike  the
Antarctic. But the  South  Pole  had never boasted two  suns, both rising at
once as Goliath swept towards them.
     The  ship  was  orbiting  less  than a  hundred  kilometres above  what
appeared to be an immense ploughed field, lightly dusted  with snow. But the
ploughman must have  been drunk  -- or  the  guidance system  must have gone
crazy -- for  the furrows meandered  in every direction,  sometimes  cutting
across  each other or turning back on themselves. Here and there the terrain
was dotted with faint circles --ghost craters from meteor impacts aeons ago.
     So  this  is  Ganymede,  Poole  wondered  drowsily. Mankind's  furthest
outpost from home! Why should any sensible person want to  live  here? Well,
I've  often  thought  that  when I've  flown  over Greenland  or Iceland  in
winter-time...
     There was  a knock  on the door, a 'Mind  if I come  in?', and  Captain
Chandler did so without waiting for a reply.
     'Thought  we'd let you sleep until we landed  -- that end-of-trip party
did last longer than I'd intended, but  I couldn't risk  a mutiny by cutting
it short.'
     Poole laughed.
     'Has there ever been a mutiny in space?'
     'Oh, quite a  few but  not in my time. Now we've mentioned the subject,
you might say that Hal started the tradition... sorry -- perhaps I shouldn't
-- look -- there's Ganymede City!'
     Coming  up over  the  horizon was  what  appeared to  be  a criss-cross
pattern of streets and avenues, intersecting almost at right-angles but with
the  slight  irregularity  typical  of  any  settlement  that  had  grown by
accretion,  without central planning.  It was bisected  by a broad river  --
Poole recalled that the equatorial  regions of Ganymede were now warm enough
for liquid water  to exist -- and it reminded  him of an old wood-cut he had
seen of medieval London.
     Then he noticed that Chandler was looking at him with an  expression of
amusement...  and the illusion  vanished  as  he  realized the scale of  the
'city'.
     'The Ganymedeans,' he said dryly, 'must have been rather large, to have
made roads five or ten kilometres wide.'
     'Twenty in some places. Impressive, isn't it? And all the result of ice
stretching  and contracting. Mother Nature is ingenious... I  could show you
some patterns that look even more artificial, though they're not as large as
this one.'
     'When  I  was a  boy, there was  a  big  fuss about a face  on Mars. Of
course, it  turned out to  be a hill that had been carved by  sand-storms...
lots of similar ones in Earth's deserts.'
     'Didn't  someone say that  history always repeats itself? Same  sort of
nonsense  happened with Ganymede City -- some nuts claimed it had been built
by aliens. But I'm afraid it won't be around much longer.'
     'Why?' asked Poole in surprise.
     'It's already started to collapse, as Lucifer melts the permafrost. You
won't  recognize Ganymede  in  another hundred years... there's the edge  of
Lake Gilgamesh -- if you look carefully -- over on the right-'
     'I see  what you mean. What's  happening  --  surely  the  water's  not
boiling, even at this low pressure?'
     'Electrolysis plant. Don't  know  how many  skillions  of  kilograms of
oxygen a day. Of course, the hydrogen goes up and gets lost -- we hope.'
     Chandler's voice  trailed  off  into  silence. Then  he  resumed, in an
unusually diffident tone: 'All that beautiful water  down  there -- Ganymede
doesn't  need half of it! Don't tell anyone, but I've been working out  ways
of getting some to Venus.'
     'Easier than nudging comets?'
     'As  far as energy  is concerned, yes -- Ganymede's escape velocity  is
only  three klicks  per second. And much,  much quicker  -- years instead of
decades. But there are a few practical difficulties..
     'I can appreciate that. Would you shoot it off by a mass-launcher?'
     'Oh no -- I'd use  towers reaching up through  the atmosphere, like the
ones on  Earth, but much smaller. We'd pump the water up to  the top, freeze
it down  to near absolute  zero, and let  Ganymede sling it off in the right
direction as it rotated. There would be  some evaporation  loss in  transit,
but most of it would arrive -- what's so funny?'
     'Sorry  --  I'm not laughing at the idea  -- it  makes good sense.  But
you've brought back such a  vivid memory. We used to have a garden sprinkler
-- driven round and round  by its  water jets. What you're planning  is  the
same thing -- on a slightly bigger scale... using a whole world...'
     Suddenly,  another  image from  his  past obliterated  all  else. Poole
remembered how,  in those hot Arizona  days, he and Rikki had loved to chase
each  other  through the clouds  of moving  mist,  from the slowly revolving
spray of the garden sprinkler.
     Captain Chandler was a much more sensitive man than he pretended to be:
he knew when it was time to leave.
     'Gotta get back to the bridge,' he said gruffly. 'See you when  we land
at Anubis.'

     18 Grand Hotel

     The  Grand  Ganymede Hotel --  inevitably  known  throughout  the Solar
System as 'Hotel Grannymede' was certainly not grand, and would be  lucky to
get a  rating of one-and-a-half stars  on Earth. As the nearest  competition
was several hundred million kilometres away, the management felt little need
to exert itself unduly.
     Yet  Poole had  no  complaints,  though he often wished  that Danil was
still around, to help him with the mechanics of life and to communicate more
efficiently  with the semi-intelligent devices with which he was surrounded.
He  had known  a brief moment of panic when the  door had closed behind  the
(human) bellboy,  who had apparently  been too awed by his  guest to explain
how any of the  room's services functioned. After five minutes of  fruitless
talking to  the  unresponsive walls,  Poole had  finally made contact with a
system  that understood  his accent and his commands. What an  'All  Worlds'
news  item  it would  have  made --  'Historic  astronaut  starves to death,
trapped in Ganymede hotel room'!
     And there would  have been a double  irony.  Perhaps  the naming of the
Grannymede's only luxury suite was  inevitable, but it had been a real shock
to  meet  an  ancient  life-size holo  of his old  shipmate,  in  full-dress
uniform, as he  was led into -- the Bowman Suite. Poole  even recognized the
image: his own official portrait had been  made at the same time, a few days
before the mission began.
     He  soon  discovered  that most of his Goliath  crewmates had  domestic
arrangements  in Anubis, and  were anxious for him to meet their Significant
Others during  the ship's planned twenty-day stop. Almost immediately he was
caught up in  the social and professional life of this frontier  settlement,
and it was Africa Tower that now seemed a distant dream.
     Like many  Americans,  in their secret hearts, Poole  had  a  nostalgic
affection for small communities where  everyone knew everyone else -- in the
real world, and not the virtual  one of cyberspace. Anubis, with  a resident
population  less  than  that  of his  remembered  Flagstaff, was  not a  bad
approximation to this ideal.
     The  three main pressure domes, each two kilometres in  diameter, stood
on a plateau  overlooking  an ice-field  which  stretched  unbroken  to  the
horizon. Ganymede's second sun
     -- once known  as Jupiter -- would never  give sufficient  heat to melt
the polar  caps. This  was the principal  reason  for establishing Anubis in
such  an  inhospitable  spot:  the  city's foundations  were  not  likely to
collapse for at least several centuries.
     And inside  the domes, it  was easy to be completely indifferent to the
outside  world. Poole,  when he  had mastered  the mechanisms  of the Bowman
Suite,  discovered  that  he   had  a  limited   but  impressive  choice  of
environments. He  could sit beneath palm trees on a Pacific beach, listening
to  the gentle murmur of  the  waves --  or, if he  preferred, the roar of a
tropical hurricane. He could fly slowly along the peaks of the Himalayas, or
down  the immense  canyons of  Mariner  Valley. He  could  walk  through the
gardens of  Versailles  or down the streets of half a dozen great cities, at
several widely spaced times  in their history.  Even if the Hotel Grannymede
was not one of the Solar System's most highly acclaimed  resorts, it boasted
facilities  which would  have  astounded all its more famous predecessors on
Earth.
     But it was  ridiculous to indulge in terrestrial nostalgia, when he had
come half-way across the Solar System to  visit  a strange  new world. After
some experimenting,  Poole  arranged  a  compromise,  for enjoyment  --  and
inspiration --during his steadily fewer moments of leisure.
     To his  great regret, he had never been to  Egypt, so it was delightful
to  relax  beneath  the  gaze  of  the  Sphinx  --  as  it  was  before  its
controversial  'restoration'  --  and  to watch tourists  scrambling  up the
massive blocks of  the Great  Pyramid.  The illusion was perfect, apart from
the no-man's-land where the desert  clashed with the  (slightly worn) carpet
of the Bowman Suite.
     The sky, however,  was one  that  no  human eyes  had  seen  until five
thousand  years after the last stone was  laid  at  Giza. But  it was not an
illusion; it was the complex and ever-changing reality of Ganymede.
     Because  this  world --  like its  companions -- had been robbed of its
spin aeons ago by the tidal drag of Jupiter, the new sun born from the giant
planet hung  motionless in its sky.  One side  of Ganymede was  in perpetual
Lucifer-light -- and although the other hemisphere was often  referred to as
the 'Night Land', that designation  was as misleading  as the  much  earlier
phrase 'The  dark side of the  Moon'. Like  the  lunar  Farside,  Ganymede's
'Night Land' had the brilliant light of old Sol for half of its long day.
     By  a coincidence  more  confusing  than useful,  Ganymede  took almost
exactly one week -- seven days, three hours --to orbit its primary. Attempts
to create a 'One Mede day  = one Earth week' calendar had generated so  much
chaos that  they  had  been  abandoned  centuries ago.  Like  all  the other
residents  of  the  Solar  System,   the  locals  employed  Universal  Time,
identifying  their  twenty-four-hour standard  days by  numbers rather  than
names.
     Since Ganymede's newborn atmosphere was still extremely thin and almost
cloudless,  the parade of heavenly bodies provided a never-ending spectacle.
At their closest, Io and  Callisto  each appeared about half the size of the
Moon  as seen from Earth -- but that was the only thing they  had in common.
Io was so close  to Lucifer that it took less than two days to  race  around
its orbit,  and  showed  visible  movement  even  in a  matter  of  minutes.
Callisto, at  over four times Io's  distance, required  two  Mede days -- or
sixteen Earth ones -- to complete its leisurely circuit.
     The physical contrast between the two worlds was even  more remarkable.
Deep-frozen Callisto had been almost  unchanged by Jupiter's conversion into
a  mini-sun: it  was still  a  wasteland  of shallow ice craters, so closely
packed that there was  not  a single spot on the entire  satellite that  had
escaped  from multiple impacts, in the days when  Jupiter's enormous gravity
field was competing with Saturn's to gather up the debris of the outer Solar
System. Since then, apart  from a few stray  shots, nothing had happened for
several billion years.
     On Io, something was happening every week. As a local wit had remarked,
before the creation  of  Lucifer it had been Hell -- now it was  Hell warmed
up.
     Often, Poole would zoom  into that burning landscape and  look into the
sulphurous throats of  volcanoes that  were  continually reshaping  an  area
larger  than  Africa.  Sometimes incandescent  fountains would soar  briefly
hundreds of kilometres into space,  like gigantic trees of fire growing on a
lifeless world.
     As the  floods  of molten sulphur spread out from volcanoes  and vents,
the versatile element changed through a narrow spectrum of reds and  oranges
and yellows when, chameleon-like, it  was transformed into its vari-coloured
allotropes. Before the dawn of the  Space Age, no one had ever imagined that
such a world  existed. Fascinating  though  it was  to  observe it  from his
comfortable vantage point, Poole found it hard to believe that men had  ever
risked landing  there,  where  even  robots  feared  to  tread...  His  main
interest, however, was Europa, which  at its closest appeared almost exactly
the same size as Earth's solitary Moon, but raced through its phases in only
four days. Though Poole had been quite unconscious of the symbolism when  he
chose his private landscape,  it now seemed  wholly  appropriate that Europa
should hang in the sky above another great enigma -- the Sphinx.
     Even with no magnification, when he requested the naked-eye view, Poole
could  see  how  greatly  Europa had  changed  in  the  thousand years since
Discovery had set out for  Jupiter.  The  spider's  web of narrow bands  and
lines that had  once completely  enveloped the smallest of the four Galilean
satellites  had  vanished, except around the poles. Here the global crust of
kilometre-thick ice remained unmelted  by  the warmth of  Europa's new  sun:
elsewhere, virgin oceans seethed and boiled in the thin atmosphere,  at what
would have been comfortable room temperature on Earth.
     It was also a comfortable temperature to the creatures who had emerged,
after  the melting  of the unbroken  ice shield  that had  both trapped  and
protected  them. Orbiting spysats, showing details only  centimetres across,
had watched one Europan species starting to evolve into an amphibious stage:
though they still spent much of their time underwater, the 'Europs' had even
begun the construction of simple buildings.
     That this could happen in a mere thousand years was astonishing, but no
one  doubted  that the  explanation  lay  in the  last and  greatest  of the
Monoliths -- the many-kilometre-long 'Great  Wall'  standing on the shore of
the Sea of Galilee.
     And no  one  doubted that, in its  own mysterious way, it  was watching
over the experiment  it had started on this world -- as it had done on Earth
four million years before.

     19 The Madness of Mankind

        MISS PRINGLE
        FILE INDRA
     My dear Indra --  sorry I've not even  voice-mailed you before -- usual
excuse, of course, so I won't bother to give it.
     To answer your question  -- yes, I'm now  feeling quite at  home at the
Grannymede,  but am spending  less and  less  time there, though  I've  been
enjoying the  sky display  I've  had piped into my suite. Last night the  Io
flux-tube put on a fine performance  -- that's a kind of lightning discharge
between  Io and  Jupiter -- I mean Lucifer. Rather  like Earth's aurora, but
much more spectacular. Discovered by the radio astronomers even before I was
born.
     And talking  about  ancient times -- did you  know  that  Anubis has  a
Sheriff?  I think  that's overdoing the frontier  spirit. Reminds me  of the
stories my grandfather  used to tell me about Arizona...  Must try  some  of
them on the Medes...
     This may  sound silly --  I'm still  not used  to  being in the  Bowman
Suite. I keep looking over my shoulder...
     How do I spend my time? Much the same as in  Africa Tower. I'm  meeting
the local intelligentsia, though as you might expect they're rather  thin on
the ground (hope no one  is bugging  this). And I've  interacted -- real and
virtual -- with the  educational system -- very good, it  seems, though more
technically  oriented than  you'd approve.  That's inevitable, of course, in
this hostile environment...
     But  it's  helped  me to  understand  why people  live here.  There's a
challenge  -- a sense of  purpose, if you  like -- that I  seldom  found  on
Earth.
     It's true  that  most  of the Medes were born here, so  don't  know any
other  home. Though they're  -- usually  -- too polite to say so, they think
that the Home Planet is becoming decadent. Are you? And if so,  what are you
Terries -- as the  locals call you  -- going  to  do  about it?  One of  the
teenage classes  I've met hopes to wake you up. They're drawing up elaborate
Top Secret plans for the Invasion of Earth. Don't say I didn't warn you...
     I've made one trip outside Anubis, into the so-called Night Land, where
they never see Lucifer. Ten of us  --Chandler,  two  of  Goliath's crew, six
Medes  -- went into Farside, and  chased  the Sun  down to the horizon so it
really was night. Awesome -- much like polar winters  on Earth, but with the
sky completely black... almost felt I was in space.
     We  could see all the Galileans beautifully, and watched Europa eclipse
-- sorry, occult --  Io.  Of course, the  trip had  been timed so  we  could
observe this...
     Several  of the  smaller satellites  were  just also  visible,  but the
double star  Earth-Moon was much  more  conspicuous.  Did  I feel  homesick?
Frankly, no -- though I miss my new friends back there...
     And I'm  sorry -- I still haven't met Dr Khan, though he's left several
messages for me.  I promise to do it in the next few days -- Earth days, not
Mede ones!
     Best wishes to Joe -- regards to Danil, if you  know what's happened to
him -- is he a real person again? -- and my love to yourself.
        STORE TRANSMIT

     Back in Poole's century,  a person's name often gave a clue to  his/her
appearance,  but that  was  no  longer  true  thirty  generations  later. Dr
Theodore Khan turned  out to be a Nordic blond who might have looked more at
home in  a  Viking longboat  than  ravaging the  steppes  of  Central  Asia:
however,  he would not have been too impressive in either role,  being  less
than a hundred and fifty centimetres tall. Poole  could not  resist a little
amateur psychoanalysis: small people were often aggressive over-achievers --
which, from Indra Wallace's  hints, appeared  to  be a good  description  of
Ganymede's   sole   resident   philosopher.  Khan  probably   needed   these
qualifications, to survive in such a practically-minded society.
     Anubis City was far too small to boast a  university campus -- a luxury
which  still existed on the  other  worlds,  though  many believed  that the
telecommunications  revolution  had  made  it   obsolete.  Instead,  it  had
something much more appropriate, as well as  centuries  older -- an Academy,
complete  with a grove  of olive trees that would have fooled Plato himself,
until he had attempted to walk through it. Indra's joke about departments of
philosophy  requiring  no more equipment than  blackboards  clearly  did not
apply in this sophisticated environment.
     'It's built to hold seven  people,' said Dr Khan proudly, when they had
settled  down  on  chairs  obviously  designed  to  be  not-too-comfortable,
'because that's the maximum one can  efficiently interact  with. And, if you
count the ghost of Socrates, it was the number present when Phaedo delivered
his famous address...'
     'The one on the immortality of the soul?'
     Khan was so obviously surprised that Poole could not help laughing.
     'I took a  crash course in philosophy just  before  I graduated -- when
the syllabus was planned, someone decided  that we hairy-knuckled  engineers
should be exposed to a little culture.'
     'I'm delighted to hear it. That makes  things so much easier. You  know
--  I still  can't credit my  luck.  Your arrival here almost  tempts me  to
believe in miracles!  I'd even thought of  going to Earth to meet you -- has
dear Indra told you about my -- ah -- obsession?'
     'No,' Poole answered, not altogether truthfully.
     Dr Khan  looked very pleased; he was clearly  delighted to  find  a new
audience.
     'You may have heard me called  an  atheist, but  that's not quite true.
Atheism is unprovable, so uninteresting. Equally, however unlikely it is, we
can never  be  certain that  God once  existed  -- and has now  shot off  to
infinity, where no one can ever find him... Like Gautama Buddha, I  take  no
position  on this subject. My field of interest is the psychopathology known
as Religion.'
     'Psychopathology? That's a harsh judgement.'
     'Amply  justified  by  history.  Imagine  that  you're  an  intelligent
extraterrestrial,  concerned only  with  verifiable truths. You  discover  a
species which has divided itself into thousands -- no by now  millions -- of
tribal  groups holding an incredible  variety of beliefs about the origin of
the universe and the way to behave in it. Although many of  them  have ideas
in common, even when there's a ninety-nine per  cent overlap, the  remaining
one per cent is enough  to set them  killing  and torturing each other, over
trivial points of doctrine, utterly meaningless to outsiders.'
     'How to account for such  irrational behaviour? Lucretius hit it on the
nail when he said that religion was the by-product of fear --  a reaction to
a mysterious and  often hostile universe. For  much of  human prehistory, it
may have been a necessary evil  --  but why was it  so much more  evil  than
necessary -- and why did it survive when it was no longer necessary?
     'I said  evil --  and I mean it,  because  fear  leads  to cruelty. The
slightest  knowledge of the  Inquisition makes  one ashamed to belong to the
human species... One of the  most revolting  books ever  published  was  the
Hammer of  Witches, written by a  couple of sadistic perverts and describing
the   tortures  the  Church  authorized  --   encouraged!   --  to   extract
"confessions" from  thousands of  harmless  old women, before it burned them
alive... The Pope himself wrote an approving foreword!'
     'But most  of the  other religions, with  a  few honourable exceptions,
were just  as bad as Christianity...  Even in your century, little boys were
kept  chained  and whipped until they'd  memorized  whole  volumes of  pious
gibberish, and robbed of their childhood and manhood to become monks...'
     'Perhaps  the most baffling  aspect of the whole affair  is how obvious
madmen, century after  century, would proclaim  that they -- and they alone!
-- had received messages  from  God. If  all the  messages  had agreed, that
would have settled the matter. But of course they were wildly discordant  --
which  never  prevented  self-styled  messiahs  from  gathering hundreds  --
sometimes millions  -- of adherents, who would fight  to the  death  against
equally deluded believers of a microscopically differing faith.'
     Poole thought it was about time he got a word in edgeways.
     'You've reminded  me of something  that happened in my home-town when I
was  a kid.  A holy  man -- quote, unquote -- set up shop, claimed he  could
work miracles -- and collected a crowd  of devotees in next  to no time. And
they weren't ignorant or illiterate; often they came from the best families.
Every Sunday I used to see expensive cars parked round his -- ah -- temple.'
     'The "Rasputin  Syndrome", it's been called: there are millions of such
cases,  all  through history,  in every  country. And about  one  time  in a
thousand the cult  survives  for  a couple of generations. What  happened in
this case?'
     'Well, the competition  was very unhappy, and did its best to discredit
him. Wish I could  remember his  name -- he used a long Indian one  -- Swami
something-or-other -- but  it turned out  he  came from Alabama. One  of his
tricks  was  to produce holy objects out of thin  air, and hand  them to his
worshippers. As  it happened,  our local rabbi was an  amateur conjuror, and
gave public demonstrations showing exactly how it  was done. Didn't make the
slightest difference -- the faithful said  that  their man's magic was real,
and the rabbi was just jealous.'
     'At one time, I'm sorry to say, Mother took the rascal seriously  -- it
was soon after Dad had run off, which may have had something to  do  with it
--  and  dragged me  to one  of his sessions. I was only  about ten,  but  I
thought I'd never seen anyone  so unpleasant-looking. He  had  a beard  that
could have held several birds' nests, and probably did.'
     'He sounds like the standard model. How long did he flourish?'
     'Three or four years. And then  he had to leave town in a hurry: he was
caught running teenage orgies. Of course, he claimed he  was using  mystical
soul-saving techniques. And you won't believe this --,
     'Try me.'
     'Even then,  lots of his dupes  still had faith in him. Their god could
do no wrong, so he must have been framed.'
     'Framed?'
     'Sorry --  convicted by faked evidence --  sometimes used by the police
to catch criminals, when all else fails.'
     'Hmm. Well, your swami was perfectly  typical: I'm rather disappointed.
But  he  does help to prove my case --that most of humanity has  always been
insane, at least some of the time.'
     'Rather an unrepresentative sample -- one small Flagstaff suburb.'
     'True,  but I could  multiply  it  by  thousands --  not  only  in your
century, but all down the ages. There's never been anything, however absurd,
that countless people weren't  prepared  to  believe, often so  passionately
that they'd fight to the  death rather than abandon  their illusions. To me,
that's a good operational definition of insanity.'
     'Would you argue that anyone with strong religious beliefs was insane?'
     'In a strictly technical sense, yes -- if they really were sincere, and
not hypocrites. As I suspect ninety per cent were.'
     'I'm certain that Rabbi Berenstein was sincere -- and he was one of the
sanest men I ever knew, as well as one of the finest. And how do you account
for this? The only real genius  I ever  met  was Dr Chandra, who led the HAL
project. I  once had to go  into his  office -- there was  no  reply when  I
knocked, and I thought it was unoccupied.'
     'He was  praying to a group of fantastic  little bronze statues, draped
with flowers. One of them looked  like an elephant... another had more  than
the regular number of arms... I was quite embarrassed, but luckily he didn't
hear me and I tiptoed out. Would you say he was insane?'
     'You've  chosen  a  bad example: genius  often  is!  So let's say:  not
insane, but mentally impaired, owing to childhood conditioning.  The Jesuits
claimed: "Give me a boy for six years,  and he is mine for life." If  they'd
got hold of  little Chandra in time, he'd have been a devout Catholic -- not
a Hindu.'
     'Possibly. But I'm  puzzled -- why  were you so anxious to meet me? I'm
afraid  I've never been a devout anything. What have I got  to  do with  all
this?'
     Slowly, and with  the obvious enjoyment of a man unburdening himself of
a heavy, long-hoarded secret, Dr Khan told him.

     20 Apostate

        RECORD POOLE
     Hello, Frank...  So  you've finally met Ted. Yes, you could  call him a
crank --  if you define that as an  enthusiast  with no sense of humour. But
cranks often get  that way because they know a Big Truth -- can, you hear my
capitals?
     -- and no one will listen... I'm glad you did -- and I suggest you take
him quite seriously.
     You said  you  were surprised  to see  a  Pope's  portrait  prominently
displayed in Ted's  apartment. That would have been his hero, Pius XX -- I'm
sure I mentioned him to you. Look him up -- he's  usually called the Impius!
It's a fascinating story, and exactly parallels something that happened just
before you  were born. You must know how Mikhail Gorbachev, the President of
the Soviet Empire, brought about its dissolution at the end of the twentieth
century, by exposing its crimes and excesses.
     He didn't intend  to go that far --  he'd hoped to  reform it, but that
was no  longer possible. We'll never  know if Pius  XX  had the  same  idea,
because he was assassinated by a demented cardinal soon after he'd horrified
the world by releasing the secret files of the Inquisition...
     The religious were still shaken by the discovery of TMA ZERO only a few
decades  earlier -- that  had  a great  impact on  Pius  XX,  and  certainly
influenced his actions...
     But you still haven't told me how Ted, that old cryptoDeist, thinks you
can  help  him in  his search for God. I  believe he's still  mad at him for
hiding so successfully. Better not say I told you that.
     On second thoughts, why not?
     Love -- Indra.
        STORE
        TRANSMIT

        MISS PRINGLE
        RECORD
     Hello --  Indra  -- I've had  another session  with Dr Ted, though I've
still not told him just why you think he's angry with God!
     But  I've had some  very interesting arguments -- no, dialogues -- with
him,  though  he  does  most of  the  talking. Never  thought  I'd get  into
philosophy again after  all these years of  engineering. Perhaps I had to go
through them first, to appreciate it. Wonder how he'd grade me as a student?
     Yesterday I tried this line  of approach, to  see his reaction. Perhaps
it's original, though  I doubt it.  Thought you'd like to hear it -- will be
interested in your comments. Here's our discussion --MISS PRINGLE COPY AUDIO
94.
     'Surely, Ted, you can't deny  that most of the  greatest works of human
art have been inspired by religious devotion. Doesn't that prove something?'
     'Yes -- but not in a way that will give  much comfort to any believers!
From time to time, people amuse themselves  making lists of the Biggests and
Greatests and Bests --  I'm  sure that was a popular entertainment  in  your
day.'
     'It certainly was.'
     'Well,  there have been some famous attempts to do this  with the arts.
Of  course  such  lists can't establish absolute  --  eternal -- values, but
they're interesting and show how tastes change from age to age.'
     'The last list I saw -- it was on the Earth Artnet only a few years ago
-- was divided into Architecture, Music, Visual  Arts... I remember a few of
the examples... the Parthenon, the Taj Mahal... Bach's Toccata and Fugue was
first  in music, followed by Verdi's Requiem  Mass. In art -- the Mona Lisa,
of  course.  Then  --  not sure of the order --  a group of  Buddha  statues
somewhere in Ceylon, and the golden death-mask of young King Tut.
     'Even if I could remember all the others -- which  of course I can't --
it  doesn't matter:  the important  thing  is their  cultural  and religious
backgrounds. Overall, no single  religion dominated -- except in  music. And
that  could be due to  a purely technological  accident: the  organ and  the
other pre-electronic musical instruments were perfected in the Christianized
West.  It could have worked out quite  differently...  if,  for example, the
Greeks or the Chinese had regarded machines as something more than toys.
     'But what  really settles the argument, as far as I'm concerned, is the
general consensus about the single greatest work of human art. Over and over
again,  in almost  every listing --  it's Angkor Wat. Yet the religion  that
inspired that  has been extinct for centuries -- no one even knows precisely
what it was, except that it involved hundreds of gods, not merely one!'
     'Wish I could have thrown that at dear old Rabbi Berenstein -- I'm sure
he'd have had a good answer.'
     'I don't  doubt it. I wish I could have met him myself. And I'm glad he
never lived to see what happened to Israel.'
        END AUDIO.
     There you have it,  Indra. Wish the Grannymede  had Angkor Wat  on  its
menu -- I've never seen it -- but you can't have everything...
     Now, the  question you  really  wanted  answered...  why is  Dr Ted  so
delighted that I'm here?
     As you  know,  he's convinced that  the key to  many mysteries  lies on
Europa -- where no one has been allowed to land for a thousand years.
     He thinks I may be an exception. He believes I have a friend there. Yes
-- Dave Bowman, or whatever he's now become...
     We know that he survived being  drawn  into the Big Brother Monolith --
and  somehow revisited  Earth  afterwards. But there's  more, that I  didn't
know.  Very few people  do, because the Medes  are embarrassed to talk about
it...
     Ted Khan has  spent  years  collecting  the evidence, and  is now quite
certain of the facts -- even though  he can't  explain them. On at least six
occasions, about  a century apart, reliable  observers here  in  Anubis have
reported seeing an -- apparition -- just like the one that Heywood Floyd met
aboard Discovery. Though not one of them knew about that incident, they were
all able to identify  Dave when they were shown  his hologram. And there was
another sighting aboard a survey ship that made  a close approach to Europa,
six hundred years ago...
     Individually, no one would take these cases seriously -- but altogether
they  make a  pattern. Ted's  quite sure  that  Dave Bowman survives in some
form, presumably associated with the Monolith we call the Great Wall. And he
still has some interest in our affairs.
     Though he's made no attempt  at  communication,  Ted hopes we  can make
contact. He believes that I'm the only human who can do it...
     I'm  still trying to make up my mind. Tomorrow, I'll talk it  over with
Captain Chandler. Will let you know what we decide. Love, Frank.
        STORE
        TRANSMIT INDRA

     21 Quarantine

     'Do you believe in ghosts, Dim?'
     'Certainly not: but like every sensible man, I'm afraid of them. Why do
you ask?'
     'If it wasn't a ghost, it was the most vivid dream  I've ever had. Last
night I had a conversation with Dave Bowman.'
     Poole  knew that Captain Chandler would take  him  seriously, when  the
occasion required; nor was he disappointed.
     'Interesting -- but there's an obvious  explanation. You've been living
here in the  Bowman Suite, for Deus's sake! You  told me  yourself  it feels
haunted.'
     'I'm sure -- well, ninety-nine per cent sure -- that you're  right, and
the whole thing was prompted by  the discussions I've been having with Prof.
Ted. Have you  heard  the reports  that  Dave Bowman occasionally appears in
Anubis? About once every hundred years? Just as he  did to  Dr  Floyd aboard
Discovery, after she'd been reactivated.'
     'What happened there? I've heard  vague  stories, but never taken  them
seriously.'
     'Dr  Khan  does --  and so  do I -- I've  seen the original recordings.
Floyd's sitting in my old chair when a  kind of dust-cloud forms behind him,
and shapes  itself  into Dave --  though only  the head has  detail. Then it
gives that famous message, warning him to leave.'
     'Who wouldn't have? But  that was a thousand years  ago. Plenty of time
to fake it.'
     'What would be the point? Khan and I  were looking at it yesterday. I'd
bet my life it's authentic.'
     'As  a  matter of  fact,  I agree  with  you.  And I  have  heard those
reports...'
     Chandler's voice trailed away, and he looked slightly embarrassed.
     'Long time  ago, I had  a  girl-friend here in Anubis. She told me that
her grandfather had seen Bowman. I laughed.'
     'I wonder if Ted has that sighting on his  list.  Could you  put him in
touch with your friend?'
     'Er -- rather not. We haven't spoken for years. For all I know, she may
be on the Moon, or Mars... Anyway, why is Professor Ted interested?'
     'That's what I really wanted to discuss with you.'
     'Sounds ominous. Go ahead,'
     'Ted  thinks that Dave  Bowman -- or whatever he's become  -- may still
exist -- up there on Europa.'
     'After a thousand years?'
     'Well -- look at me.'
     'One sample is poor statistics, my maths prof. used to say. But go on.'
     'It's a complicated story -- or maybe a jigsaw, with most of the pieces
missing. But  it's generally agreed that something crucial happened  to  our
ancestors when that Monolith appeared in Africa, four million years ago.  It
marks a turning point in  prehistory -- the first appearance of tools -- and
weapons -- and religion... That can't be pure coincidence. The Monolith must
have  done  something to  us  -- surely it couldn't  have just stood  there,
passively accepting worship...'
     'Ted's fond of quoting a famous palaeontologist who said "TMA ZERO gave
us an evolutionary kick  in the pants". He argues that the  kick wasn't in a
wholly desirable  direction.  Did we  have  to become so  mean and  nasty to
survive?  Maybe  we  did... As  I understand him,  Ted believes that there's
something fundamentally wrong with the wiring of our brains, which makes  us
incapable of  consistent logical thinking. To make matters worse, though all
creatures need a certain amount of  aggressiveness to survive,  we  seem  to
have far more than is absolutely necessary. And no other animal tortures its
fellows as we do. Is this an evolutionary accident -- a piece of genetic bad
luck?
     'It's  also widely agreed that TMA  ONE was planted on the Moon to keep
track of the project --  experiment -- whatever it was  -- and to  report to
Jupiter --  the obvious  place for Solar  System Mission Control. That's why
another Monolith -- Big Brother -- was waiting there.  Had been waiting four
million years, when Discovery arrived. Agreed so far?'
     'Yes; I've always thought that was the most plausible theory.'
     'Now for the more speculative stuff. Bowman was apparently swallowed up
by Big  Brother, yet  something of  his personality  seems to have survived.
Twenty years  after that  encounter with Heywood Floyd in the second Jupiter
expedition, they had another  contact aboard Universe, when Floyd  joined it
for the 2061 rendezvous with Halley's Comet. At least, so he tells us in his
memoirs -- though he was well over a hundred when he dictated them.'
     'Could have been senile.'
     'Not according to  all  the contemporary accounts! Also -- perhaps even
more significant -- his grandson Chris  had  some equally weird  experiences
when Galaxy made its forced landing on  Europa. And, of course, that's where
the Monolith -- or a Monolith -- is, right now! Surrounded by Europans...'
     'I'm beginning to  see what Dr Ted's  driving at. This is where we came
in -- the whole  cycle's starting over again.  The Europs  are being groomed
for stardom.'
     'Exactly --  everything fits. Jupiter  ignited to  give them a sun,  to
thaw  out  their frozen  world. The  warning  to us to  keep our distance --
presumably so that we wouldn't interfere with their development...'
     'Where have I heard that idea before? Of course, Frank  -- it goes back
a thousand  years -- to your own time! "The  Prime Directive"!  We still get
lots of laughs from those old Star Trek programmes.'
     'Did I ever  tell  you  I once met some of the  actors? They would have
been surprised to  see me now... And I've always had two thoughts about that
non-interference  policy.  The Monolith certainly violated  it with us, back
there in Africa. One might argue that did have disastrous results...'
     'So  better luck next  time --  on Europa!' Poole laughed, without much
humour. 'Khan used those exact words.'
     'And  what does he think we should do about  it? Above all  -- where do
you come into the picture?'
     'First of all,  we must find what's  really happening on Europa  -- and
why. Merely observing it from space is not enough.'
     'What  else  can we do? All the probes the Medes have  sent  there were
blown up, just before landing.'
     'And ever since the  mission to rescue Galaxy, crew-carrying ships have
been diverted by  some field  of  force, which no  one can  figure out. Very
interesting: it proves that whatever is down there  is protective,  but  not
malevolent. And -- this is the important  point -- it must  have some way of
scanning what's on the way. It can distinguish between robots and humans.'
     'More than I can do, sometimes. Go on.'
     'Well, Ted thinks there's one human being who might make it down to the
surface  of  Europa  --  because his old friend  is there, and may have some
influence with the 'powers-that-be.'
     Captain Dimitri Chandler gave a long, low whistle.
     'And you're willing to risk it?'
     'Yes: what have I got to lose?'
     'One valuable  shuttle  craft, if I know what you have in mind. Is that
why you've been learning to fly Falcon?'
     'Well, now that you mention it... the idea had occurred to me.'
     'I'll have to think it  over -- I'll admit I'm intrigued, but there are
lots of problems.'
     'Knowing  you, I'm  sure  they won't stand  in  the way -- once  you've
decided to help me.'

     22 Venture

        MISS PRINGLE LIST PRIORITY MESSAGES FROM EARTH
        RECORD
     Dear Indra --  I'm not trying to be  dramatic, but this may be  my last
message from  Ganymede. By the time  you receive  it, I will be on my way to
Europa.
     Though it's a sudden decision -- and no one is more surprised than I am
-- I've thought it over very carefully. As you'll have  guessed, Ted Khan is
largely  responsible...  let him do  the explaining, if I don't  come  back.
Please don't misunderstand  me -- in  no way do I regard this  as a  suicide
mission!  But I'm  ninety per cent convinced  by Ted's  arguments, and  he's
aroused my curiosity so much that I'd never forgive  myself if I turned down
this  once-in-a-lifetime  opportunity.  Maybe  I  should  say  once  in  two
lifetimes...
     I'm flying Goliath's  little one-person shuttle Falcon  -- how I'd have
loved  to   demonstrate  her  to  my  old  colleagues  back  at   the  Space
Administration!  Judging by  past  records, the  most likely outcome is that
I'll be diverted away from Europa before I can land. Even this will teach me
something...
     And if it -- presumably the local  Monolith, the Great Wall --  decides
to treat me like the robot probes it's zapped in the past, I'll never  know.
That's a risk I'm prepared to take.
     Thank you for everything, and  my very  best to Joe. Love from Ganymede
-- and soon, I hope, from Europa.
        STORE
        TRANSMIT

        IV THE KINGDOM OF SULPHUR

     23 Falcon

     'Europa's about four hundred thousand kay from Ganymede at the moment,'
Captain Chandler informed Poole.
     'If you stepped on the gas -- thanks  for teaching me that  phrase!  --
Falcon  could  get  you there  in an hour.  But I wouldn't recommend it: our
mysterious friend might be alarmed by anyone coming in that fast.'
     'Agreed and I want time to  think. I'm going  to take several hours,