colour pencil

The square shrank again; the number 1,000,000,000,000,000 flickered on to the screen. In the center of the new square, there was just one shining point-the Sun.

"The planets, of course, have vanished completely. But notice this-for the first time, nothing new has entered the picture. Even this huge jump has not taken us to the very nearest of the stars.

"If we wish to see them, we must jump again...."

1,000,000,000,000,000,000 flashed up, now the new square was dotted with dozens of tiny points of light.

"At last we enter the realm of the stars. There are a few hundred of them in this picture, which light takes 150 years to cross-the light which, remember, went from Earth to Moon in little more than a second. Of these stars, our own Sun is a perfectly average specimen. And because it is so average-so normal-we believe that many of the other stars are accompanied by similar planets, though they are too distant for our telescopes to show them. More than that-we also feel certain that many of those planets must have life.

"On this scale, the stacolour pencilrs-our neighboring suns-appear scattered at random. But when we make the next, and seventh, thousandfold jump, we see that they form a pattern...."

Up came the number 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, and now even the colour pencilindividual stars had vanished. There was only a great spiral of glowing mist, almost filling the outlines of the square.

"This is the Galaxy-the slowly turning city of stars of which our Sun is a modest suburbanite-somewhere about here."

An arrow pointed to a region two-thirds of the way out from the center of the spiral.

"It takes light a hundred colour pencilthousand years to cross this immense whirlpool of suns-this island universe. And it is turning so slowly that it has made only a dozen revolutions since life began on Earth.

"Call this the Home Galaxy, if you wish. The stars you see in the night sky are merely the local residents-most of them very close at hand. The more distant ones form the glowing background we call the Milky Way.

"And how many stars, how many suns, would you guess that the whole Galaxy contains? If you said a few million, you would be hopelessly in error. A few billion would be better; there are, in fact, about a hundred billion stars in the Galaxy. Every one of those a sun-thirty of them to every man, woman, and child now alive.

"We will return to our own Galaxy again-after we have seen the still greater background of which it is a tiny part. So once more we multiply our scale a thousand times....

"Yes, it looks like a field of stars. But it is not: each of those tiny smudges of light is a whole galaxy-this one colour pencilmight be ours. Our splendid star-city of a hundred billion suns, now reduced to a faint star itself. It would take light a hundred and fifty million years to cross this picture; this is how far we have gone in eight jumps, each of a thousand times, from the man we started with....

"But now-at last!-we are coming to the end of the line. For if we make one more jump, we run out of space itself...."

In the center of the screen, filling only a small fraction of the square frame that had surrounded each of the earlier pictures, was a globe of light. Its edges were slightly diffuse, fading away into the nothingness around it.

"This may be all of Creation-the Universe of Galaxies. Beyond this region, our most powerful telescopes cannot penetrate; indeed, there may be no beyond. For out at the cosmic horizon, at the ultimate limits of our vision, the galaxies themselves are disappearing from our sight, as if falling over the edge of space. What happens here we do not know; it may well be something which our minds can never grasp.

"So let us return from colour pencilthese far reaches, back to our Home Galaxy, with its hundred billion suns...."

The shining globe of the Cosmic All expanded at a dizzying speed. Presently its uniform glow broke up into tiny grains of light; these too expanded and drove apart. The screen was once more full of little whirlpools and spirals-some tangled in clusters, some alone. One of them grew and grew until it spanned the sky, and its raveled edges condensed into knots of stars.

"Our home galaxy, again, with its hundred billion suns," repeated the commentator, "most of them are little suns like our own-too small to be visible on this scale. All those you see here are giants; ours is only a dwarf, despite its overwhelming importance to us.

"And of those hundred billion suns, large and small- how many shine upon worlds that carry life? Perhaps most of them, for matter has the same properties throughout the universe. We know that life arose independently on Earth and Mars. we believe that it arises automatically on all worlds that are not too hot or cold, that have the common elements of oxygen and carbon and hydrogen, and that are bathed by sunlight for a few billion years.

"Yet even if life is common, intelligence may be rare; in the long story of Earth, it has evolved only once. Nevertheless, there may be millions of advanced cultures scattered throughout the Galaxy-but they will be separated by gulfs that light itself takes years to span."

Two arrows appeared, aimed at stars so close together in the sparsely pcolour pencilopulated outer arms of the Galaxy that they seemed to be neighbors.

"If this was our Sun, and we sent a radio signal to a planet circling this nearby one, it would take a thousand years for the reply.... Or, to put it in another way, we might expect an answer now, if the message left our world around the birth of Christ.... And this would be a conversation with one of the closest of our galactic neighbors.

"Yet even if it takes thousands of years to travel from star to star, a really advanced race might attempt the feat. It could send robot ships exploring for it-as Man has already sent his robots ahead of him to explore the Moon and planets."

There were shots of ungainly space probes-some familiar, others obviously imaginary-drifting across the stars, peering down at passing worlds with their television eyes.

"Or they might build huge scolour pencilpace arks-mobile planetoids which could travel between the stars for centuries, while generation after generation lived and died upon them....

"Or they might hibernate, or be frozen in the changeless sleep of suspended animation, to be awakenecolour pencild by robots when their age-long journey neared its end....

"Even these are not the only possibilities. A very advanced race might be able to build ships that could attain almost the speed of light. According to Einstein, no material object can travel faster than this; it is the natural built-in speed limit of our universe. However, as we approach this speed, time itself appears to slow down. A space traveler might fly to a distant star in what, to him, appeared to be only a few months-or even a few hours.

"But only to him. When he returned from his destination, he would find that years or centuries had passed, that all his friends were dead, and, perhaps, that his very civilization had vanished. That would be the price of stellar exploration-trading Time for Space, with no possibility of refund. Yet the price might be attractive, to creatures whose lives are much longer than ours.

"Finally-perhaps Einstein's theory, like so many theories in the past, does not tell the whole truth. There may be subtle ways of circumventing it, and so exceeding the speed of light. Perhaps there are roads through the universe which we have not yet discovered-shortcuts through higher dimensions. 'Wormholes in Space,' some mathematicians have called them; one might step through such a hole-and reappear instantaneously, a thousand light-years away.

"But even if this is true-and most scientists think it pure fantasy-the exploration of the universe will still require unimaginable ages. There are more suns in the whole of space than there are grains of sand on all the shores of Earth; and on any one of those grains, there may be civilizations that will make us look like primitive, ignorant savages.

"What will we say to the peoples of such worlds, when at last we meet? And what will they say to us?"

"Thank you, Victor," said Manning when the screen blanked out and the red light in the dubbing room went off. "I knew you'd do it. Don't worry about the fluffs- we'll fix them. Anyway-what did you think of it?"

"Not bad-not bad. But I wish you hadn't put in tcolour pencilhat nonsense at the end."

"Eh? What nonsense?"

"Higher dimensions, wormholes in space, and all that rubbish. That's not science; it's not even good science fiction. It's pure fantasy."

"Well, that's exactlycolour pencil what the script said "

"Then why bring it in? Whose bright idea was it?"

"One Dr. Heywood Floyd's, if you want to know. I suggest you take it up with him."

Kaminski really meant it, but somehow the matter slipped his mind. There was so much work to do, so much to learn, that it was months before he thought of it again.

And then it was far, far too late.

ANCESTRAL VOICES

The ape-man stood on a low, rocky hill, grasping a pointed stone and looking out across a dusty African plain. Overhead, the sky was cloudless, and a hot sun baked the yellowing grass of the savannah and the stunted trees which provided the only shade. In the middle distance, a small herd of gazelles was browsing, watched intently by a saber-toothed tiger crouching in the scrub.

There were more ape-men-about a dozen of them- scattered over the crown of the little hill. Propped colour pencilup against a large boulder, one female was nursing her baby; not far away, two juveniles were quarreling over a hunk of meat-all that was left of some small dismembered animal. One bent and gray-haired male was trying to suck the marrow from a cracked bone; another was curled up asleep; two females were grooming each other for lice; and yet another male was hunting through a pile of dried bones in search of future weapons.

"It's a beautiful model," said Bowman at last, when he and his two companions had looked their fill.

"Thank you," answered the curator of Anthropology. "It's as accurate as humanly possible several years of work went into it."

Dr. Anna Brailsford was acolour pencil striking, dark-haired woman in her early forties, who seemed much too vivacious to have devoted her life to fossils. Though she was a famous explorer and veteran of many expeditions, she had lost none of her femininity; it was hard to believe that she was one of the world's leading authorities on early Man.

"So these," said Phillip Goode, Bowman's understudy, "are the characters the pyramid-makers would have met, if they landed on Earth three million years ago?"

"Not necessarily. It depends on the thoroughness of their investigation. Australopithecus was probably not very common; he might easily have been overlooked among the elephants and giraffes and other more conspicuous animals. In fact, he wasn't even the most impressive of the primates. To a casual visitor, he might have seemed just another ape."

It was rather difficult, thought Bowman, to take so detached a view. His great-to-the-hundred- thousandth grandfather was not a very prepossessing sight, but there was a wistful sadness about the hairy, no-longer-quite animal face staring at him through the glass of the diorama. He was not ashamed to admit kinship with his remote ancestor across the unimaginable ages that sundered them. "I rather doubt," he said dryly, "that creatures landing on Earth back in the Pleistocene would have been casual visitors. And this is one of the things we wanted to discuss with you-their motivations."

"Well, I can only tell you how I'd behave, in the same circumstances. I'd note that Earth was teeming with advanced life forms, but that none of them had developed high intelligence. However, I'd probably guess-I might even be able to predict, with the knowledge I'd undoubtedly have-that intelligence would arise in a few million years.

"So I'd leave behind some intelligence monitors-or, better still, civilization detectors. I might put some of them on Earth, though I'd realize that they would probably be destroyed or buried before they had a chance to operate. But the Moon would be an ideal spot for such a device especially if I was only interested in civilizations that had reached the space-faring stage. Any culture still planet-bound might be too primitive to concern me."

"So you're in favor of the fire-alarm theory, as we call it, to explain TMA-1?"

colour pencil

"Yes-it seems very plausible. But perhapcolour pencils it's too plausible. Human motivations vary so much that any attempt to analyze wholly alien behavior must be pure guesswork."

"But guesswork is all we have to go on for the present. We're trying to think of every possibility that may arise, when and if we do catch up with the creatures who built TMA-1."

Bowman pointed to the frozen tableau of his ancestors.

"Look how far we've progressed since then! Yet after that same three million years, where will the pyramid makers be? I don't mind admitting it-the thought sometimes scares me."

"It scares me. But remember, progress is never uniform; even after three million years, they may not be incomprehensibly far ahead of us. Perhaps there's a plateau for intelligence that can't be exceeded. They may already have reached it when they visited the Moon. After all, it has yet to be proved that intelligence has real survival value."

"I can't accept that!" protested Bowman. "Surely, our intelligence has made us what we are-the most successful animals on the planet!"

"As an anthropologist, I'm naturally biased in favor of Man. From the short-term point of view, intelligence has undoubtedly been an advantage. But what about geological time-and how do you define a 'successful' species? My friend the curator of reptiles keeps reminding me that the dinosaurs flourished for more than a hundred million years. And their I.Q.'s were distinctly minimal."

"Well, where are they now? I don't see any around today."

"True-but you can't call a hundred-million-year reign a failure; it's a thousand times as long as Homo sapiens has existed. There may be an optimum level of intelligence, and perhaps we've already exceeded it. Our brains may be too big-dooming us as Triceratops was doomed by his armor. He overspecialized in horns and spikes and plates; we overspecialized in cerebral cortex. The end result may be the same."

"So you believe that as soon as a species reaches more than a certain level of intelligence, it is heading for extinction?"

"I don't state it as a fact, I'm merely pointing out the possibilities. There's no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in intelligence-or even in life. Both may be random, accidental by-products of its operations, like the beautiful patterns on a butterfly's wing. The insect would fly just as well without them; our species might survive as long as-oh, the sharks, which haven't changed much in a couple of hundred million years-if we were a little less clever. Look at the daily newspapers, and the history of the whole twentieth century."

Dr. Brailsford smiled at her obviously disapproving audience.

colour pencil

"No-I'm not a pessimiscolour pencilt," she said, answering their unspoken accusation. "Just a realist, who knows that only a tiny fraction of the species that have lived on this planet have any descendants today. And because I am a realist, perhaps I understand the importance of your project better than you do."

"Go on, please."

"The creatures who built the pyramid-how far ahead of us would you say they were from the technical viewpoint?"

"Probably no more than a hundred years, at our present rate of progress."

"Exactly. Now suppose that they are still in existence, even if they've made little progress during the three million years since they visited the Moon. Don't you see-this will be the first definite proof that intelligence does have real survival value. That will be very reassuring."

"Quite frankly, doctor," said Goode, "I don't need any reassurance. Even if intelligence has limited survival value, it has a good deal of comfort value. I wouldn't change places with them." He jerked his thumb toward the tableau of ape-men.

The anthropologist joined in the laughter; then she became serious again.

"There's another possibility, though-and that's cultural shock. If they are too advanced, and we come into contact with them, we may not be able to survive the impact psychologically. As Jung put it, half a century ago, we might find all our aspirations so outmoded as to leave us completely paralyzed. He used a rather striking phrase- we might find ourselves 'without dreams.' Like the Atlanteans, you know-Herodotus said that they never dreamed. I always thought that made them peculiarly inhuman-and pitiable."

"I don't believe in cultural shock," said Hunter. "After all, we expect to meet a very advanced society. It wouldn't be such an overwhelming surprise to us as-well, as it would be to him, if he was suddenly dumped here in Manhattan."

"I think you are too-optimistic," answered Dr. Brailsford; Bowman guessed that she had been tempted to use the word "naive." "On our planet, societies only a few generations apart culturally have proved to be incompatible."

"Perhaps our Pleistcolour pencilocene astronauts were aware of the danger-perhaps that's why they've left us alone, all these years."

"Have they?" said the anthropologist. "I wonder. If you'd like to come to my office now, I've something to show you."

They walked out of the Leakey Memorial Exhibit, through the great, cathedral-like halls of the museum. From time to time Bowman was recognized by other visitors, and several eager youngsters rushed up for his autograph. Goode and Hunter were not asked for theirs, but they were accustomed to this; Goode was fond of quoting, a little ironically, Milton's line "They also serve who only stand and wait."

Bowman's relationship with his two understudies was, on the whole, excellent-whicolour pencilch was not surprising, for their intellectual and psychological profiles had been matched with great care. They were colleagues, not competitors, and they were often able to act as his alter egos, reporting back to him after missions and trips which he was too busy to make. Of course, each hoped that he would be the one finally selected, but they served Bowman loyally and with the minimum of friction. They had had disagreements, but never a serious quarrel-and so it had been with the other five trios. The psychologists had done their work well; but by this time, they had had plenty of practice.

Every time he entered a place like the Natural History Museum, Bowman was overwhelmed by the infinite variety of life produced by evolution on a single world, this one planet Earth. As he walked past the great displays with their panoramas of scenes from other times and other continents, he realized again the sheer foolishness of the question he was so often asked about the builders of the pyramid: "What do you think they looked like?"

Even if one were given every relevant fact about Earth's climate, geography, atmosphere, and chemical composition, who could have predicted the elephant, the whale, the giraffe, the giant squid, the duck-billed platypus-or Man himself? How infinitely more impossible it was, therefore, to make sensible guesses about the inhabitants of a totally unknown, and perhaps quite alien, planet! Yet it was equally impossible to stop trying....

Dr. Brailsford's office was that of any museum curator- piled high with books, reports, journals from other institutions, exhibits being packed and unpacked, and hundreds of small drawers which covered two whole walls. On her desk were several skulls; she picked up one and said: "Here is the gentleman we have been talking about; not much of a forehead yet, but he's taken the first step toward us. And I mean first steps; even today, none of the other anthropoids are good walkers."

She placed the skull reverently back into its bed of cotton wool, then began ruffling through the folders drawings, maps, and photographs on her crowded desk. Presently she dug out a large book,* opened it at a marker, and handed it over to her visitors.

*The Search For the Tassili Frescoes, Henn Lhote

"My god!" said Hunter. "What the devil is that?"

"That" colour pencil; was a line drawing of a looming, roughly anthropomorphic figure, shown from the waist up. The head appeared to be covered by some kind of helmet, in the center of which was a large, Cyclopean eye. Another, smaller eye was tucked away in one corner of the helmet there were no other features, and by no possible distortion or artistic license could it be converted into a human face.

"Thought-provoking, isn't it? It's a Paleolithic cave painting, found in the Sahara half a century ago-back in 1959. And it made such an impression on the discoverers that, believe it or not, they christened it the 'Great Martian God."

"How old is it?"

"About ten thousand years. Not very old compared with your TMA-1-but ancient enougcolour pencilh by human standards."

There was a long and profound silence while the three astronauts studied the painting. Then Hunter asked: "Do you really think it's a record of a meeting with extraterrestrials?"

"Frankly, no. It's probably a medicine man or witch doctor wearing some peculiar hairdress. I should have mentioned that it's extremely large-about eighteen feet high-so the artist obviously considered it quite important."

"Or it was something that made a big impression on him. I guess a spacesuit back in the Stone Age would create a sensation."

"Not necessarily, you should seecolour pencil a New Guinea devildancer in full regalia. But I think we can draw a lesson from this; just suppose it was a visitor from space, wearing some kind of protective suit. Granted that, I think you'll agree that the Stone Age artist did a fine job of recording something utterly incomprehensible, and beyond the farthest limits of his own culture. Could you do as well, if you encountered a supercivilization?"

"Perhaps not-but at least we have cameras."

colour pencil

"Even in photographs, you can only recognize things you already know. The shapes and colors of a really advanced civilization might be so strange that we might go mad trying to interpret them. Its time scale, too, might be incompatible with ours-faster, for example. Suppose you put Australopithecus in a car and drove him at high speed down Broadway one night. What sense would he make of it?"

"I see your point," said Bowman. "So what should we do, if we ever find ourselves in a similar situation?"

"I would say-try to become a passive recorder of events, and not attempt to understand anything. Take as many photographs as possible. And, of course, hope that the entities you meet are patient, and aware of your limitations."

"And if they are not?"

"Then I am afraid you will survive jcolour pencilust about as long as Australopithecus would-if he got out of the car and tried to cross Broadway against the lights."

THE QUESTION

The weeks of preflight checkout in orbit went smoothly and uneventfully, as they were supposed to do. There was only one moment of drama and emotion: the christening of the ship.

Officially, most spacecraft have only numbers. Unofficially, they all have names, as ships have since the beginning of time. This one, the astronauts decided, would be called Discovery, after the most famous of polar exploration ships. It seemed appropriate, for they were going into regions far colder than the South Pole, and the discovery of facts was the sole purpose of their mission.

But how does one christen a spaceship, in orbit two hundred miles above tcolour pencilhe earth? The traditional champagne bottle was obviously out of the question, and the distinguished ladies who were expected to wield it would balk at carrying out the ceremony while floating around in spacesuits. Some kind of compromise was necessary.

Almost eighteen times a day, the ship passed directly above every point on the equator. The largest city beneath its path was Nairobi, and here, at night, the christening took place.

The lights of the city were extinguished, and all eyes were turned to the sky, when the world's First Lady made a brief speech of dedication and, at the calculated moment, said, "I christen you Discovery." Then, with all eyes upon her as she stood regal and resplendent in her tribal robes, the Secretary-General pressed a switch.

Directly overhead, a dazzling star burst into life-the billion-candlepower flare that was drenching both Space Station One and Discovery with its brilliance. It moved slowly from west to east while the whole world watched-both from the ground, and through cameras on the station. The fastest vessel built by man had been christened by the swiftest of all entities, light itself.

Other much more important events in the program were less publicized; and there was one that took place in complete secrecy.

Weeks ago, the final team selection had been made, and the twelve back-ups had swallowed their disappointment. It had been short-lived, for they knew that their time would come; already they were looking ahead to the rescue mission-the Second Jupiter Expedition-which would require them all. Yet, even now, at this late moment, there was a chance that some of them might leave with Discovery....

The Space Center's large and lavishly equipped operating room contained only three men, and one of those was not conscious of his surroundings. But the figure lying prone on the table was neither sleeping nor anesthetized, for its eyes were open. They were staring blankly at infinity, seeing nothing of the spotless white room and its two other occupants.

Lester Chapman, Project Manager of the Jupiter Misscolour pencilion, looked anxiously at the Chief Medical Officer.

"Are you ready?" he asked, his voice in an unnecessarily low whisper.

Dr. Giroux swept his eyes across the gauges of the electrohypnosis generator, felt the flaccid wrist of his subject, and nodded his head. Chapman wet his lips and leaned over the table.

"David-do you hear me?"

"Yes." The answer was immediate, yet toneless and lacking all emotion.

"Do you recognize my voice?'

"I do. You are Lester Chapman."

"Good. Now listen very carefully. I am going to ask you a question, and you will answer it. Then you will forget both the question and the answer. Do you understand?"

Again that dead, zombie-like reply.

"I understand. I will answer your question. Then I will forget it."

Chapman paused, stalling for time. So much depended on this-not millions, but billions of dollars-that he was almost afraid to continue. This was the final test, known only to a handful of men. Least of all was it known to the astronauts, for its usefulness would be totally destroyed if they were aware of it.

"Go on," said Giroux encouragingly, making a minute adjustment to the controls of the generator.

"This is the question, David. You have completed your training. In a few hours you go abcolour penciloard the ship for the trial countdown. But there is still time to change your mind.

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