Andromeda (A Space-Age Tale)

CHAPTER TWO EPSILON TUCANAE

The faint tinkle of glass that came from the table was accompanied by orange and blue lights. Varicoloured lights sparkled up and down the transparent partition. Darr Veter, Director of the Outer Stations of the Great Circle, was observing the lights on the Spiral Way. Its huge arc curved into the heights and scored a dull yellow line along the sea-coast. Keeping his eyes on the Way, Darr Veter stretched out his hand and turned a lever to point M, ensuring himself solitude for meditation. A great change had on that day come into his life. His successor Mven Mass, chosen by the Astronautical Council, had arrived that morning from the southern residential belt. They would carry out his last transmission round the Circle together and then… it was precisely this “then” that had not yet been decided upon. For six years he had been doing a job that required superhuman effort, work for which the Council selected special people, those who were outstanding for their splendid memories and encyclopaedic knowledge. When attacks of complete indifference to work and to life began recurring with ominous frequency — and this is one of the most serious ailments in man — he had been examined by Evda Nahl, a noted psychiatrist. A tried remedy — sad strains of minor music in a room of blue dreams saturated with pacifying waves — did not help. The only thing left was to change his work and take a course of physical labour, any sort of work that required daily, hourly muscular effort. His best friend, Veda Kong, the historian, had offered him an opportunity to do archaeological work with her. Machines could not do all the excavation work, the last stages required human hands. There was no lack of volunteers but still Veda had promised him a long trip to the region of the ancient steppes where he would be close to nature.

If only Veda Kong… but of course, he knew the whole story. Veda was in love with Erg Noor, Member of the Astronautical Council and Commander of Cosmic Expedition No. 37. There should have been a message from Erg Noor — from the planet Zirda he should have reported and said whether he was going farther. But if no message had come — and all space nights were computed with the greatest precision — then… but no, he must not think of winning Veda’s love! The Vector of Friendship, that was all, that was the greatest tie that there could be between them. Nevertheless he would go and work for her.

Darr Veter moved a lever, pressed a button and the room was flooded with light. A crystal glass window formed one of the walls of a room situated high above land and sea, giving a view over a great distance. With a turn of another lever Darr Veter caused the window to drop inwards leaving the room open to the starry sky; the metal frame of the window shut out from his view the lights of the Spiral Way and the buildings and lighthouses on the sea-coast.

Veter’s eyes were fixed on the hands of the galactic clock with three concentric rings marked in subdivisions. The transmission of information round the Great Circle followed galactic time, once in every hundred-thousandth of a galactic second, or once in eight days, 45 times a year according to terrestrial time. One revolution of the Galaxy around its axis was one day of galactic time.

The next and, for him, the last transmission would be at 9 a.m. Tibetan Mean Time or at 2 a.m. at the Mediterranean Observatory of the Council. A little more than two hours still remained.

The instrument on the table tinkled and flashed again. A man in light-coloured clothing made of some material with a silk-like sheen appeared from behind the partition.

“We are ready to transmit and receive,” he said briefly, showing no outward signs of respect although in his eyes one could read admiration for his Director. Darr Veter did not say a word, nor did his assistant who stood there in a proud, unrestrained pose.

“In the Cubic Hall?” asked Veter, at last, and, getting an answer in the affirmative, asked where Mven Mass was.

“He is in the Morning Freshness Room, getting tuned up after his journey and, apart from that, I think he’s a bit excited.”

“I’d be excited myself if I were in his place!” said Darr Veter, thoughtfully. “That’s how I felt six years ago.”

The assistant was flushed from his effort to preserve his outward calm. With all the fire of youth he was sorry for his chief, perhaps he even realized that some day he, too, would live through the joys and sorrows of great work and great responsibility. The Director of the Outer Stations did not in any way show his feelings for to do so at his age was not considered decent. “When Mven Mass appears, bring him straight to me.” The assistant left the room. Darr Veter walked over to one corner where the transparent partition was blackened from floor to ceiling and with an easy movement opened two shutters in a panel of polished wood. A light appeared, coming from somewhere in the depths of a mirror-like screen. It did not, however, possess the gloss of a mirror — it gave the impression of a long corridor leading into the far distance.

Using selected switches the Director of the Outer Stations switched on the Vector of Friendship, a system of direct communication between people linked by the ties of profound friendship that enabled them to contact each other at any moment. The Vector of Friendship was connected with a number of places where the person concerned was likely to be — his house, his place of work, his favourite recreation centre.

The screen grew light and in the depths there appeared familiar panels with columns of coded titles of electronic films that had succeeded the ancient photocopies of books.

When all mankind adopted a single alphabet — it was called the linear alphabet because there were no complicated signs in it — it became easy to film even the old books, so that eventually the process was fully mechanized. The blue, green and red stripes were the symbols of the central film libraries where scientific research works were stored, works that had for centuries been published only in a dozen copies. It was merely necessary to select the a code number and symbols and the film library would transmit, automatically, the full text of the book. This machine was Veda’s private library. A snap of switches and the picture faded, it was followed by another room which was also empty. Another switch connected the screen with a hall in which stood a number of dimly lighted desks. The woman seated at the nearest desk raised her head and Darr Veter recognized the thick, widely separated eyebrows and the sweet, narrow face with its grey eyes. As she smiled, white teeth flashed in a big mouth with bold lines and her cheeks were chubbily rounded on either side of a slightly snub nose with a childish, round tip to it that made the face gentle and kindly.

“Veda, there are two hours left. You have to change and I would like you to come to the observatory a little before time.”

The woman on the screen raised her hands to her thick, ash-blonde hair.

“I obey, my Veter,” she smiled. “I’m going home.” Veter’s ear was not deceived by the gayness of her tones.

“Brave Veda, calm yourself. Everybody who speaks to the Great Circle had to make a first appearance.”

“Don’t waste words consoling me,” said Veda Kong, raising her head with a stubborn gesture. “I’ll be there soon."

The screen went dark. Darr Veter closed the shutters and turned to meet his successor. Mven Mass entered the room with long strides. The cast of his features and his smooth, dark-brown skin showed that he was descended from African ancestors. A white mantle fell from his powerful shoulders in heavy folds. Mven Mass took both Darr Veter’s hands in his strong, thin ones. The two Directors of the Outer Stations, the new and the old, were both very tall. Veter, whose genealogy led back to the Russian people, seemed broader and more massive than the graceful African.

“It seems to me that something important ought to happen today,” began Mven Mass, with that trusting sincerity that was typical of the people who lived in the Era of the Great Circle. Darr Veter shrugged his shoulders.

‘‘Important things will happen for three people. I am handing over my work, you are taking it from me and Veda Kong will speak to the Universe for the first time.”

“She is beautiful?” responded Mven Mass, half questioning, half affirming.

“You’ll see her. By the way, there’s nothing special about today’s transmission. Veda will give a lecture on our history for planet KRZ 664456 + BS 3252.”

Mven Mass made an astonishingly rapid mental calculation.

“Constellation of the Unicorn, star Ross 614, its planetary system has been known from time immemorial but has never in any way distinguished itself. I love the old names and old words,” he added with a scarcely detectable note of apology.

“The Council knows how to select people,” Darr Veter thought to himself. Aloud he said:

“Then you’ll get on well with Junius Antus, the Director of the Electronic Memory Machines. He calls himself the Director of the Memory Lamps. He is not thinking of the lamps they used for light in ancient days but of those first electronic devices in clumsy glass envelopes with the air pumped out of them; they looked just like the electric lamps of those days.”

Mven Mass laughed so heartily and frankly that Darr Veter could feel his liking for the man growing fast.

“Memory lamps! Our memory network consists of kilometres of corridors furnished with billions of cell elements.” He suddenly checked himself. “I’m letting my feeling run away with me and haven’t yet found out essential things. When did Ross 614 first speak?”

“Fifty-two years ago. Since then they have mastered the language of the Great Circle. They are only four parsecs away from us. They will get Veda’s lecture in thirteen years’ time.”

“And then?”

“After the lecture we shall go over to reception. We shall get some news from the Great Circle through our old friends.”

“Through 61 Cygni?”

“Of course. Sometimes we get contact through 107 Ophiuchi, to use the old terminology.”

A man in the same silvery uniform of the Astronautical Council as that worn by Veter’s assistant entered the room. He was of medium height, sprightly and aquiline-nosed; people liked him for the keenly attentive glance of his jet-black eyes. The newcomer stroked his hairless head.

“I’m Junius Antus,” he said, apparently to Mven Mass. The African greeted him respectfully. The Directors of the Memory Machines exceeded everybody else in erudition. They decided what had to be perpetuated by the machines and what would be sent out as general information or used by the Palaces of Creative Effort.

“Another brevus,” muttered Junius Antus, shaking hands with his new acquaintance.

“What’s that?” inquired Mven Mass.

“A Latin appellation I have thought up. I give that name to all those who do not live long — vita breva, you know — workers on the Outer Stations, pilots of the Interstellar Space Fleet, technicians at the spaceship engine plants…. And… er… you and I. We do not live more than half the allotted span, either. What can one do, it’s more interesting. Where’s Veda?”

“She intended coming earlier,” began Darr Veter. His words were drowned by disturbing chords of music that followed a loud click on the dial of the galactic clock.

“Warning for all Earth. All power stations, all factories, transport and radiostations! In half an hour from now cease the output of all energy and accumulate it in high-capacity condensers till there is enough for a radiation channel to penetrate the atmosphere. The transmission will take 43 per cent of Earth’s power resources. The reception will need only 8 per cent for the maintenance of the channel,” explained Darr Veter.

“That’s just as I imagined it would be,” said Mven Mass, nodding his head. Suddenly his glance became fixed and his face glowed with admiration. Darr Veter looked round. Unobserved by them Veda Kong had arrived and was standing beside a luminescent column. For her lecture she had donned the costume that adds mostly to the beauty of women, a costume invented thousands of years before at the time of the Cretan Civilization. The heavy knot of ash-blonde hair piled high on the back of her head did not detract from her strong and graceful neck. Her smooth shoulders were bare and the bosom was open and supported by a corsage of cloth of gold. A wide, short silver skirt embroidered with blue flowers, exposed bare, sun-tanned legs in slippers of cherry-coloured silk. Big cherry-coloured stones brought from Venus, set with careful crudeness in a gold chain, were like balls of fire on her soft skin and matched cheeks and tiny ears that were flaming with excitement.

Mven Mass met the learned historian for the first time and he gazed at her in frank admiration. Veda lifted her troubled eyes to Darr Veter. “Very nice,” he said in answer to his friend’s unspoken question.

“I’ve spoken to many audiences, but not like this,” she said.

“The Council is following a custom. Communications for the different planets are always read by beautiful women. This gives them an impression of the sense of the beautiful as perceived by the inhabitants of our world, and in general it tells them a lot,” continued Darr Veter. “The Council is not mistaken in its choice!” exclaimed Mven Mass.

Veda gave the African a penetrating look. “Are you a bachelor?” she asked softly and, acknowledging Mven Mass’s nod of affirmation, smiled.

“You wanted to talk to me?” she asked, turning to Darr Veter. The friends went out on to the circular verandah and Veda welcomed the touch of the fresh sea breeze on her face.

The Director of the Outer Stations told her of his decision to go to the dig; he told her of the way he had wavered between the 38th Cosmic Expedition, the Antarctic submarine mines and archaeology.

“Anything, but not the Cosmic Expedition!” exclaimed Veda and Darr Veter felt that he had been rather tactless.

Carried away by his own feelings he had accidentally touched the sore spot in Veda’s heart.

He was helped out by the melody of disturbing chords that reached the verandah.

“It’s time to go. In half an hour the Great Circle will be switched on!”

Darr Veter took Veda Kong carefully by the arm. Accompanied by the others they went down an escalator to a deep underground chamber, the Cubic Hall, carved out of living rock.

There was little in the hall but instruments. The dull black walls had the appearance of velvet divided into panels by clean lines of crystal. Gold, green, blue and orange lights lit up the dials, signs and figures. The emerald green points of needles trembled on black semicircles, giving the broad walls an appearance of strained, quivering expectation.

The furniture consisted of a few chairs and a big black-wood table, one end of which was pushed into a huge hemispherical screen the colour of mother-of-pearl set in a massive gold frame.

Veda Kong and Mven Mass examined everything with rapt attention for this was their first visit to the observatory of the Outer Stations.

Darr Veter beckoned to Mven Mass and pointed to high black armchairs for the others. The African came towards him, walking on the balls of his feet, just as his ancestors had once walked in the sunbaked savannas on the trail of huge, savage animals. Mven Mass held his breath. Out of this deeply-hidden stone vault a window would soon be opened into the endless spaces of the Cosmos and people would join their thoughts and their knowledge to that of their brothers in other worlds. This tiny group of five represented terrestrial mankind before the whole Universe.

And from the next day on, he, Mven Mass, would be in charge of these communications. He was to be entrusted with the control of that tremendous power. A slight shiver ran down his back. He had probably only at that moment realized what a burden of responsibility he had undertaken when he had accepted the Council’s proposal. As he watched Darr Veter manipulating the control switches something of the admiration that burned in the eyes of Darr Veter’s young assistant could be seen in his.

A deep, ominous rumble sounded, as though a huge gong had been struck. Darr Veter turned round swiftly and threw over a long lever. The gong ceased and Veda Kong noticed that a narrow panel on the right-hand wall laid lit up from floor to ceiling. The wall seemed to have disappeared into the unfathomable distance. The phantom-like outlines of a pyramidal mountain surmounted by a gigantic stone ring appeared. Below the cap of molten stone, patches of pure white mountain snow lay here and there.

Mven Mass recognized the second highest mountain in Africa, Mount Kenya.

Again the strokes of the gong resounded through the underground chamber making all present alert and compelling them to concentrate their thoughts.

Darr Veter took Mven’s hand and placed it on a handle in which a ruby eye glowed. Mven obediently turned the handle as far as it would go. All the power produced on Earth by 1,760 gigantic power stations was being concentrated on the equator, on a mountain 5,000 metres high. A multicoloured luminescence appeared over the peak, formed a sphere and then surged upwards in a spearheaded column that pierced the very depths of the sky. Like the narrow column of a whirlwind it remained poised over the glassy sphere, and over its surface, climbing upwards, ran a spiral of dazzlingly brilliant blue smoke.

The directed rays cut a regular channel through Earth’s atmosphere that acted as a line of communication between Earth and the Outer Stations. At a height of 36,000 kilometres above Earth hung the diurnal satellite, a giant station that revolved around Earth’s axis once in twenty-four hours and kept in the plane of the equator so that to all intents and purposes it stood motionless over Mount Kenya in East Africa, the point that had been selected for permanent communications with the Outer Stations. There was another satellite, Number 57, revolving around the 90th meridian at a height of 57,000 kilometres and communicating with the Tibetan Receiving and Transmitting Observatory. The conditions for the formation of a transmission channel were better at the Tibetan station but communication was not constant. These two giant satellites also maintained contact with a number of automatic stations situated at various points round Earth.

The narrow panel on the right went dark, a signal that the transmission channel had connected with the receiving station of the satellite. Then the gold-framed, pearl screen lit up. In its centre appeared a monstrously enlarged figure that grew clearer and then smiled with a big mouth. This was Goor Hahn, one of the observers on the diurnal satellite, whose picture on the screen grew rapidly to fantastic proportions. He nodded and stretched out a ten-foot arm to switch on all the Outer Stations around our planet. They were linked up in one circuit by the power transmitted from Earth. The sensitive eyes of receivers turned in all directions into the Universe. The planet of a dull red star in the Unicorn Constellation that had shortly before sent out a call, had a better contact with Satellite 57 and Goor Hahn switched over to it. This invisible contact between Earth and the planet of another star would last for three-quarters of an hour and not a moment of that valuable time could be lost.

Veda Kong, at a sign from Darr Veter, stood before the screen on a gleaming round metal dais. Invisible rays poured down from above and noticeably deepened the sun-tan of her skin. Electron machines worked soundlessly as they translated her words into the language of the Great Circle. In thirteen years’ time the receivers on the planet of the dull-red star would write down the incoming oscillations in universal symbols and, if they had them, electron machines would translate the symbols into the living speech of the planet’s inhabitants.

“All the same, it is a pity that those distant beings will not hear the soft melodious voice of a woman of Earth and will not understand its expressiveness,” thought Darr Veter. “Who knows how their ears may be constructed, they may possess quite a different type of hearing. But vision, which uses that part of the electromagnetic oscillations capable of penetrating the atmosphere, is almost the same throughout the Universe and they will behold the charming Veda in her flush of excitement….”

Darr Veter did not take his eyes off Veda’s tiny ear, partly covered by a lock of hair, while he listened to her lecture.

Briefly but clearly Veda Kong spoke of the chief stages in the history of mankind. She spoke of the early epochs of man’s existence, when there were numerous large and small nations that were in constant conflict owing to the economic and ideological hostility that divided their countries. She spoke very briefly and gave the era the name of the Era of Disunity. People living in the Era of the Great Circle were not interested in lists of destructive wars and horrible sufferings or the so-called great rulers that filled the ancient history books. More important to them was the development of productive forces and the forming of ideas, the history of art and knowledge and the struggle to create a real man, the way in which the creative urge had been developed, and people had arrived at new conceptions of the world, of social relations and of the duty, rights and happiness of man, conceptions that had nurtured the mighty tree of communist society that flourished throughout the planet.

During the last century of the Era of Disunity, known as the Fission Age, people had at last begun to understand that their misfortunes were due to a social structure that had originated in times of savagery; they realized that all their strength, all the future of mankind, lay in labour, in the correlated efforts of millions of free people, in science and in a way of life reorganized on scientific lines. Men came to understand the basic laws of social development, the dialectically contradictory course of history and the necessity to train people in the spirit of strict social discipline, something that became of greater importance as the population of the planet increased.

In the Fission Age the struggle between old and new ideas had become more acute and had led to the division of the world into two camps — the old and the new states with differing economic systems. The first kinds of atomic energy had been discovered by that time but the stubbornness of those who championed the old order bad almost led mankind into a colossal catastrophe.

The new social system was bound to win although victory was delayed on account of the difficulty of training people in the new spirit. The rebuilding of the world on communist lines entailed a radical economic change accompanied by the disappearance of poverty, hunger and heavy, exhausting toil. The changes brought about in economy made necessary an intricate system to direct production and distribution and could only be put into effect by the inculcation of social consciousness in every person.

Communist society had not been established in all countries and amongst all nations simultaneously. A tremendous effort had been required to eliminate the hostility and, especially, the lies that had remained from the propaganda prevalent during the ideological struggle of the Fission Age. Many mistakes had been made in this period when new human relations were developing. Here and there insurrections had been raised by backward people who worshipped the past and who, in their ignorance, saw a way out of man’s difficulties in a return to that past.

With inevitable persistence the new way of life had spread over the entire Earth and the many races and nations were united into a single friendly and wise family.

Thus began the next era, the Era of World Unity, consisting of four ages — the Age of Alliance, the Age of Lingual Disunity, the Age of Power Development and the Age of the Common Tongue.

Society developed more rapidly and each new age passed more speedily than the preceding one as man’s power over nature progressed with giant steps.

In the ancient Utopian dreams of a happy future great importance was attached to man’s gradual liberation from the necessity to work. The Utopians promised man an abundance of all he needed for a short working day of two or three hours and the rest of his time lie could devote to doing nothing, to the dolce far niente of the novelists. This fantasy, naturally, arose out of man’s abhorrence of the arduous, exhausting toil of ancient days.

People soon realized that happiness can derive from labour, from a never-ceasing struggle against nature, the overcoming of difficulties and the solution of ever new problems arising out of the development of science and economy. Man needed to work to the full measure of his strength but his labour had to be creative and in accordance with his natural talents and inclinations, and it had to be varied and changed from time to time. The development of cybernetics, the technique of automatic control, a comprehensive education and the development of intellectual abilities coupled with the finest physical training of each individual, made it possible for a person to change his profession frequently, learn another easily and bring endless variety into his work so that it became more and more satisfying. Progressively expanding science embraced all aspects of life and a growing number of people came to know the joy of the creator, the discoverer of new secrets of nature. Art played a great part in social education and in forming the new way of life. Then came the most magnificent era in man’s history, the Era of Common Labour consisting of four ages, the Age of Simplification, the Age of Realignment, the Age of the First Abundance and the Age of the Cosmos.

A technical revolution of the new period was the invention of concentrated electricity with its high-capacity accumulators and tiny electric motors. Before this, man had learned to use semi-conductors in intricate weak-current circuits for his automated cybernetic machines. The work of the mechanic became as delicate as that of the jeweller but at the same time it served to subordinate energy on a Cosmic scale.

The demand that everybody should have everything required the simplification of articles of everyday use. Man ceased to be the slave of his possessions, and the elaboration of standard components enabled articles and machines to be produced in great variety from a comparatively small number of elements in the same way as the great variety of living organisms is made up of a small number of different cells: the cells consist of albumins, the albumins come from proteins and so on. Feeding in former ages had been so wasteful that its rationalization made it easy to feed, without detriment, a population that had increased by thousands of millions.

All the forces of society that had formerly been expended on the creation of war machines, on the maintenance of huge armies that did no useful labour and on propaganda and its trumpery, were channelled into improving man’s way of life and promoting scientific knowledge.

At a sign from Veda Kong, Darr Veter pressed a button and a huge globe rose up beside her.

“We began,” continued the beautiful historian, “with the complete redistribution of Earth’s surface into dewelling and industrial zones.

“The brown stripes running between thirty and forty degrees of North and South latitude represent an unbroken chain of urban settlements built on the shores of warm seas with a mild climate and no winters. Mankind no longer spends huge quantities of energy warming houses in winter and making himself clumsy clothing. The greatest concentration of people is around the cradle of human civilization, the Mediterranean Sea. The subtropical belt was doubled in breadth after the ice on the polar caps had been melted. To the north of the zone of habitation lie prairies and meadows where countless herds of domestic animals graze. The production of foodstuffs and trees for timber is confined to the tropical belt where it is a thousand times more profitable than in the colder climatic zones. Ever since the discovery was made that carbohydrates, the sugars, could be obtained artificially from sunlight and carbonic acid, agriculture has no longer had to produce all man’s food. Practically speaking, there is no limit to the quantities of sugars, fats and vitamins that we can produce. For the production of albumins alone we have huge land areas and huge fields of seaweed at our disposal. Mankind has been freed from the fear of hunger that had been hanging over it for tens of thousands of years.

“One of man’s greatest pleasures is travel, an urge to move from place to place that we have inherited from our distant forefathers, the wandering hunters and gatherers of scanty food. Today the entire planet is encircled by the Spiral Way whose gigantic bridges link all the continents.” Veda ran her finger along a silver thread and turned the globe round. “Electric trains move along the Spiral Way all the time and hundreds of thousands of people can leave the inhabited zone very speedily for the prairies, open fields, mountains or forests.

“At last the planned organization of life put an end to the murderous race for higher speeds, the construction of faster and faster vehicles. Trains on the Spiral Way proceed at 200 kilometres an hour. Only on rare occasions do we use aircraft with a speed of thousands of kilometres an hour.

“A few centuries ago we made extensive improvements to the surface of our planet. The energy of the atomic nucleus had been discovered long before, in the Fission Age, when man learned to liberate a tiny part of its energy to produce a burst of heat but with the harmful radiation of the fall-out. It was soon realized that this meant danger to life on the planet and nuclear power possibilities were greatly curtailed. Almost at the same time astronomers studying the physics of distant stars discovered two new ways of obtaining nuclear energy, Q and F, that were more effective than the old methods and involved no harmful radiation.

“These two methods are now in use on Earth although our spaceships use another form of nuclear energy, the anameson fuel, that became known to us from our observations of the great stars of the Galaxy through the Great Circle.

“It was decided to destroy all the stocks of thermo-’nuclear materials that had been accumulating a long time — radioactive isotopes of uranium, thorium, hydrogen, cobalt and lithium — as soon as a method of ejecting them beyond Earth’s atmosphere had been devised.

“In the Age of Realignment artificial suns were made and ‘hung’ over the north and south polar regions. These greatly reduced the size of the polar ice-caps that had been formed during the ice ages of the Quaternary Period and brought about extensive climatic changes. The level of the oceans was raised by seven metres, the cold fronts receded sharply and the ring of trade winds that had dried up the deserts on the outskirts of the tropic zone became much weaker. Hurricanes and, in general, stormy weather manifestations ceased almost completely.

“The warm steppelands spread almost as far as the sixtieth parallels north and south and beyond them the grasslands and forests of the temperate zone passed the seventieth parallels.

“Three-quarters of the Antarctic Continent was freed from ice and proved a treasure-house of minerals that were invaluable because resources on the other continents had been almost completely exhausted by the reckless destruction of metals in the universal wars of the past. The Spiral Way was completed by carrying it across the Antarctic.

“Before this radical change in climate had been achieved canals had been dug and mountain chains had had passages cut through them to balance out the circulation of air and water on the planet. Even the high mountain deserts of Asia had been irrigated by constantly operating dielectric pumps.

“The potential output of foodstuffs had grown very considerably and new lands had become habitable.

“The frail and dangerous old planetships, poor as they were, enabled us to reach the other planets of our system. Earth was encircled by a belt of artificial satellites from which scientists were able to make a close study of the Cosmos. And then, eight hundred and eight years ago, there occurred an event of such great importance that it marked a new era in the history of mankind — the Era of the Great Circle.

“For a long time the human intellect had laboured over the transmission of images, sounds and energy over great distances. Hundreds of thousands of the most talented scientists worked in a special organization that still bears the name of the Academy of Direct Radiation. They evolved methods for the directed transmission of energy over great distances without any form of conductor. This became possible when ways were found to concentrate the stream of energy in non-divergent rays. The clusters of parallel rays then transmitted provided constant communication with the artificial satellites, and, therefore, with the Cosmos. Long, long ago, towards the end of the Era of Disunity, our scientists established the fact that powerful radiation streams were pouring on to Earth from the Cosmos. Calls from the Cosmos and the transmission round the Great Circle of the Universe were reaching us together with radiation from the other constellations and galaxies. At that time we did not understand them although we had learned to receive the mysterious signals which we, at that time, thought to be natural radiation.

“Kam Amat, an Indian scientist, got the idea of conducting experiments from the satellites with television receivers and with infinite patience tried all possible wavelength combinations over a period of dozens of years.

“Kam Amat caught a transmission from the planetary system of the binary star that had long been known as 61 Cygni. There appeared on the screen a man, who was not like us but was undoubtedly a man, and he pointed to an inscription made in the symbols of the Great Circle. Another ninety years passed before the inscription was read and today it is inscribed in our language, the language of Earth, on a monument to Kam Amat: ‘Greetings to you, our brothers, who are joining our family. Separated by space and time we are united by intellect in the Circle of Great Power.’

“The language of symbols, drawings and maps used by the Great Circle proved easy to assimilate at the level of development then reached by man. In two hundred years we were able to use translation machines to converse with the planetary systems of the nearest stars and to receive and transmit whole pictures of the varied life of different worlds. We recently received an answer from the fourteen planets of Deneb, a first magnitude star and tremendous centre of life in the Cygnus; it is 122 parsecs distant from us and radiates as much light as 4,800 of our suns. Intellectual development there has proceeded on different lines but has reached a very high level.

“Strange pictures and symbols come from immeasurable distances, from the ancient worlds, from the globular clusters of our Galaxy and from the huge inhabited area around the Galactic Centre, but we do not understand them, and have not yet deciphered them. They have been recorded by the memory machines and passed on to the Academy of the Bounds of Knowledge, an institution that works on problems that our science can as yet only hint at. We are trying to understand ideas that are far from us, millions of years ahead of us, ideas that differ very greatly from ours due to life there having followed different paths of development.”

Veda Kong turned away from the screen into which she had been staring as though hypnotized and cast an inquiring glance at Darr Veter. He smiled and nodded his head in approval. Veda proudly raised her head, stretched out her arms to those invisible and unknown beings who would receive her words and her image thirteen years later.

“Such is our history, such is the difficult, devious and lengthy ascent we have made to the heights of knowledge. We appeal to you — join us in the Great Circle to carry to the ends of the tremendous Universe the gigantic power of the intellect!”

Veda’s voice had a triumphant sound to it, as though it were filled with the strength of all the generations of the people of Earth who had reached such heights that they now aspired to send their thoughts beyond the bounds of their own Galaxy to other stellar islands in the Universe….

The bronze gong sounded as Darr Veter turned over the lever that switched off the stream of transmitted energy. The screen went dark. The luminescent column of the conductor channel remained on the transparent panel on the right.

Veda, tired and subdued, curled up in the depths of her armchair. Darr Veter turned the control desk over to Mven Mass and leaned over his shoulder to watch him at work. The absolute silence was broken only by the faint clicks of switches opening and closing.

Suddenly the screen in the gold frame disappeared and its place was taken by unbelievable depths of space. It was the first time that Veda Kong had seen this marvel and she gasped loudly. Even those well acquainted with the method of the complex interference of light waves by means of which this exceptional expanse and depth of vision was achieved, found the spectacle amazing.

The dark surface of another planet was advancing from the distance, growing in size with every second. It belonged to an extraordinarily rare system of binary stars in which two suns so balanced each other that their planet had a regular orbit and life was able to emerge on it. The two suns, orange and crimson, were smaller than ours, and they lit up the ice of a frozen sea that appeared crimson in colour. A huge, squat building standing on the edge of a chain of flat-topped black hills, was visible through a mysterious violet haze. The centre of vision was focussed on a platform on the roof and then seemed to penetrate the building until the watchers saw a grey-skinned man with round eyes like those of an owl surrounded by a fringe of silvery down. He was very tall and exceedingly thin with tentacle-like limbs. The man jerked his head ridiculously as though he were making a hurried bow; turned listless, lens-like eyes to the screen and opened a lipless mouth that was covered, by a flap of soft flesh that looked like a nose.

“Zaph Phthet, Director of External Relations of 61 Cygni. Today we are transmitting for yellow star STL 3388 + 04 JF…. We are transmitting for…”-’ came the gentle, melodious voice of the translation machine.

Darr Veter and Junius Antus exchanged glances and Mven Mass squeezed Darr Veter’s wrist for a second. That was the galactic call sign of Earth, or rather, of the entire solar system, that observers in other worlds had formerly regarded as one big planet rotating round the Sun once in 59 terrestrial years. Once in that period Jupiter and Saturn are in opposition which displaces the Sun in the visible sky of other systems sufficiently for astronomers on the nearer stars to observe. Our astronomers made the same mistake in respect of many planetary systems that a number of stars had long been known to possess.

Junius Antus checked up on the tuning of his memory machine with greater celerity than he had shown at the beginning of the transmission and also checked the watchful accuracy indicators.

The unchanging voice of the electron translator continued:

“We have received a transmission from star…” again a long string of figures and staccato sounds, “by chance and not during the Great Circle transmission times. They have not deciphered the language of the Circle and are wasting energy transmitting during the hours of silence. We answered them during their transmission period and the result will be known in three-tenths of a second….” The voice broke off. The signal lamps continued to burn with the exception of the green electric eye that had gone out.

“We get these unexplained interruptions in transmission, perhaps due to the passage of the astronauts’ legendary neutral fields between us,” Junius Antus explained to Veda.

“Three-tenths of a galactic second — that means waiting six hundred years,” muttered Darr Veter, morosely. “A lot of good that will do us!”

“As far as I can understand they are in communication with Epsilon Tucanae in the southern sky that is ninety parsecs away from us and close to the limit of our regular communications. So far we haven’t established contact with anything farther away than Deneb,” Mven Mass remarked.

“But we receive the Galactic Centre and the globular clusters, don’t we?” asked Veda Kong.

“Irregularly, quite by chance, or through the memory machines of other members of the Great Circle that form a circuit stretching through the Galaxy,” answered Mven Mass.

“Communications sent out thousands and even tens of thousands of years ago do not get lost in space but eventually reach us,” said Junius Antus.

“So that means we get a picture of the life and knowledge of the peoples of other, distant worlds, with great delay, for the Central Zone of the Galaxy, for example, a delay of about twenty thousand years?”

“Yes, it doesn’t matter whether they are the records of the memory machines of other, nearer worlds, or whether they are received by our stations, we see the distant worlds as they were a very long time ago. We see people that have long been dead and forgotten in their own worlds.”

“How is it that we are helpless in this field when we have achieved such great power over nature?” Veda Kong asked, petulantly. “Why can’t we find some other means of contacting distant worlds, something not connected with waves or photon ray equipment?”

“How well I understand you, Veda!” exclaimed Mven Mass.

“The Academy of the Bounds of Knowledge is engaged on projects to overcome space, time and gravity,” Darr Veter put in. “They are working on the fundamentals of the Cosmos, but they have not yet got even as far as the experimental stage and cannot….”

The green eye suddenly flashed on again and Veda once more felt giddy as the screen opened out into endless space.

The sharply outlined edges of the image showed that it was the record of a memory machine and not a transmission received directly.

At first the onlookers saw the surface of a planet, obviously as seen from an outer station, a satellite. The huge, pale violet sun, spectral in the terrific heat it generated, deluged the cloud envelope of the planet’s atmosphere with its penetrating rays.

“Yes, that’s it, the luminary of the planet is Epsilon Tucanae, a high temperature star, class B”, 78 times as bright as our Sun,” whispered Mven Mass. Darr Veter and Junius Antus nodded in agreement.

The spectacle changed, the scene grew narrower and seemed to be descending to the very soil of the unknown world.

The rounded domes of hills that looked as though they had been cast from bronze rose high above the surrounding country. An unknown stone or metal glowed like fire in the amazingly white light of the blue sun. Even in the imperfect apparatus used for transmission the unknown world gleamed triumphantly, with a sort of victorious magnificence.

The reflected rays produced a silver pink corona around the contours of the copper-coloured hills and lay in a wide path on the slowly moving waves of a violet sea. The water, of a deep amethyst colour, seemed heavy and glowed from within with red lights that looked like an accumulation of living eyes. The waves washed the massive pedestal of a gigantic statue that stood in splendid isolation far from the coast. It was a female figure carved from dark-red stone, the head thrown back and the arms extended in ecstasy towards the naming depths of the sky. She could easily have been a daughter of Earth, the resemblance she bore to our people was no less astounding than the amazing beauty of the carving. Her body was the fulfilment of an earthly sculptor’s dream; it combined great strength with inspiration in every line. The polished red stone of the statue emitted the flames of an unknown and, consequently, mysterious and attractive life.

The five people of Earth gazed in silence at that astounding new world. The only sound was a prolonged sigh that escaped the lips of Mven Mass whose every nerve had been strained in joyful anticipation from his first glance at the statue.

On the sea-coast opposite the statue, carved silver towers marked the beginning of a wide, white staircase that swept boldly over a thicket of stately trees with turquoise leaves.

“They ought to ring!” Darr Veter whispered in Veda’s ear, pointing to the towers and she nodded her head in agreement.

The camera of the new planet continued its consistent and soundless journey into the country.

For a second the five people saw white walls with wide cornices through which led a portal of blue stone; the screen carried them into a high room filled with strong light. The dull, pearl-coloured, grooved walls lent unusual clarity to everything in the hall. The attention of the Earth-dwellers was attracted to a group of people standing before a polished emerald panel.

The flame-red colour of their skin was similar to that of the statue in the sea. It was not an unusual colour for Earth — coloured photographs that had been preserved from ancient days recorded some tribes of Indians in Central America whose skin was almost the same colour, perhaps just a little lighter.

There were two men and two women in the hall. They stood in pairs wearing different clothing. The pair standing closer to the emerald panel wore short golden clothes, something like elegant overalls, fastened with a number of clips. The other pair wore cloaks that covered them from head to foot and were of the same pearl tone as the walls.

Those standing before the panel made some graceful movements, touching some strings stretching diagonally from the left-hand edge of the panel. The wall of polished emerald or glass became transparent and in time with the movements of the man and woman, clearly defined pictures appeared in the crystal. They appeared and disappeared so quickly that even such trained observers as Junius Antus and Darr Veter had difficulty in following the meaning of them.

In the procession of copper-coloured mountains, violet seas and amethyst trees the history of the planet emerged. A chain of animal and plant forms, sometimes monstrously incomprehensible, sometimes beautiful, appeared as ghosts of the past. Many of the animals and plants seemed to be similar to those that have been preserved in the record of the rocks on Earth. It was a long ladder of ascending forms of life, the ladder of developing living matter. The endlessly long path of development seemed even longer, more difficult and more tortuous than the path of evolution known to every Earth-dweller.

New pictures flashed through the phantom gleam of the apparatus: the flames of huge fires, piled-up rocks on the plains, fights with savage beasts, the solemn rites of funerals and religious services. The figure of a man covered by a motley cloak of coloured skins filled the whole panel. Leaning on a spear with one band and raising the other towards the stars in an all-embracing gesture, he stood with his foot on the neck of a conquered monster with a ridge of stiff hair down its back and long, bared fangs. In the background a line of men and women had joined hands in pairs and seemed to be singing something.

The picture faded away and the place of the tableaux was taken by a dark surface of polished stone.

At this moment the pair in golden clothing moved away to the right and their place was taken by the second pair. With a movement so rapid that the eye could not follow it the cloaks were thrown aside and two dark-red bodies gleamed like living fire against the pearl of the walls. The man held out his two hands to the woman and she answered him with such a proud and dazzling smile of joy that the Earth-dwellers responded with involuntary smiles. And there, in the pearl hall of that immeasurably distant world, the two people began a slow dance. It was probably not danced for the sake of dancing, but was something more in the nature of eurhythmics, in which the dancers strove to show their perfection, the beauty of the lines and the flexibility of their bodies. A majestic and at the same time sorrowful music could be felt in the rhythmic change of movement, as though recalling the great ladder of countless unnamed victims sacrificed to the development of life that had produced man, that beautiful and intelligent being.

Mven Mass fancied he could hear a melody, a movement in pure high tones played against a background of the resonant and measured rhythm of low notes. Veda Kong squeezed Darr Veter’s hand but the latter did not pay her any attention. Junius Antus stood motionless watching the scene, without even breathing, and beads of perspiration stood out on his broad forehead.

The people of the Tucana planet were so like the people of Earth that the impression of another world was gradually lost. The red people, however, possessed bodies of refined beauty such as had not by that time been universally achieved on Earth, but which lived in the dreams and the creations of artists and was to be seen only in a small number of unusually beautiful people.

“The more difficult and the longer the path of blind animal evolution up to the thinking being, the more purposeful and perfected are the higher forms of life and, therefore, the more beautiful,” thought Darr Veter. “The people of Earth realized a long time ago that beauty is an instinctively comprehended purposefulness of structure that is adapted to definite objectives. The more varied the objectives, the more beautiful the form — these red people must be more versatile and agile than we are…. Perhaps their civilization has progressed mainly through the development of man himself, the development of his spiritual and physical might, rather than through technical development. Even with the coming of communist society our civilization has remained rudimentally technical and only in the Era of Common Labour did we turn to the perfection of man himself and not only his machines, houses, food and amusements.”

The dance was over. The young red-skinned woman came into the centre of the hall and the camera of the transmitter focussed on her alone. Her outstretched arms and her face were turned to the ceiling of the hall.

The eyes of the Earth-dwellers involuntarily followed her glance. There was no ceiling, or, perhaps, some clever optical illusion created the impression of a night sky with very large and bright stars. The strange combinations of constellations did not arouse any association. The girl waved her hand and a blue ball appeared on the index finger of her left hand. A silvery ray streamed out of the ball and served her as a gigantic pointer. A round patch of light at the end of the pointer halted first on one then on another star in the ceiling. In each case the emerald panel showed a motionless picture extremely wide in scale. As the pointer ray moved from star to star the panel demonstrated a series of inhabited and uninhabited planets. Joyless and sorrowful were the stone or sand deserts that burned in the rays of red, blue, violet and yellow suns. Sometimes the rays of a strange leaden-grey star would bring to life on its planets flattened domes or spirals, permeated with electricity, that swam like jelly-fish in a dense orange atmosphere or ocean. In the world of the red sun there grew trees of incredible height with slimy black bark, trees that stretched their millions of crooked branches heavenwards as though in despair. Other planets were completely covered with dark water. Huge living islands, either animal or vegetable, were floating everywhere, their countless hairy feelers waving over the smooth surface of the water.

“They have no planets near them that possess the higher forms of life,” said Junius Antus, suddenly, without once taking his eyes off the star map of the unknown sky.

“Yes they have,” said Darr Veter, “although the flattened stellar system to one side of them is one of the newest formations in the Galaxy, we know that flattened and globular systems, the old and the new, not infrequently alternate. In the direction of Eridanus there is a system with living intelligences that belongs to the Circle.”

“VVR 4955 + MO 3529… etc.,” added Mven Mass, “but why don’t they know of it?”

“The system entered the Great Circle 275 years ago and this communication was made before that,” answered Darr Veter.

The red-skinned girl from the distant world shook the blue ball from her finger and turned to face her audience, her arms spread out widely as though to embrace some invisible person standing before her. She threw back her head and shoulders as a woman of Earth would in a burst of passion. Her mouth was half open and her lips moved as she repeated inaudible words. So she stood, immobile, appealing, sending forth into the cold darkness of interstellar space fiery human words of an entreaty for friendship with people of other worlds.

Again her enthralling beauty held the Earth-dwellers spellbound. She had nothing of the bronze severity of the red-skinned people of Earth. Her round face, small nose and big, widely-placed blue eyes bore more resemblance to the northern peoples of Earth. Her thick, wavy black hair was not stiff. Every line of her face and body expressed a light and joyful confidence that came from a subconscious feeling of great strength.

“Is it possible that they know nothing of the Great Circle?” Veda Kong almost groaned as though in obeisance before her beautiful sister from the Cosmos.

“By now they probably know,” answered Darr Veter, the scenes we have witnessed date three hundred years back.”

“Eighty-eight parsecs,” rumbled Mven Mass’s low voice. “Eighty-eight…. All those people we have just seen have long been dead.”

As though in confirmation of his words the scene from the wonderful world disappeared and the green indicator went out. The transmission around the Great Circle was over.

For another minute they were all in a trance. The first to recover was Darr Veter. Biting his lip in chagrin he hurriedly turned the granulated lever. The column of directed energy switched off with the sound of a gong that warned power station engineers to re-direct the gigantic stream of energy into its usual channels. The Director of the Outer Stations turned back to his companions only when all the necessary manipulations had been completed.

Junius Antus, with a frown on his face, was looking through pages of written notes.

“Some of the memory records taken down from the stellar map on the ceiling must be sent to the Southern Sky Institute!” he said, turning to Darr Veter’s young assistant. The latter looked at Junius Antus in amazement as though he had just awakened from an unusual dream.

The grim scientist looked at him, a smile lurking in his eyes — what they had seen was indeed a dream of a wonderful world sent out into space three hundred years before… a dream that thousands of millions of people on Earth and in the colonies on the Moon, Mars and Venus would now see so clearly that it would be almost tangible.

“You were right, Mven Mass,” smiled Darr Veter, “when you said before the transmission began that something unusual was going to happen today. For the first time in the eight hundred years since we joined the Great Circle a planet has appeared in the Universe inhabited by beings who are our brothers not only in intellect but in body as well. You can well imagine my joy at this discovery. Your tour of duty as Director has begun auspiciously! In the old days people would have said that it was a lucky sign and our present-day psychologists would say that coincidental events have occurred that favour confidence and give you encouragement in your further work.”

Darr Veter stopped suddenly: nervous reaction had made him more verbose than usual. In the Era of the Great Circle verbosity was considered one of the most disgraceful failings possible in a man — the Director of the Outer Stations stopped without finishing his sentence.

“Yes, yes…” responded Mven Mass, absent-mindedly. Junius Antus noticed the sluggishness in his voice and in his movements; he was immediately on the alert. Veda Kong quietly ran her finger along Darr Veter’s hand and nodded towards the African.

“Perhaps he is too impressionable?” wondered Darr Veter staring fixedly at his successor. Mven Mass sensed the concealed surprise of his companions; he straightened up and became his usual self, an attentive and skilled performer of the task in hand. An escalator took them to the upper storeys of the building where there were extensive windows looking out at the starry sky that was again as far away as it had always been during the whole thirty thousand years of man’s existence — or rather the existence of that species of hominids known as Homo sapiens. Mven Mass and Darr Veter had to remain behind.

Veda Kong whispered to Darr Veter that she would never forget that night.

“It made me feel so insignificant!” she said, in conclusion, her face beaming despite her sorrowful words. Darr Veter knew what she meant and shook his head.

“I am sure that if the red woman had seen you she would have been proud of her sister, Veda. Surely our Earth isn’t a bit worse than their planet!’’ Darr Veter’s face was glowing with the light of love.

“That’s seen through your eyes, my friend,” smiled Veda, “but ask Mven Mass what he thinks!” Jokingly she covered his eyes with her hand and then disappeared round a corner of the wall.

When Mven Mass was, at last, left alone it was already morning. A greyish light was breaking through the cool, still air and the sky and the sea were alike in their crystal transparency, the sea silver and the sky pinkish.

For a long time the African stood on the balcony of the observatory gazing at the still unfamiliar outlines of the buildings.

On a low plateau in the distance rose a huge aluminium arch crossed by nine parallel aluminium bars, the spaces between them filled in with yellowish-cream and silvery plastic glass; this was the building of the Astronautical Council. Before the building stood a monument to the first people to enter outer space; the steep slope of a mountain reaching into clouds and whirlwinds was surmounted by an old-type spaceship, a fish-shaped rocket that pointed its sharp nose into still unattainable heights. Cast-metal figures, supporting each other in a chain, were making a superhuman effort to climb upwards, spiralling their way around the base of the monument — these were the pilots of the rocket ships, the physicists, astronomers, biologists and writers with bold imaginations…. The hull of the old spaceship and the light lattice-work of the Council building were painted red by the dawn, but still Mven Mass continued pacing up and down the balcony. Never before had he met with such a shock. He had been brought up according to the general educational rules of the Great Circle Era, had had a hard physical training and had successfully performed his Labours of Hercules — the difficult tasks performed by every young person at the end of his schooling that had been given this name in honour of ancient Greece. If a youngster performed these tasks successfully he was considered worthy to storm the heights of higher education.

Mven Mass had worked on the construction of the water-supply system of a mine in Western Tibet, on the restoration of the Araucaria pine forests on the Nahebt Plateau in South America and had taken part in the annihilation of the sharks that had again appeared off the coasts of Australia. His training, his heredity and his outstanding abilities enabled him to undertake many years of persistent study to prepare himself for difficult and responsible activities. On that day, during the first hour of his new work, there had been a meeting with a world that was related to our Earth and that had brought something new to his heart. With alarm Mven Mass felt that some great depths had opened up within him, something whose existence he had never even suspected. How he craved for another meeting with the planet of star Epsilon in the Tucan Constellation!.. That was a world that seemed to have come into being by power of the best legends known to the Earth-dwellers. He would never forget the red-skinned girl, her outstretched alluring arms, her tender, half-open lips!

The fact that two hundred and ninety light years dividing him from that marvellous world was a distance that could not be covered by any means known to the technicians of Earth served to strengthen rather than weaken his dream.

Something new had grown up in Mven’s heart, something that lived its own life and did not submit to the control of the will and cold intellect. The African had never been in love, he had been absorbed in his work almost as a hermit would be and had never experienced anything like the alarm and incomparable joy that had entered his heart during that meeting across the tremendous barrier of space and time.