Andromeda (A Space-Age Tale)

CHAPTER TEN TIBETAN EXPERIMENT

The Corr Yule installation on the flat top of a high mountain was no more than a thousand metres from the Astronautical Council’s Tibetan Observatory. It stood at a height of nearly 4,000 metres where the only trees that would grow were a dark-green leafless variety with branches bending inwards towards the top brought from Mars. Although the light-yellow grass in the valleys waved in the wind these rigid iron-limbed strangers from another world stood motionless. The slopes were covered with streams of stones, the remnants of eroded rocks. The fields, patches and strips of snow gleamed with that special whiteness that belongs to mountain snow under a clear sky.

A tower built of steel tubes supporting two latticed arches stood behind crumbling diorite walls belonging to a ruined monastery that had been built with astounding audacity at that great height. On the arches lay an inclined parabolic spiral of beryllium bronze dotted with the gleaming white spots of rhenium contacts and open to the sky. Close beside it lay a second spiral with the open end turned to the ground to form a cover over eight huge cones made of the greenish borason amalgam. Energy was brought to the installation by branches of the main pipe, six metres in diameter. The valley was crossed by a line of pylons with directing rings, a temporary line from the observatory’s main that was used when transmissions requiring the energy of all the world’s stations were in progress. Renn Bose, scratching his tousled head, reviewed with a pleased air the changes that had been made in the former installation. It had all been done by volunteers in an incredibly short time. The most difficult job had been the digging of deep, open trenches in the hard stone of the mountain without the use of big mining machines. But that was all over and the volunteer workers, justly believing themselves entitled to see the great experiment as a reward for their labours, had moved to some distance from the installation and found a place for their tents on the mountain slope to the north of the observatory.

Mven Mass, who was in control of all communications with the Cosmos, sat on a cold boulder opposite the physicist and, shivering slightly from the cold, told him the latest news from the Great Circle. Satellite 57 had been used recently for communication with spaceships and planetships and had not been working for the Circle. Mven Mass also told him of the death of Vlihh oz Ddiz near star E at which the weary physicist showed more interest.

“The high gravitational tension of star E will lead to its becoming overheated in its further evolution. It is becoming a violet super-giant of tremendous power that is overcoming colossal gravitation. The red end of the spectrum is missing altogether and, despite the strength of the gravitational field, the waves of light rays are shortened and not lengthened.”

“They become very short violet or even ultra-violet,” agreed Mven Mass.

“That’s not all. The process goes farther. The quanta become bigger until at last the transition takes place — there is a zero field and antispace — the other side of the movement of matter that is unknown to us on earth owing to the insignificant scale of everything we have. We could not achieve anything like it even if we were to burn up all the hydrogen in all the water on Earth.”

Mven Mass made a lightning mental calculation.

“If we translate fifteen thousand trillion tons of water into the energy of the hydrogen cycle on the principle of the relativity of mass-energy we should get roughly a trillion tons of energy. The Sun gives off 240 million tons a minute so that it would be equal to no more than the Sun’s radiation for ten years.”

Renn Bose gave a smile of satisfaction.

“And how much does a blue super-giant radiate?”

“I can’t compute it at once. But you can judge for yourself. In the Greater Magellanic Cloud there is a cluster, NGK 1910, near the Tarantula Nebula… excuse me, I’m accustomed to using the old names and numbers for heavenly bodies!”

“It doesn’t matter at all!”

“Cluster 1910 is only 70 parsecs in diameter but it contains no less than a hundred super-giant stars. And the Tarantula Nebula is so bright that if it could be moved closer to us like, for example, the Orion Nebula that everybody knows so well, it would be as bright as our Moon. In that area there is the binary blue super-giant in the Dorado, with clear-cut hydrogen lines in the spectrum and dark lines at the violet end. It is greater than Earth’s orbit in diameter and its luminosity is about half a million of our suns! Is that the sort of star you mean? In that same cluster there are stars bigger in size, with a diameter equal to Jupiter’s orbit, but they are only just beginning to warm up.”

“We’ll leave the super-giants alone. For thousands of years people have been looking at the annular nebulae in Aquarius, Ursa Major and Lyra, not realizing that they have before them neutral fields of zero gravitation, which, according to the repagulum law, is the transition from gravitation to antigravitation. It was there that the riddle of zero space was hidden.”

Renn Bose jumped up from where he had been sitting on the doorstep of the control room, a shelter built of huge blocks of cast stone.

“I’m sufficiently rested. We can begin now.”

Mven Mass’ heart was beating fast and he was almost choking from excitement. His breathing was deep and irregular. Renn Bose remained quite calm, the feverish gleam of his eyes alone betraying the concentration of thought and will-power that the physicist had achieved in order to begin his dangerous experiment.

Mven Mass squeezed Renn Bose’s tiny hand in his huge palm. A nod of the head and Mven’s tall figure was striding downhill along the road to the observatory. The cold wind howled wildly down from the ice-bound mountain giants that stood guard over the road. Mven Mass shivered and involuntarily hurried his footsteps although, actually, there was no need for haste. The experiment was to begin at sunset.

Mven Mass established radio communication with Satellite 57, using the lunar waveband. The reflectors and directors set up on the station were fixed on Epsilon Tucanae for the few minutes of the satellite’s revolution from 33° north latitude to the South Pole during which the star was visible.

Mven Mass took his place at the control desk in the underground room, a place very similar to that at the Mediterranean Observatory.

For the thousandth time he looked through the sheets of data on the planet of the star Epsilon Tucanae, again systematically checked up the orbit of the planet and again got in touch with Satellite 57 and gave instructions that at the moment when the field was switched they must very slowly change direction along an arc four times greater than the parallax of the star.

The time passed slowly. Mven Mass could not rid himself of thoughts of Beth Lohn, the criminal mathematician. Renn Bose appeared on the TVP screen seated at the control desk of his installation. His stiff hair was sticking up more than usual.

The dispatchers at the power stations had been warned and reported their readiness. Mven Mass’ hand moved towards the switches on his desk but a motion from Renn Bose in the screen stopped him.

“We must warn the reserve Q station on the Antarctic. We have not got sufficient power.”

“I’ve done that, they’re ready.”

The physicist pondered for a few more seconds.

“On the Chukotka Peninsula and on Labrador there are F-energy stations. If you were to talk to them and ask them to switch in at the moment of the field inversion… I’m afraid the apparatus is imperfect….”

“I’ve done that.”

Renn Bose beamed and waved his hand.

The colossal column of energy reached Satellite 57. The excited young faces of the observers appeared in the hemispherical screen at the observatory.

Mven Mass greeted the courageous young people, checked up on the direction of the column to make sure that it would reach and follow the satellite. Then he switched all the energy over to Renn Bose. The physicist’s head disappeared from the screen.

The indicators on the energy collector turned their needles to the right showing a constant growth in the condensation of power. The signals burned brighter and with a whiter light. As Renn Bose switched in one field radiator after another the intensity indicators fell in jerks towards zero. The sound of a muffled gong from the experimental station made the African start, but he knew what to do: with a movement of a lever he switched in the Q station and its power surged into the dying eyes of the indicators, bringing life to their falling needles. Scarcely had Renn Bose switched on the common inverter, however, than the needles again dropped to zero. Almost instinctively Mven Mass switched in both F stations.

It seemed to him that the measuring instruments had been extinguished — a peculiar pale light filled the room. Sounds ceased. Another second and the shadow of death crossed the consciousness of the Director of the Outer Stations, dulling his senses. He struggled against a nauseating dizziness, squeezing the edges of the desk in his hands and sobbing from the effort and from a terrible pain in his spine. The pale light began to grow brighter on one side of the underground room, but from which side, Mven Mass could not determine, or had forgotten. Perhaps it came from the screen, or from the direction of Renn Bose’s installation….

Suddenly it seemed that a waving curtain had been torn asunder and Mven Mass heard clearly the splashing of waves. An indescribable perfume, one that could not be remembered, reached his widely dilated nostrils. The curtain moved to the left and in the corner the former grey hangings were still trembling. High copper mountains materialized before his eyes with remarkable reality; they were surrounded by turquoise trees and the violet waves of the sea splashed at Mven Mass’ feet. The curtain moved still farther to the left and he saw his dream. A red-skinned woman sat on the upper platform of the staircase leaning on the polished surface of a white stone table, staring at the ocean. Suddenly she saw something and her widely placed eyes were filled with astonishment and admiration. The woman stood up with magnificent elegance and stretched out her open hand to the African. She was breathing spasmodically and in that moment of delirium she reminded Mven Mass of Chara Nandi.

“Offa alii cor.” Her gentle, melodious and strong voice penetrated to Mven Mass’ heart. He opened his mouth to answer her but in place of his vision there was a green flame and a shattering whistle filled the room. As the African lost consciousness he felt some soft, invincible power folding him in three, rotating him like the blade of a turbine and then flattening him out against something solid. Mven Mass’ last thought was of the fate of Satellite 57, the station and Renn Bose….

The observatory staff and the builders who were some distance away saw very little. Something flashed across the profound Tibetan sky that dimmed the brightness of the stars. Some invisible power crashed down on to the mountain on which the experimental station was situated. Then came a whirlwind that swept up a mass of stones. A black stream, some five hundred metres in diameter that seemed to have been fired from a gigantic hydraulic gun raced towards the observatory building, swept upwards, turned back and again struck the mountain, smashing the entire installation and scattering the fragments. An instant later everything was quiet again. The dust-filled air was saturated with the odour of hot stones and burning mixed with a strange aroma similar to that of the flowering coast of a tropical sea.

At the site of the catastrophe the people saw that a wide furrow with molten edges had been ploughed across the valley, and that the side of the mountain facing it had been torn clean away. The observatory building had not been touched. The furrow stretched as far as the southeastern wall where it had destroyed the transformer chamber built against it; it ended at the dome of the underground chamber cast from a four-metre thick layer of molten basalt. The basalt was polished as though it had been worked on a grinding machine. Part of it remained untouched and that had saved Mven Mass and the underground chamber from complete destruction.

A stream of molten silver hardened in a hollow — the melted fuses of the power receiver!

Emergency lighting cables were soon connected and when the searchlight from the lighthouse on the highway threw out its beam an appalling sight met the eyes of the onlookers — the whole of the metal structure of the experimental installation was spread along the furrow in a gleaming thin coating making the ground shine as though it had been chromium-plated. A piece of the bronze spiral had been pressed into the precipice formed where the side of the hill had been cut away as clean as with a knife. The rocks had melted into a glassy mass, like sealing wax under a hot stamp. The turns of the spiral of reddish metal with its white rhenium tooth-like contacts were embedded in the rock and gleamed in the electric light like a flower done in enamel. One glance at that piece of jewellery two hundred metres in diameter was sufficient to arouse fear of the unknown force that had operated there.

When the fallen boulders had been cleared away from the entrance to the underground chamber rescue workers found Mven Mass on his knees with his head resting on the bottom step. The Director of the Outer Stations had apparently made an effort to escape the moment he regained consciousness. There were doctors amongst the volunteers who had been working there and his powerful organism aided by no less powerful medicines soon recovered. Mven Mass got to his feet, still trembling and staggering and had to be supported on both sides.

“Renn Bose?”

The faces of the people surrounding the scientist darkened at this question, and the Director of the observatory said harshly:

“Renn Bose has been badly disfigured. He is hardly expected to live.”

“Where is he?”

“He was found at the bottom of the eastern slope of the mountain. He must have been hurled out of the installation building. There is nothing left on top of the mountain, even the ruins have been wiped off the face of the earth!”

“Is Renn Bose still lying there?”

“He must not be touched. Some bones have been crushed, some ribs broken and his stomach injured.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“His stomach has been split open and his insides have fallen out.”

Mven Mass’ legs gave way under him and he clutched spasmodically at the necks of those supporting him. His will and his mind, however, were functioning clearly.

“Renn Bose must be saved at all costs. He is the greatest of all scientists….”

“We know. There are five doctors there. They have erected a sterilized operation tent over him. Two men who have volunteered to give blood are lying beside him. The tiratron[25], the artificial heart and liver are already working.”

“Then help me to the telephone room. Switch on to the world network and call the information centre in the northern zone. How are things on Satellite 57?”

“We called the satellite but got no answer.”

“Are the telescopes in working order?”

“Yes, they are.”

“Look for the satellite in the telescope and examine it through the electronic inverter to get the maximum magnification.”

The night operator at the northern information centre looked into his screen and saw a face smeared with blood, the eyes gleaming feverishly. He had to study the face for some time before he recognized Mven Mass who, as the Director of the Outer Stations, was a person well known throughout the planet.

“I want Grom Orme, President of the Astronautical Council and Evda Nahl, psychiatrist.”

The operator nodded his head and began fiddling with the switches and vernier scales of the memory machines. The answer came back in a minute.

“Grom Orme is preparing some papers and is spending the night at the Council. Shall I call the Council?”

“Yes, call them. And Evda Nahl?”

“She’s at School No. 410 in Ireland. If you need her I can try to call her to…” — here the operator looked up at a diagram — ”… to telephone station No. 5654SP!”

“She’s badly needed. It is a matter of life or death!”

The operator looked up from his diagrams.

“Has there been an accident?”

“A very serious accident.”

“Then I’ll hand everything over to my assistant and get busy on your call alone. Wait for me.”

Mven Mass dropped into an armchair that had been pushed towards him, in an effort to gather his thoughts and regain his strength. The Director of the observatory came running into the room.

“The situation of Satellite 57 has been ascertained. There is no satellite.”

Mven Mass jumped to his feet as though he had not received any injuries.

“A piece of the bow which acts as a quay for the reception of ships, has survived,” continued the staggering report, “and is still in the same orbit. There are probably some smaller pieces but they have not yet been discovered.”

“So the observers….”

“They must have been killed!”

Mven Mass clenched his fists and sank back into the chair. A few minutes of oppressive silence followed, then the screen lit up again.

“Grom Orme is at the Council transmitter,” said the operator and turned a handle. The screen showed a huge, dimly-lit hall and then the well-known head of the President of the Astronautical Council appeared. The narrow seemingly streamlined face, the big aquiline nose, the deep-set eyes under sceptically raised brows, the questioning twist of the tightly pressed lips…. Under Grom Orme’s glance Mven Mass hung his head like a naughty boy.

“Satellite 57 has just been destroyed,” began the African, plunging straight into his confession as he would into dark water. Grom Orme started and his face seemed even sharper.

“How could that have happened?”

Briefly and precisely Mven Mass told him everything, not hiding the illegality of the experiment or in any way sparing himself. The President’s brows knitted together, deep lines appeared at the corners of his mouth but his glance remained calm.

“Wait a moment, I’ll see about aid for Renn Bose. Do you think that Ahf Noot….”

“Oh, if you could get Ahf Noot!”

The screen went dark. There was a long wait and Mven Mass forced restraint upon himself with the last of his strength. He would be all right, soon… ah, here was Grom Orme.

“I found Ahf Noot and have given him a planetship. He will require an hour to prepare his apparatus and his assistants. In two hours he’ll be at your observatory. Make the necessary arrangements for the handling of heavy cargo. Now about you — did the experiment succeed?”

The question took Mven Mass by surprise. He did not doubt that he had seen Epsilon Tucanae. Was this, however, real contact with an inaccessibly distant world? Or had it been a combination of the deadly effect of the experiment on his organism and the burning desire to see that had produced a very clear hallucination? Could he announce to the whole world that the experiment had been a success, that fresh efforts, new sacrifices and further expenditure to repeat it would be justified? Could he say that the method adopted by Renn Bose was more successful than that of his predecessors? For fear of risking anybody else’s life they had foolishly carried out the experiment alone, just the two of them. But what had Renn seen? What could he tell them?… Would he ever be able to talk… if he had seen!.. Mven Mass stood up still straighter. “I have no proof that the experiment was successful. I don’t know what Renn Bose saw….”

Undisguised sorrow was expressed on Grom Orme’s face. A minute before that he had only been attentive, now he had become stern.

“What do you propose to do?”

“Please permit me to hand over the station to Junius Antus immediately. I am no longer worthy to direct it. Then, I’ll remain with Renn Bose to the end…” he stammered and then corrected himself, “… until the end of the operation. Then… then I’ll go away to the Island of Oblivion to await trial. I have already condemned myself!”

“Possibly you are right. Some of the circumstances are not yet clear to me so I must reserve my judgement. Your actions will be examined at the next meeting of the Astronautical Council. Whom do you consider the most fitting successor to your post — firstly for the work of rebuilding the satellite?”

“I don’t know a better candidate than Darr Veter!” The President of the Council nodded his consent. For some time he continued looking at the African as though he intended saying something, but instead he just made a gesture of farewell. The screen was extinguished just in time, for at that moment everything went hazy in Mven Mass’ head.

“You tell Evda Nahl yourself,” he whispered to the observatory Director who was standing near by; then he fell, made several attempts to get up and lost consciousness.

A little man with Mongoloid features, a merry smile and unusually imperative in his words and actions became the centre of attention at the Tibetan Observatory. The assistants that had come with him obeyed him with that glad willingness with which faithful soldiers had probably followed the great captains of ancient days. The authority of their teacher, however, did not suppress their own ideas and enterprise. They constituted a very harmonious little group of strong people worthy to give battle to man’s most terrible and implacable enemy — death!

When Ahf Noot learned that Renn Bose’s heredity record had still not been received he gave vent to exclamations of indignation, but was just as quickly calmed when he was told that it was being prepared by Evda Nahl herself and that she would bring it in person.

The Director of the observatory asked quietly what the card was needed for and in what way Renn’s distant ancestors could help. Ahf Noot screwed up his eyes slyly as though he were about to divulge a great secret.

“Accurate knowledge of the heredity structure of every person is needed both for an understanding of his psychological structure and to help make predictions in that field; it also provides important data on his neuro-physiological peculiarities, the resistance factor of his organism, immunity, selective sensitivity to traumas and allergy to medicines. The choice of treatment cannot be precise without an understanding of the heredity structure and the conditions under which his ancestors lived.”

The Director wanted to ask more questions but Ahf Noot stopped him.

“I’ve given you a sufficient answer for independent thought. I have no time for more!”

The Director muttered some apology which the surgeon did not wait to hear.

A portable operating theatre was erected at the foot of the mountain: water, electricity and compressed air were laid on. A huge number of workers offered their services and the building was ready in three hours. Ahf Noot’s assistants selected fifteen doctors from amongst the volunteer builders to service the surgical clinic that had been so rapidly built. Renn Bose was carried under a transparent plastic shield that had been fully sterilized and had had sterilized air blown through it by means of special filters. Ahf Noot and four of his assistants entered the first section of the operating theatre and remained there several hours where they were subjected to waves of bactericides and air saturated with antiseptic emanations until their very breath became sterilized. In the meantime Renn Bose’s body was subjected to deep freezing. Then their swift and confident work began.

The shattered bones and torn blood vessels were joined by means of tantalum hooks and plates that did not irritate the living tissues. Ahf Noot sorted out the injured intestines and stomach: they were quickly freed of the mortified parts, stitched up and placed in a jar of healing solution B 314 that was prepared in conformity with the somatic properties of the human organism. He then started on his hardest job. From under the ribs he removed the blackened liver, pierced with fragments of the rib bones, and, while his assistants held it suspended in position, he confidently treated the fine hairs of the autonomous nerves of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems and pulled them into position behind it. The slightest harm done to these finer branches of the nerves might lead to serious, irreparable damage. With a lightning-like movement the surgeon cut through the portal vein and joined the tubes of artificial blood vessels to the two ends. Then he did the same with the artery and placed the removed liver in a jar of solution B 314. After an operation lasting five hours all Renn Bose’s injured organs were in separate jars. Artificial blood flowed through his body, pumped by the patient’s own heart and an auxiliary double-heart, a tiny automatic pump. Now they had to wait for the healing of the removed organs. Ahf Noot could not simply replace the liver with another from the planet’s surgical fund because that would require further investigation and the condition of the sick man would not permit of any delay. One of the surgeons stayed with the outstretched body (it looked just like an anatomized corpse) until the next shift of surgeons had undergone their sterilization.

The doors of the protective walls built round the operation theatre opened noisily and Ahf Noot, squinting and stretching himself like a beast of prey awakened from its slumber, appeared in the company of his blood-smeared assistants. Evda Nahl, tired and pale, met him. and handed him Renn Bose’s heredity record. Ahf Noot snatched at it eagerly, glanced through it and heaved a sigh of relief.

“I think everything will be all right. Come on and get some sleep.”

“But… suppose he wakes up?”

“Come along. He can’t wake up. Do you think we are so foolish that we did not take care of that?” “How long must we wait?”

“Four or five days. If the biological investigation is accurate and the calculations are correct we shall then be able to make another operation, putting all the organs back. After that, consciousness….” “How long can you stay here?”

“About ten days. The catastrophe fortunately coincided with a break in my teaching work. I’ll take advantage of the opportunity to have a look at Tibet, I’ve never been here before. It is my fate to live where there are most people, in the inhabited zone!”

Evda Nahl gazed at the surgeon in admiration. Ahf Noot smiled gloomily.

“You’re looking at me in the same way as people used to look at an image of a god. That does not befit the cleverest of my pupils!”

“I really am seeing you in a different way. This is the first time in my life that a person dear to me has been in the hands of a surgeon and I can well understand the emotions of those who have come in contact with your art — knowledge combined with unexcelled skill!”

“All right! Admire us, if you must. I shall have time to perform not only a second but even a third operation on your physicist.”

“What third operation?” asked Evda Nahl, immediately on the alert. Ahf Noot, however, squinted cunningly and pointed to the pathway leading to the observatory. Mven Mass, his head bowed, was hobbling down.

“Here’s another unwilling admirer of my art. Have a talk with him, if you can’t sleep, that is. I must sleep.”

The surgeon disappeared round an irregularity in the hill in the direction of the temporary home of the doctors. From afar Evda Nahl could see how haggard the Director of the Outer Stations had grown and how much he had aged: but then, Mven Mass was no longer Director. She told him everything she had learned from Ahf Noot and the African heaved a sigh of relief.

“Then I’ll go away in ten days’ time.”

“Are you doing the right thing, Mven? I’m still suffering too much from shock to be able to think over what has happened, but it doesn’t seem to me that your guilt is so great as to require such condemnation.”

Mven Mass frowned painfully.

“I was carried away by Renn Bose’s brilliant theories. I had no right to apply all Earth’s power to the first attempt.”

"Renn Bose showed you that an attempt would be useless with less power,” she objected.

“That’s true, but we should have made indirect experiments first. I was insanely impatient and did not want to wait years. Don’t waste words — the Council will confirm my decision and the Control of Honour and Justice will not annul it.”

“I’m a member of the Control of Honour and Justice myself!”

“And apart from you there are ten other people. Since my case concerns the whole planet there will be a decision by the Joint Controls of North and South — twenty-one people besides you.”

Evda Nahl laid a hand on the African’s shoulder.

“Let’s sit down, Mven, you’re weak on your legs. Did you know that when the first doctors looked at Renn they decided to call a death concilium?”

“I know, they were two short. All doctors are conservative, and according to an old rule that they haven’t got down to changing, there must be twenty-two people to decide to give a patient an easy death.”

“Until recently the death concilium consisted of sixty doctors!”

“That is a relic of the days when there was a fear of the right to put a patient out of his suffering being misused; in those days doctors used to condemn the sick to long and useless suffering and their relatives to senseless moral torment, even when there was not the slightest hope and death would have been a quick and easy release. But still, you see how useful tradition has been in this case, they were two short and I was able to get Ahf Noot, thanks to Grom Orme.”

“That’s what I wanted to remind you of. Your own concilium of social death so far consists of only one man!”

Mven Mass took Evda’s hand and raised it to his lips and she permitted him this gesture of great and intimate friendship. She was, at the moment, the only friend of a strong man oppressed by moral responsibility. The only one? And if Chara had been in her place? No… to receive Chara now the African would need great spiritual uplift and he still had not found strength enough for that. Let everything go its own way until Renn Bose recovered and the Astronautical Council held its meeting.

“Do you know what the third operation is that Renn has to undergo?” asked Evda, to change the subject. Mven Mass thought for a moment and then recalled a conversation he had had with Ahf Noot.

“Noot wants to take advantage of Renn’s being opened up to cleanse his organs of accumulations of entropy. It is usually done by physiochemotherapy and takes a long time, but it can be done in conjunction with such extensive surgery much more quickly and thoroughly.”

Evda Nahl thought over everything she knew of the basis of longevity, the cleansing of the organism of entropy. Man’s fish, saurian and arboreal ancestors have left contradictory vestiges of ancient physiological structures in his organism each of which has its own specific way of forming entropic remnants of their activity. Thousands of years of study of these ancient centres of entropy accumulation, formerly the cause of senility and sickness, have resulted in the elaboration of cleansing by chemical and ray treatment and of methods of stimulating the aging organism with wave baths.

In nature living beings are freed of accumulated entropy through being born of different individuals coming from different places and possessing different lines of heredity. This juggling with heredity in the struggle against entropy and the absorption of fresh strength from the surrounding world is one of the most difficult riddles of science that biologists, physicists, palaeontologists and mathematicians have been battling with for thousands of years. But the struggle has been worth it, expectation of life is now almost two hundred years and, more important still, that exhausting period of decay in old age has been eliminated.

Mven Mass guessed the psychiatrist’s thoughts.

“I have been thinking of the new and great contradiction of our lives,” said the African. “I mean the power of biological medicine that fills the body with new strength and the constantly increasing creative labour of the brain that burns a man up so quickly. How complicated everything is in the laws of our world.”

“That’s true and explains why we are lagging behind with the development of man’s third system of signals[26],” agreed Evda Nahl. “Thought-reading greatly facilitates communication between individuals but requires a great expenditure of energy and weakens the inhibitory nerve centres. This latter effect is the most dangerous.”

“And still the majority of the people, the real workers, live only half the possible number of years owing to their tremendous nervous tension. As far as I can understand, medicine cannot combat this except by forbidding people to work. But, then, who will give up his work for the sake of a few extra years of life?”

“Nobody, naturally, because people only fear death and try to hang on to life when their lives have been passed in isolation and in sorrowful expectation of joys never experienced,” said Evda Nahl pensively; despite herself she could not help remembering that people live longer on the Island of Oblivion than anywhere else.

Mven Mass once again understood her unspoken thoughts and grimly suggested that they return to the observatory to rest. Evda consented.

Two months later Evda Nahl found Chara Nandi in the upper hall of the Palace of Information, whose tall columns gave it the appearance of a Gothic cathedral. The rays of the sun, slanting down from high windows, crossed at half the height of the hall creating a warm glow above and soft twilight below.

The girl stood leaning against a column, her hands folded behind and her legs crossed. Evda Nahl, as usual, could not help admiring her simple attire — a short grey dress trimmed with blue and with a very low-cut bodice.

Chara glanced over her shoulder as Evda approached and her sorrowful eyes lit up.

“What are you doing here, Chara? I thought you were practising a new dance to surprise us with.”

“Dances are a thing of the past,” said Chara, seriously. “I’m choosing a job in a field I’m acquainted with. There is a vacancy at a factory growing artificial leather somewhere in the South Seas near Celebes and another at the station developing perennial plants in the old Atakama Desert. I was happy working in the Atlantic Ocean, everything was so clear and bright and joyful there from the power of the sea and an unthinking contact with it… I enjoyed skilful play in competition with the waves, the big waves that are always there waiting for you and, as soon as you’ve finished work….”

“I, too, have only to give way to melancholy to recall my first work in the psychological sanatorium in New Zealand where I was just an ordinary nurse. And Renn Bose, today even, after his terrible accident, says that he was happiest when he was working on helicopter traffic control. But, Chara, surely you know that’s just weakness! It’s only fatigue from the tremendous strain that was necessary for you to keep at the high artistic level you have achieved. It is going to be worse later on when your body ceases to be so splendidly charged with vital energy. But as long as it remains what it is, please give us the pleasure of admiring your skill and your beauty.”

“You don’t know how it is with me, Evda. Every new dance I prepare is a matter of joyful search. I realize that I shall once more be giving people something good, something that brings them joy and reaches to the very depths of their emotions and that is what I live by. The moment comes when my plan is put into effect and I give myself up entirely to one burst of passion, to furious, flaming voluptuousness. I suppose this is transmitted to the audience and accounts for the enthusiasm with which the dance is received. I give all of myself to you all!”

“And then what next? A sudden anticlimax?”

“Yes! I’m just like a song that has flown away and vanished into thin air, I’m an exile from a vanished world that nobody wants and to whom nothing is left but the admiration of naive youth. I do not create anything that is registered by the intellect!”

“You do more than that, you leave something in the hearts of people!”

“That’s all very immaterial and transient — I was thinking of myself!”

“Have you ever been in love, Chara?”

The girl lowered her eyelashes and her chin stuck out.

“Would that be like me?” she answered with another question.

Evda Nahl shook her head.

“I mean that tremendous big emotion that you, but not everybody, are capable of.”

“I know what you mean, the poverty of my intellectual life leaves me a richness of emotion….”

“That’s the right idea in essence but I would explain it differently; you are so gifted emotionally that the other side docs not necessarily have to be poor, although, of course, it will naturally be weaker by the law of contradictions. We’re talking too much in the abstract and I have an urgent matter to talk to you about, something that directly concerns our conversation. Mven Mass….”

The girl flinched and Evda Nahl felt that she was inwardly putting up barriers against her. She took Chara under the arm and led her to a side gallery of the hall where the dark wooden panelling harmonized beautifully with the blue-gold of the stained glass in the arched windows.

“Chara, my dear, you are an earthly, light-loving flower transplanted on to the planet of a double star. There are two suns in the sky, one blue and the other red, and the flower does not know which one to turn to. You are a daughter of the red sun, why do you turn to the blue?”

Strongly but gently Evda drew the girl to her shoulder and Chara suddenly snuggled up to her. The famous psychiatrist stroked the girl’s thick, somewhat harsh hair, thinking all the time how thousands of years of training had changed man’s petty private joys for something greater and common to all. But how far they still were from victory over the loneliness of the soul, especially in a soul complicated by a gamut of feelings and impressions, nurtured by a body rich in life. Aloud she said:

“Mven Mass — do you know what’s happened to him?”

“Of course, the whole planet is talking about his unsuccessful experiment!’’

“And what do you think?”

“I think he was right!”

“So do I. That’s why we have to get him off the Island of Oblivion. A month from now there will be the annual meeting of the Astronautical Council. His misdeeds will be discussed and the Council’s decision will be handed over to the Control of Honour and Justice that constitutes the guardian of every person on the planet. I have every reason to hope for a lenient verdict, but Mven Mass must be here. A man whose emotions are quite as strong as yours must not remain long on the island, especially as he is alone!”

“Am I really so much of an ancient woman that I build up plans for my life to depend on what a man is doing, even if it is the man I’ve chosen myself?”

“Chara, my child, don’t! I’ve seen you together and I know what you mean to him and he to you. Don’t blame him for not having seen you, for having hidden from you. Think what it would mean to a man, one of the same type as yourself, to come to you whom he loves — yes, it’s true, Chara — badly defeated and liable to judgement and exile. Could he have come to you, one of the world’s beauties?”

“That’s not what I was thinking of, Evda. Does he need me now that he is weary and broken? I’m afraid he may not have the strength necessary for a great flight of the spirit, not intellectual, but emotional this time, for such love as I believe we are both capable of. If he doesn’t possess strength enough he might lose faith in himself a second time and that would be too much for him. That’s why I thought that it would be better for me to be… in the Atakama Desert!”

“You’re right, Chara, but only from one side. You have forgotten his loneliness and the unnecessary self-condemnation of a great and passionate man who has nothing to support him once he has left our world. I would go there myself but I have Renn Rose on my hands, he’s just pulling through, and, as he’s badly wounded, he comes first. Darr Veter’s been appointed to build the new satellite and that’s his share in helping Mven Mass. I’m making no mistake when I tell you quite seriously to go to him, ask nothing of him, not even a tender glance, no plans for the future, no love… only give him your support, dispel his doubts in his own right and then bring him back to our world. You have strength enough to do that, Chara. Will you go?”

The girl was breathing fast, she raised her childishly trusting eyes to the older woman and there were tears in them.

“I’ll go today!”

Evda Nahl kissed Chara heartily.

“You’re right, you must hurry. We’ll go to Asia Minor together on the Spiral Way. Renn Bose is in a surgical sanatorium on the Island of Rhodes and I’ll send you on to Deir-es-Sohr where there is a helicopter base belonging to the technical and medical first-aid service on the Australia and New Zealand route. I can imagine the pleasure it will give the pilot to take the famous dancer Chara — alas, not the biologist Chara! — to any place she wants to visit.”

The chief conductor of train 116/78 invited Evda Nahl and her companion to pay a visit to the central control room. A corridor, covered with a silicolloid hood, ran along the whole length of the huge cars. Mechanics walked up and down this corridor, from one end of the train to the other, watching instruments indicating the temperature of the axles, the strain on the springs and frame of each of the cars. Geiger counters kept a check on lubrication and brakes. The two women went up a spiral staircase and walked along the corridor until they came to a big cabin high up over the streamlined nose of the first car. In a crystal ellipsoid twenty-two feet above the railway line sat two mechanics one on either side of the pyramidal hood of the electronic robot driver. Parabolic screens showed them everything that was going on on both sides and behind the train. The whiskers of the antenna that trembled on the roof belonged to an apparatus that should give warning of anything appearing on the line of the Spiral Way for the next 50 kilometres although the circumstances under which anything could appear would be very extraordinary.

Evda and Chara sat down on a sofa against the bade wall of the cabin placed half a metre higher than the seats of the mechanics and allowed themselves to be hypnotized by the railway lines racing swiftly towards them. The gigantic railway crossed mountain ranges, was carried over the plains along huge embankments and crossed narrow waters and bays by viaducts built deep in the water. The forest planted on the sides of the colossal cuttings and embankments formed a continuous carpet owing to the train’s uniform speed of 200 kilometres an hour, a carpet that was reddish, light or dark green depending on the trees of the district — pines, eucalypti, or olives. The calm waters of the Archipelago were set in motion on both sides of the bridge by the movement of the air as it was cut by the ten-metre-wide train. The big ripples ran out fanwise, darkening the transparent blue water.

The two women sat in silence, watching the line and wrapped up, each in her own thoughts and cares. So they sat for four hours on end. Another four hours were spent in the comfortable chairs of the saloon on the second storey amongst the other passengers until they parted near the coast of Asia Minor. Evda transferred to an electrobus that would take her to the nearest port and Chara continued her way to the East Taurus station, the junction of the First Meridian Branch. Another two hours and Chara found herself on a hot plain, in a haze of hot dry air. Here on the edge of the former Syrian Desert was the airport Deir-es-Sohr, where spiral helicopters, dangerous in inhabited areas, could land and take off.

Chara Nandi would never forget the weary hours she spent at Deir-es-Sohr waiting for the plane to come in. Time and again she thought over her words and her actions, trying to imagine her meeting with Mven Mass; she built up plans for the search for him on the Island of Oblivion, where everything was blurred in the procession of uneventful days.

At last she was on her way: below spread the endless fields of thermo-elements in the Nefud and Rub-el-Hali deserts, huge stations for the conversion of sunshine into electric power. They were arranged in straight rows and had blinds that shielded them at night and from the dust; built on consolidated sand dunes, on plateaux cut away with a slope to the south and over a labyrinth of filled-in wadis, they stood there as a monument to man’s terrific struggle for energy, a struggle that had begun when the ancient coal and oil resources were exhausted, after the first failures with atomic energy, when mankind came to the conclusion that the chief source of energy would have to be that of the sun in two forms — hydroelectric power stations and sun stations. When new forms of energy, P, Q and F energy were discovered, the necessity for severe economy disappeared. A whole forest of windmotors stood motionless along the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, another reserve power capacity for the northern living zone. In an instant the helicopter had crossed the barely noticeable line of the coast and was airborne over the Indian Ocean. Five thousand kilometres was an insignificant distance for the swift aircraft. Very soon Chara Nandi, followed by good wishes and hopes for a speedy return, left the helicopter, stepping wearily on her shaky legs.

The director of the landing field sent his daughter with a tiny flat-bottomed motor-boat to take Chara to the Island of Oblivion. The two girls were frankly delighted with the high speed of the tiny boat as it skimmed the big waves of the open sea. They went straight to a big bay on the east coast of the island where there was a medical station belonging to the Great World.

Coconut palms, their feathered leaves bowed over the wavelets lapping gently against the shore, welcomed Chara to the island. The medical station was deserted, all its workers having gone inland to destroy ticks discovered on certain rodents in the forest.

There was a stable at the station. Horses were still bred for work in places like the Island of Oblivion or at sanatoria where helicopters could not be used on account of the noise or electric cars on account of the absence of roads. Chara slept for a while, changed her clothes and then went to look at the rare and beautiful animals. There she met a woman who was skilfully operating two machines — a feed distributor and a stable-cleaning machine. Chara helped her with her work and the woman answered her questions. Chara asked her the best way to look for somebody on the island. The woman advised her to join one of the destroyer caravans that travelled all over the island and knew the place much better than the local inhabitants. Chara approved of this idea.