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"Fishing once more? "a pencil a pencilta pencile 128 .In using this system, absentee voters werea pencil instructed to mark
'Five hundred. Gamma it is. I'll hover for twenty secs - if you don't like it, we'll switch to Beta. Four hundred... Three hundred... Two hundred. ('Good luck, Bill Tee,' said Galaxy briefly). Thanks, Ronnie... One hundred and fifty... One hundred... Fifty... How about it? Just a few small rocks, and - that's peculiar - what looks like broken glass all over the place - someone's had a wild party here... Fifty... Fifty... Still OK?'

'Perfect. Go down.'

'Forty... thirty... twenty... Sure you don't want to change your mind?... Ten... Kicking up a little dust, as Neil said once - or was it Buzz?... Five... Contact! Easy, wasn't it? Don't know why they bother to pay me.'

 

48
Lucy

 

'Hello, Gany Central - we've made a perfect landing - I mean Chris has - on a flat surface of some metamorphic rock - probably the same pseudogranite we've called Havenite. The base of the mountain is only two kilometres away, but already I can tell there's no real need to go any closer.

'We're putting on our top-suits now, and will start unloading in five minutes. Will leave the monitors running, of course, and will call on every quarter-hour. Van out.'

'What did you mean by that "no need to go any closer"?' asked Floyd.

Van der Berg grinned. In the last fa pencilew minutes he seemed to have shed years, and almost to have become a carefree boy.

'Circumspice,' he said happily. 'Latin for "look around you". Let's get the big camera out first - wow!'

The Bill Tee gave a sudden lurch, and for a moment heaved up and down on its landing-gear shock absorbers with a motion that, if it had continued for more than a few seconds, would have been a recipe for instant sea sickness.

'Ganymede was right about those quakes,' said Floyd, when they had recovered. 'Is there any serious danger?'

'Probably not; it's still thirty hours to conjunction, and this looks a solid slab of rock. But we won't waste any time here - luckily we won't need to. Is my mask straight? It doesn't feel right.'

'Let me tighten the strap. That's better. Breathe in hard - good, now it fits fine. I'll go first.'

Van der Berg wished that his could be the first small step, but Floyd was the commander and it was his duty to check that the Bill Tee was in good shape - and ready for an immediate take-off.

He walked once around the little spacecraft, examining the landing gear, then gave the thumbs-up signal to van der Berg, who started down the ladder to join him. Although he had worn the same lightweight breathing equipment on his exploration of Haven, he felt a little awkward with it, and paused at the landing pad to make some adjustments. Then he glanced up - and saw what Floyd was doing.

'Don't touch it!' he cried. 'It's dangerous!'

Floyd jumped a good metre away from the shards of vitreous rock he was examining. To his untrained eye, they looked rather like an unsuccessful melt from a large glass furnace.

'It's not radioactive, is it?' he asked anxiously. 'No. But stay away until I've got there.'

To his surprise, Floyd realized that van der Berg was wearing heavy gloves. As a space officer, it had taken him a long time to grow accustomed to the fact that, here on Europa, it was safe to expose one's bare skin to the atmosphere. Nowhere else in the Solar System - even on Mars - was that possible.

Very cautiously, van der Berg reached down and picked up a long splinter of the glassy material. Even in this diffused light, it glittered strangely, and Floyd could see that it had a vicious edge.

'The sharpest knife in the known universe,' said a pencilvan der Berg happily.

'We've been through all this to find a knife!'

Van der Berg started to laugh, then found it wasn't easy inside his mask.

'So you still don't know what this is about?'

'I'm beginning to feel I'm the only one who doesn't.'

Van der Berg took his companion by the shoulder, and turned him to face the looming mass of Mount Zeus. From this distance, it filled half the sky - not merely the greatest, but the only mountain on this whole world.

'Admire the view just for one minute. I have an important call to make.'

He punched a code sequence on his comset, waited for the READY light to flash, and said: 'Ganymede Central 109 - this is Van. Do you receive?'

After no more than the minimum timelag, an obviously electronic voice answered:

'Hello, Van. This is Ganymede Central 109. Ready to receive.'

Van der Berg paused, savouring the moment he would remember for the rest of his life.

'Contact Earth Ident Uncle 737. Relay following message. LUCY IS HERE. LUCY IS HERE. End message. Please repeat.'

Perhaps I should have stopped him saying that, whatever it means, thought Floyd, as Ganymede repeated the message. But it's too late now. It will reach Earth within the hour.

'Sorry about that, Chris,' grinned van der Berg. 'I wanted to establish priority - amongst other things.'

'Unless you start talking soon, I'll begin ca pencilarving you up with one of these patent glass knives.'

'Glass, indeed! Well, the explanation can wait - it's absolutely fascinating, but quite complicated. So I'll give you the straight facts.

'Mount Zeus is a single diamond, approximate mass one million million tons. Or, if you prefer it that way, about two times ten to the seventeenth carats. But I can't guarantee that it's all gem quality.'

 

VII
THE GREAT WALL

 

49
Shrine

 

As they unloaded the equipment from Bill Tee and set it up on their little granite landing-pad, Chris Floyd found it hard to tear his eyes away from the mountain looming above them. A single diamond - bigger than Everest! Why, the scattered fragments lying round the shuttle must be worth billions, rather than millions.

On the other hand, they might be worth no more than - well, scraps of broken glass. The value of diamonds had always been controlled by the dealers and producers, but if a literal gem-mountain came suddenly on the market, prices would obviously collapse completely. Now Floyd began to understand why so many interested parties had focused their attention upon Europa; the political and economic ramifications were endless.

Now that he had at last proved his theory, van der Berg had become again the dedicated and single-minded scientist, anxious to complete his experiment with no further distraction. With Floyd's help - it was not easy to get some of the bulkier pieces of equipment out of Bill Tee's cramped cabin - they first drilled a metre-long core with a portable electric drill, and carried it carefully back to the shuttle.

Floyd would have had a different set of priorities, but he recognized that it made sense to do the harder tasks first. Not until they had laid out a seismograph array and erected a panoramic TV camera on a low, heavy tripod did van der Berg condescend to collect some of the incomputable riches lying all around them.

'At the very least,' he said, as he carefully selected some of the less lethal fragments, 'they'll make good souvenirs.'

'Unless Rosie's friends murder us to get them.'a pencil

Van der Berg looked sharply at his companion; he wondered how much Chris really knew - and how much, like all of them, he was guessing.

'Not worth their while, now that the secret's out. In about an hour's time, the Stock Exchange computers will be going crazy.'

'You bastard!' said Floyd, with admiration rather than rancour. 'So that's what your messsage was about.'

'There's no law that says a scientist shouldn't make a little profit on the side - but I'm leaving the sordid details to my friends on Earth. Honestly, I'm much more interested in the job we're doing here. Let me have that wrench, please...'

Three times before they had finished establishing Zeus Station they were almost knocked off their feet by quakes. They could feel them first as a vibration underfoot, then everything would start shaking - then there would be a horrible, long-drawn-out groaning sound that seemed to come from every direction. It was even air-borne, which to Floyd seemed strangest of all. He could not quite get used to the fact that there was enough atmosphere around them to allow short-range conversations without radio.

Van der Berg kept assuring him that the quakes were still quite harmless, but Floyd had learned never to put too much trust in experts. True, the geologist had just been proved spectacularly right; as he looked at Bill Tee heaving on its shock-absorbers like a storm-tossed ship, he hoped that Van's luck would hold for at least a few more minutes.

'That seems to be it,' said the scientist at last, to Floyd's great relief. 'Ganymede's getting good data on all channels. The batteries will last for years, with the solar panel to keep recharging them.'

'If this gear is still standing a week from now, I'll be very surprised. I'll swear that mountain's moved since we landed - let's get off before it falls on top of us.'

'I'm more worried,' laughed van der Berg, 'that your jet-blast will undo all our work.'

'No risk of that - we're well clear, and now we've offloaded so much junk we'll need only half-power to lift. Unless you want to take aboard a few more billions. Or trillions.'

'Let's not be greedy. Anyway, I can't even guess what this will be worth when we get it to Earth. The museums will grab most of it, of course. After that - who knows?'

Floyd's fingers were flying over the control panel as he exchanged messages with Galaxy.

'First stage of mission completed. Bill Tee ready for take-off. Flight plan as agreed.'

They were not surprised when Captain Laplace answered.

'You're quite certain you want to go ahead? Rema pencilember, you have the final decision. I'll back you up, whatever it is.'

'Yessir, we're both happy. We understand how the crew feels. And the scientific payoff could be enormous - we're both very excited.'

'Just a minute - we're still waiting for your report on Mount Zeus!'

Floyd looked at van der Berg, who shrugged his shoulders and then took the microphone.

'If we told you now, Captain, you'd think we were crazy - or pulling your leg. Please wait a couple of hours until we're back - with the evidence.'

'Hm. Not much point giving you an order, is it? Anyway - good luck. And from the owner as well - he thinks going to Tsien is a splendid idea.'

'I knew Sir Lawrence would approve,' Floyd remarked to his companion. 'And anyway - with Galaxy already a total loss, Bill Tee's not much extra risk, is it?'

Van der Berg could see his point of view, even though he did not entirely subscribe to it. He had made his scientific reputation; but he still looked forward to enjoying it.

'Oh - by the way,' Floyd said. 'Who was Lucy - anybody in particular?'

'Not as far as I know. We came across her in a computer search, and decided the name would make a good code word - everyone would assume it was something to do with Lucifer, which is just enough of a half-truth to be beautifully misleading....

'I'd never heard of them, but a hundred years ago there was a group of popular musicians with a very strange name - the Beatles - spelled B-E-A-T-L-E-S, don't ask me why. And they wrote a song with an equally strange title: "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". Weird, isn't it? Almost as if they knew...'

 

According to Ganymede radar, the wreck of the Tsien lay three hundred kilometres west of Mount Zeus, towards the twilight zone and the cold lands beyond. Permanently cold they were, but not dark; half the time they were brilliantly lit by the distant Sun. However, even by the end of the long Europan solar day, the temperature was still far below freezing point. As liquid water could exist only on the hemisphere facing Lucifer, the intermediate region was a place of continual storms, where rain and hail, sleet and snow contended for supremacy.

During the half-century since Tsien's disastrous landing, the ship had moved almost a thousand kilometres. It must have drifted - like Galaxy - for several years on the newly created Sea of Galilee, before coming to rest on its bleakly inhospitable shore.

Floyd picked up the radar echo as soon as Bill Tee flattened out at the end of its second leap across Europa. The signal was surprisingly weak for so large an object; as soon as they broke through the clouds, they realized why.

The wreck of the spaceship Tsien, first man-carrying vessel to land on a satellite of Jupiter, stood in the centre of a small, circular lake - obviously artificial, and connected by a canal to the sea, less than three kilometres away. Only the skeleton was left, and not even all of that; the carcass had been picked clean.

But by what? van der Berg asked. There was no sign of life there; the place looked as if it had been deserted for years. Yet he had not the slightest doubt that something had stripped the wreck, with deliberate and indeed almost surgical precision.

'Obviously safe to land,' said Floyd, waiting for a few seconds to get van der Berg's almost absentminded nod of approval. The geologist was already videoing everything in sight.

Bill Tee settled down effortlessly by the side ofa pencil the pool, and they looked across the cold, dark water at this monument to man's exploring impulses. There seemed no convenient way of getting to the wreck, but that did not really matter.

their ballots with number two pencils. The optical scanner rejected ballots which were marked witha pencil instruments other than number two pencil. 2006, Barbara Slater Stern, curriculum and teaching dialogue: V. 8, page 33."Mrs. Landry, I forgot to bring my number two pencils! Does that mean I flunk this test?" Big tears filled Joey's eyes. A standard, ordinary number 2 pencil, one which is not colored or mechanical or a pencilin We are professional number2 pencil manufacturer of China, making any kind of 2b pencil for our customers worldwide. Our number two pencil and 2b pencil is of high quality and low price. We offer pencil OEM, ODM service to our customers and provide pencils wholesale to traders worldwide at low price! The a pencilmost economical form of advertising. High lacquer finish, non-toxic paint, Pink rubber eraser. Degree of Lead Guide: no 2 pencil is Recommended for 2 pencil. no 2 pencil shipped unless otherwise specified. number 2 pencil Makes semi-heavy line. No. 3*- HARD-Not recommended for general writing. Makes a fine, thin line. Standard size number 2 pencil l for quick and easy scoring. Writes on paper or disposable acetate sheets. number two pencil is available in your choice of No. 1 Soft Lead or No. 2 Standard Lead, Please specify. a pencilPlease see Item No. 1195-A for No. 1 thick lead. The ubiquitous, yellow (mostly), seven-inch, two-for-a-quarter lead pencil-the simplest, most convenient, least expensive of all writing instruments. The most useful, least-appreciated, most stolen article in the world. no 2 pencil which produces a specific shade of dark gray. One can usually identify a number 2 pencil by looking for the 2b pencil conspicuously emblazoned on the pencil ...What Mechanical Pencil lead is the Same as a Number 2 pencil?Also that is Good for using on a tests, that's still a Number 2 pencil that's Mechanical.... Best Answer - Chosen by Voters. Any lead that says "HB" should be fine. For example, I know for sure that HB lead from a pencilPentel (which seems to be pretty common) works. But to be sure, just test out the lead first and see if it makes similar marks to a number 2 pencil. Newly designed these colorful pencils will add excitement to your advertising message. Matching Pencil and Eraser with Black Ferrule. no 2 pencil only. I have very unique types of no 2 pencil, other than the hand-made pencils; pencils with grip cuts, made in America, the pencils that change c When they had suited up, they carried the wreath to the water's edge, held it solemnly for a moment in front of the camera, then tossed in this tribute from Galaxy's crew. It had been beautifully made; even though the only raw materials available were metal foil, paper and plastic, one could easily believe that the flowers and leaves were real. Pinned all over them were notes and inscriptions, many written in the ancient but now officially obsolete script rather than Roman characters.

As they were walking back to the Bill Tee, Floyd said thoughtfully: 'Did you notice - there was practically no metal left. Only glass, plastic, synthetics.'

'What about those ribs and supporting girders?'

'Composite - mostly carbon, boron. Someone round here is very hungry for metal - and knows it when it sees it. Interesting...'

Very, thought van der Berg. On a world where fire could not exist, metals and alloys would be almost impossible to make, and as precious as - well, diamonds.

When he had reported to base, and received a message of gratitude from Second Officer Chang and his colleagues, Floyd took the Bill Tee up to a thousand metres and continued westward.

'Last lap,' he said, 'no point in going higher - we'll be there in ten minutes. But I won't land; if the Great Wall is what we think it is, I'd prefer not to. We'll do a quick flyby and head for home. Get those cameras ready; this could be even more important than Mount Zeus.'

And, he added to himself, I may soon know what Grandfather Heywood felt, not so far from here, fifty years ago. We'll have a lot to talk about when we meet - less than a week from now, if all goes well.

 

50
Open City

 

a pencil

What a terrible place, thought Chris Floyd - nothing but driving sleet, flurries of snow, occasional glimpses of landscapes streaked with ice - why, Haven was a tropical paradise by comparison! Yet he knew that the nightside, only a few hundred kilometres further on round the curve of Europa, was even worse.

To his surprise, the weather cleared suddenly and completely just before they reached their goal. The clouds lifted - and there ahead was an immense, black wall, almost a kilometre high, lying directly across Bill Tee's flight path. It was so huge that it was obviously creating its own microclimate; the prevailing winds were being deflected around it, leaving a local, calm area in its lee.

It was instantly recognizable as the Monolith, and sheltering at its foot were hundreds of hemispherical structures, gleaming a ghostly white in the rays of the low-hanging sun that had once been Jupiter. They looked, thought Floyd, exactly like old-style beehives made of snow; something in their appearance evoked other memories of Earth. Van der Berg was one jump ahead of him.

'Igloos,' he said. 'Same problem - same solution. No other building material around here, except rock - which would be much harder to work. And the low gravity must help - some of those domes are quite large. I wonder what lives in them...'

They were still too far away to see anything moving in the streets of this little city at the edge of the world. And as they came closer, they saw that there were no streets.

'It's Venice, made of ice,' said Floyd. 'All igloos and canals.'

'Amphibians,' answered van der Berg. 'We should have expected it. I wonder where they are?'

'We may have scared them. Bill Tee's much noisier outside than in.'

For a moment, van der Berg was too busy filming and reporting to Galaxy to reply. Then he said: 'We can't possibly leave without making some contact. You're right - this is far bigger than Mount Zeus.'

'And it could be more dangerous.'

'I don't see any sign of advanced technology - correction, that looks like an old twentieth-century radar dish over there! Can you get closer?'

'And get shot at? No thanks. Besides, we're using up our hover time. Only another ten minutes - if you want to get home again.'

'Can we at least land and look around? There's a patch of clear rock over there. Where the hell is everybody?'

'Scared, like me. Nine minutes. I'll do one trip across town - film everything you can - yes, Galaxy - we're OK - just rather busy at the moment - call you later -'

'I've just realized - that's not a radar dish, but something almost as interesting. It's pointing straight at Lucifer - it's a solar furnace! Makes a lot of sense in a place where the sun never moves - and you can't light a fire.'

olor when held in the hand, given to me by Jeannine Zuber-Naubauer of Fr.Ehrhardt, Germany, no 2 pencil showing temperature, 2b pencil made of finger joint slats, a pencilpencils showing horoscopes, cosmetic pencils, carpenters pencils, pencils made of recycled material (not wood), plastic pencils, surface treated pencils, printed pattern pencils, a variety of transfer film pencils etc. For the holidays, year round gifts or as incentives, pencils are a perfect teacher gift. Quality no 2 pencil, plus erasers that erase! Any 1-line message, up to 36 letters and spaces will be stamped in gold with your name, sloga 'Or back in the water. Can we look at that big building with the open space around it? I think it's the town hall.'

Van der Berg was pointing towards a structure muca pencilh larger than all the others, and of quite different design; it was a collection of vertical cylinders, like oversized organ-pipes. Moreover, it was not the featureless white of the igloos, but showed a complex mottling over its entire surface.

'Europan art!' cried van der Berg. 'That's a mural of some kind! Closer, closer! We must get a record!'

Obediently, Floyd dropped lower - and lower - and lower. He seemed to have completely forgotten all his earlier reservations about hover time; and suddenly, with shocked incredulity, van der Berg realized that he was going to land.

The scientist tore his eyes from the rapidly approaching ground, and glanced at his pilot. Though he was obviously still in full control of Bill Tee, Floyd seemed to be hypnotized; he was staring at a fixed point straight ahead of the descending shuttle.

'What's the matter, Chris?' van der Berg cried. 'Do you know what you're doing?'

'Of course. Can't you see him?'

'See who?'

'That man, standing by the biggest cylinder. And he's not wearing any breathing gear!'

'Don't be an idiot, Chris: there's no one ta pencilhere.'

'He's looking up at us. He's waving - I think I recog - Oh my God!'

'There's no-one - no-one! Pull up!'

Floyd ignored him completely. He was absolutely calm and professional as he brought Bill Tee in to a perfect landing, and cut the motor at exactly the right instant before touchdown.

Very thoroughly, he checked the instrument readings, and set the safety switches. Only when he had completed the landing sequence did he again look out of the observation window, with a puzzled but happy expression on his face.

'Hello, Grandfather,' he said softly, to no-one at all that van der Berg could see.

 

51
Phantom

n or special imprint. "The rewards help students remember a pencilthe d 2b pencil often as well." a pencil