Chapter 9 Chapter 7 Briefing

"It's nice," Poole said, "that the Smithsonian is still around after all these centuries." "You may not recognize it." Dr. Alista King, who introduced himself as the director of the Space Administration, said: "Especially the entire museum is now scattered in the solar system-the main collection points outside the earth are on Mars and the moon, and other There are many exhibits that are legally ours, and they are all heading for other stars. One day, we will catch up and bring them back. We are very anxious to get back the 'Pioneer Ten', which is the first An artifact that slipped out of the solar system."

"I believe I almost slipped out when they found me." "You're in luck—and so are we. There's a lot we don't know, and maybe you can provide clues." "Frankly, I'm skeptical, but I'll do my best. I don't remember anything after that runaway pod hit me. But I still find it hard to believe that 'Hal' was responsible. ?” "True, but it's pretty complicated. All we know is in this log - about 20 hours or so, but most of it should be able to 'fast forward'. "You should know that David Bowman went to rescue you in pod two, but was locked out of the spaceship because Hal refused to open the entrance and exit of the spaceship."

"God, why?" Dr. King was taken aback. This was not the first time Poole had noticed such a reaction. (I'll have to be careful with my wording, "God" seems to be a dirty word in this century - do ask Indira.) "Hal's order had some big procedural problems—there were aspects of that mission that neither you nor Bowman knew about, but Hal was in control of. It's all in this record... "Anyway, Hal cut off the life support of the other three hibernating astronauts—the Alpha Team—so Bowman had to dump their bodies too." (So ​​David and I are a beta group, I didn't know that...)

"What happened to them?" asked Poole. "Can't they be brought back as well as me?" "I'm afraid there is no way, of course we have studied the feasibility. After Bowman regained control from Hal, it was a few hours before he shot them out. So their trajectory is a bit different from yours, enough for them Burn up on Jupiter - you just pass by, and in a few thousand years, that gravitational boost will keep you drifting all the way to the Orion Nebula... "Everything was manually forced to take over, what a performance! Bowman managed to get Discovery to orbit Jupiter, and there he encountered what the 'Second Expedition' called 'Big Brother' - it seems to be related to' The Tycho Tablets are identical, but hundreds of times larger.

"That's where we lost track of him, and he left Discovery in the only remaining pod to rendezvous with Big Brother. His last message has haunted us for nearly a millennium. He said, 'God, man It's a star!'" (Again! That's not what Davy would have said, Poole told himself...he must have said "My God, it's full of stars!") "Apparently the pod was pulled into the slab by some kind of inertial field, because that acceleration would have crushed both the pod and Pool, and they were both unharmed. On the joint US-Russia 'Leonov' mission It was almost ten years or so before, and that's all we know."

"They rendezvous with the abandoned Discovery so Dr. Chandra can get on board and restart Hal. Yes, I know." Dr. King looked a little embarrassed. "Sorry, I'm not sure how much you've heard. Anyway, weirder things happened then. "The arrival of the Leonov has obviously triggered something in Big Brother's machinery. If it weren't for these records, no one would believe what happened. I'll show you... this is Dr. Heywood Floyd , he was keeping vigil aboard Discovery after the power was restored, you must know everything." (I sure do. And watching the long-dead Heywood Floyd sit in my old seat, and Hal's no-blinking red eyes checking everything in view, is How strange... and even stranger, considering how both Hal and I have had the experience of being brought back from the dead...)

A message popped up on one of the monitors, and Floyd lazily replied, "Okay, Hal, who's calling?" Not indicated. Floyd looked a little impatient. "Okay, please tell me the content of the message." It's dangerous to stay here, you must leave within 15 days. "Absolutely impossible, the 'launch window' is 26 days away. We don't have enough thrust to go early." I understand these conditions.Even so, you still have 15 days to leave. "Unless I know the source, I can't believe... who is talking to me?" I'm David Bowman, and you've got to trust me.look behind you.

Heywood Floyd sat on a swivel chair and slowly turned around from the row of keyboards and buttons that controlled the computer, looking at the narrow passage that was originally covered with devil's felt behind him. ("Watch carefully," said Dr. King. It's up to you, Poole thought...) The zero-gravity upper deck of the Discovery was much dirtier than Poole had imagined.Maybe, he thought, the air filter hadn't been hooked up to the computer yet.A parallel beam of light from the distant but still bright sun streams into the large viewing window, illuminating countless dust particles flying in Brownian motion patterns.

Then a strange thing happened to these dust molecules: some force seemed to guide them, driving the central ones out and pushing the outer ones inward until they formed a sphere.The sphere, about one meter in diameter, hovered in the air for a while, like a giant soap bubble.Then it elongated into an oval shape, and wrinkles and depressions began to appear on the surface.And Poole wasn't surprised when it started taking human form. He's seen figures like this blown out of glass in museums and science fairs.But this dust apparition is not at all precise. It resembles a rough clay statue, or an artifact found in a Stone Age cave.Only the head has been carefully sculpted, and that is undoubtedly the face of Commander David Bowman.

Hi Dr. Floyd, you trust me now. The figure's lips didn't move, and Poole realized that the voice (it was Bowman's, yes) was actually coming from the speaker. This is very difficult for me and I don't have much time.I have been given permission to deliver this warning and you have only 15 days. "Why? What are you?" But the ghostly figure had begun to disappear, and the grainy outer layer had begun to disintegrate into the original dust molecules. Goodbye, Dr. Floyd, we can no longer communicate.If all goes well, there may be another message. That old space-age catchphrase makes Poole smile as the image fades away.

"If all goes well" - how many times he'd heard that before a mission! The ghost image disappeared, leaving only flying dust, and the original random dancing pattern was restored.Poole struggled to pull himself together before he could return to reality. "Well, Commander, what do you think that is?" Dr. King asked him. Poole hadn't recovered from the shock, and it took him several seconds to react. "The face and the voice are Bowman's, yes—I can swear on it. But what the hell is that?" "We are still arguing about it until now. It can be said that it is a holographic image and a projection—of course, if you have the heart, there are many ways to fake it; but it is not in that case! Of course, it happened later. over that." "Tai Kui?" "Yes, thanks to that warning, they had just enough time to escape before Jupiter exploded." "So whatever it is, that Bowman-like thing is friendly and wants to help." "It must have been, and it wasn't the last time it appeared. There was another message warning us not to try to land on 'Europa Europa', and maybe it brought it too." "So we never landed?" "Only once, purely by accident - 36 years later, the 'Galaxy' was hijacked, crash-landed there, and her sister ship 'Cosmos' had to save her. Here it is - with some 'automatic The monitor' recorded something about the Europa creature." "I can't wait to see it." "They're amphibians, and come in all shapes and sizes. Once the sun began to melt the snow and ice covering that world, they emerged from the water. Since then, they've been flying around at a rate that's biologically impossible. evolution." "Based on my impression of Europa, aren't there many cracks in the ice? Maybe they have crawled out a long time ago and have been watching for a long time." "This theory is widely accepted, but there is a much more speculative theory. The slate may be involved, and we don't know the details. What triggered that line of thought was the discovery of TMA0. Just on Earth, almost 500 years after your time, you should have heard of it, right?" "Vague - too much stuff to cram! I do think the name is a bit ridiculous though, it's not anomalous, and it's found in Africa instead of 'Tycho'!" "You're quite right, but we're sticking with that name. The more we know about the tablets, the more skeptical they become. Especially since they're still the only evidence of advanced technology beyond Earth." "That's surprising. I thought we'd picked up some radio signal somewhere by this time. Astronomers have been looking for it since I was a kid!" "Well, there's a clue - but it's scary, and we don't like to talk about it. Have you heard of 'Scorpio Nova'?" "Maybe not." "Of course, stars go nova every day, and that's no big deal. But before it exploded, we already knew how many planets Scorpio Nova had." "Is it inhabited?" "It's completely impossible to judge, and the radio wave search found nothing. And this is when the real nightmare begins... "Fortunately, automated nova monitors caught the event as soon as it happened. The explosion did not originate from the star itself, but one of the planets exploded first, which then triggered its sun." "My old... I'm sorry, please continue." "You've got the point. Planets don't go nova at all—with one exception." "I once read a black humor in a science fiction novel, it said - 'Supernova is an industrial accident'." "It's not a supernova, and it's probably not just a joke. The most widely accepted theory is that some external force is using vacuum energy and it's getting out of hand." "It could be war, too." "As bad as it gets, we'll probably never know. Since we're all dependent on the same energy source, you can see why Scorpio Nova gives us nightmares." "At that time, we only needed to worry about the core of the nuclear power plant not melting!" "God forbid, no more! But I really wanted to tell you a little bit more about the discovery of TMA0, because it marked a turning point in human history. "Finding TMA1 on the moon is scary enough, but 500 years later, there's an even worse one, and it's right next to home — explain what you want to say about home. Right here, in Africa beneath our feet."