Chapter 6 Chapter 5 Leonov

Months turned into weeks, weeks turned into days, days turned into hours, and suddenly Heywood Floyd was in the headlands again —Rereader's note)—this was his first space voyage since his last trip to the Lunar Kravis Base and Tycho Monolith, and so many years had passed since then. But this time he's not alone, and the mission is no longer a secret.A few rows ahead of him sat Dr. Chandra, absorbed in his conversation with his laptop, oblivious to the outside world. Freud had a secret hobby that he never mentioned to anyone, that is, to find some similarities between human beings and animals. This similarity is not so much insult as a joke. Useful tool to help him remember others.

Dr. Chandra was easy to categorize—the word "birdman" quickly came to mind.He was small, slender, and brisk in his manner.But which bird?Obviously, it should be an extremely intelligent one.Magpies?The bird is too complacent and greedy.owl?No—the bird was too slow.Perhaps more like a sparrow. Walter Kono, the systems specialist who will be tasked with restarting Discovery, is harder to categorize.He was a tall, stout man, certainly not a bird.Maybe some dog traits could be found, but nothing seemed to fit the comparison.Apparently - Kono is a bear.Not the ferocious and cruel kind, but the kind-hearted and gentle kind.Perhaps the analogy is apt; it reminds Freud of his Russian colleagues, whom we will meet shortly.They've been in orbit for a few days and are busy with their final checks.

This is a great moment in my life, Freud told himself.The tasks I will perform may determine the future of humanity.But he had no sense of joy, and as he counted down the final minutes, all he could think of was his whisper as he left home: "Goodbye, my dear little son, will you remember me when I come home?" And , he was still angry with Caroline for not disturbing the sleeping child to give him a last hug; yet he also knew that she was wise and it was the best course of action. His meditations were interrupted by a loud laugh; Dr. Curnow was joking with his companions—he was clutching a large bottle of fine champagne.

"Hey, Heywood," he called, "I've been told Captain Oleva has banned alcoholic beverages, so this is your last chance. Take a sip, '95 Seri Castle. Sorry, only Can use plastic cups. Sipping the fine champagne, Floy could not help cringing at the thought of Curnow's laughter resounding in the solar system.As much as he respected the engineer's abilities, Kono might have been too rowdy for a traveling companion.At least Dr. Chandra didn't have that problem; Freud could hardly imagine him smiling, let alone laughing.Then he put down the glass of champagne with a barely noticeable tremor.Kono was very polite and happy, so he didn't insist on letting him drink.

It looks like this engineer is determined to be the soul and center of the party.A few minutes later, he took out an electronic keyboard, imitated the piano, trombone, violin, flute and organ, played the song "John Bill" skillfully, and began to sing.He performed so well that soon Floyd found himself singing along with everyone else.But, he thought, it was for the best that Kono would spend most of the journey in silent hibernation. The music was interrupted suddenly, the engine started violently, and the space shuttle fired into space.Floyd felt a familiar yet new sense of joy—infinite energy carrying him up, carrying him away from the care and care of Earth.Mankind knew long before it knew it, placing God's dwelling place outside the gravity of the earth.He was flying into weightless space; for a moment he could forget that what awaited him there was not freedom but the hardest responsibility of his career.

The momentum was stronger, he felt gravity on his shoulders—but he welcomed it, like an Atlas not yet weary of the burden ).Instead of trying to think, he was content to savor the feeling.Even though it was the last time he left Earth, the last time he said goodbye to everything he loved, he didn't feel sad.Victory songs were roaring all around him, driving away every little emotion. He was almost sad when the feeling went away, though he felt a sudden sense of freedom and ease of breathing.Most of the others started to unbuckle their seatbelts, ready to enjoy the thirty minutes of zero-G on the transit track, but the few who were clearly making the trip for the first time remained in their seats, looking anxiously around. Look for the shuttle attendant.

"I'm the captain. We're three hundred kilometers up, over the coast of West Africa. Since it's nighttime, you can't see much - Sierra Leone is the glow - there's a tropical storm in the Gulf of Guinea. Look at the lightning ! "We'll see the sun rise in fifteen minutes. In the meantime I'll steer the shuttle so that you'll have a good view of the equatorial belt of satellites. The brightest one—almost directly overhead— - It's Intelsat's Atlantic 1 satellite, and Cosmos 2 is to the west - that dark star is Jupiter. Look down and you'll see a flash of light moving behind that planet - that's China's new space station. We're a hundred kilometers from it, so we can't see anything with the naked eye—"

What are they going to do?Floyd thought casually.He'd seen the stubby cylindrical structure with the weird bumps on it before, but he'd seen nothing to support the rumors that it was a space laser fortress.But since the Academy of Sciences in Beijing ignored the request of the United Nations Space Committee to conduct an inspection of the station, the Chinese will have to blame themselves for these rumors. The Alex Leonov spaceship is not very beautiful, but few spaceships are, and perhaps in the future, mankind will develop a new aesthetic; a new generation of artists will no longer Standards on Earth are ideals to pursue.Space is one such domain that often exhibits an overwhelming beauty, and unfortunately, humans have not yet developed enough to live in space.

Four huge propellant containers will automatically fall off after entering orbit. Now it seems that the Leonov is surprisingly small.It was less than fifty meters from the heat shield to the thrusters; it was hard to believe that such a simple vehicle, smaller than many commercial spacecraft, could carry ten men and women across half the solar system. But zero gravity eliminates the boundaries of walls, roofs, and floors, thus rewriting all the laws of life.Even if everyone was awake, or gathered at the same moment, there was plenty of room on the Leonov.It was true, however, that its normal resupply levels had been doubled by the journalists, and engineers and worried officials had made the final adjustments.

Once the shuttle was docked, Floyd was trying to find the space in which he would wake up after a year of sleep - he would share with Kono and Chandra.When he found it, he found it so packed with labeled equipment and supplies that it was nearly impossible to get into.He was dejectedly figuring out how to get a foot in the door when one of the boat's crew members, moving deftly from one handle to the other, noticed Floyd's predicament and stopped. "Dr. Floyd - welcome. I'm Max Brerowski - Engineering Assistant." The young Russian spoke slowly, like a student who learned English from an electronic teaching machine rather than a human teacher, and spoke carefully.When they shook hands, Freud quickly linked the name, this face to the information he saw: Maxim Andreyevich Brerowski, thirty-one years old , born in Leningrad, major in structural engineering, hobbies: fencing, gliding, chess.

"It's good to see you," Floyd said, "but how do I get in?" "Don't worry," Max said cheerfully. "When you wake up, it's all going to be one thing. It's—what do you say?—consumables. We'll eat up your room when you need it. I Promise." He patted his stomach. "Okay—but where can I put my stuff?" Floyd pointed to three small boxes, weighing a total of fifty-five kilograms, which contained—he hoped—the next few days. It is not an easy task to transport these weightless boxes through the corridor of the spacecraft with as few impacts as possible, because they still have inertia. Max took two boxes, slid gracefully along the triangular girder, and entered a small hatch, posing a strong challenge to Newton's law of universal gravitation.Floyd followed him, and it took a considerable amount of time, and with several bruises—the Leonov appeared to be larger inside than it looked from the outside—and they arrived at a door marked "Captain ", which are written in Slavic and Roman respectively.Although he could read Russian, he appreciated the practice; he had noticed that all the signs in this ship were written in both scripts. Max knocked on the door, a green light came on, and Floyd floated in with as much dignity as possible.Although he had spoken to Captain Oleva many times, they had never met.So two things surprised him. It's impossible to judge a person's size from a videophone; the camera will convert everyone to the same scale.Captain Oleva, standing there - as anyone can do in zero gravity - barely reaches Floyd's shoulders.The videophone also failed to convey the insight of those twinkling blue eyes, the most striking feature of this face, at this moment, of course, cannot be fully described as "beautiful". "Hi, Tanya," Floyd said. "Glad to finally meet you, sorry about your hair problems." They shook hands like two old friends. "I'm glad you're here, Heywood!" said the captain.Her English, unlike Brerowski's, was fluent but heavily accented. "Yeah, I'm sorry to have to cut it too - but hair is a nuisance on long-duration missions, and I'm willing to send the barber away. My apologies for your space; as Max As I may have explained to you, we suddenly found that we still needed ten cubic meters of space for storage. Vasily and I will not be here for the next few hours—use our room as you please." "Thanks. What about Kono and Chandra?" "I've arranged for them accordingly. Maybe it looks like we're taking you as cargo—" "Shipping irrelevant goods." "what?" "That's one of the labels they put on packages in the old days when they shipped by ocean." Tanya smiled. "It looks like that. But you'll be useful at the end of this trip, and we're already planning your resuscitation party." "That sounds too religious. Change it—no, Resurrection is worse!—Wake Party. But I can see you're busy—I'll put my stuff down and look around Bar." "Max will take you—take Dr. Floyd to Vasily, okay? He's on the propulsion system." As they floated out of the captain's cabin, Floyd gave high marks to the committee that selected the astronauts.Tanya Oleva is an attractive person on paper, and in person she is almost commanding, even though she is charming.I wonder, Freud thought to himself, what does she look like when she loses her temper?Is it fire or ice?In short, I'd rather not know better. Floyd quickly mastered the space pace, and by the time they found Vasily Olof, he was almost as adept at maneuvering as his guide.The chief scientist welcomed Floyd as warmly as his wife. "You're welcome, Heywood. How do you feel?" "Fine, it's just that I'm slowly starving to death." For a moment Olof looked confused; then he grinned. "Oh, I forgot. It's okay, it won't take long, in another ten months, you can eat as much as you like." Hibernators had to go on a diet for a week in advance, and for the last twenty-four hours they were restricted to liquids.Floyd didn't know if his growing dizziness had been caused by hunger, if Kono's champagne had played a role, or if zero gravity had something to do with it. In order to concentrate, he looked around at the colorful pipes around him. "Then this is the famous Sakharov thruster. This is the first time I have seen the whole device in its entirety." "This is the fourth one produced." "Hopefully it works." "It's great. Otherwise, the Gorky Municipal Committee would have changed the name of Sakharov Square again." It was a sign of the times, the wry jokes Russians could tell about the treatment of their greatest scientists by their motherland.Freud once again remembered the eloquent speeches Sakharov gave at the Academy of Sciences, only then he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviets.Imprisonment and exile, he told his audience, are the wellsprings of creativity; many great ideas are born in a cell, far removed from the entertainments of the world.So the greatest conclusion of human intellect, the law of gravitation, was also a product of Newton's escape from plague-ravaged London. The analogy is not without humility; over the years, Gorky not only produced new insights into the structure of matter and the origin of the universe, but new concepts of plasmas led to the study of thermonuclear energy.Although this thruster is the most famous and public product of these studies, it is only an accessory among many amazing results.The tragedy is that these achievements have been motivated by injustice; perhaps one day, humanity will find a more civilized way of dealing with problems. By the time they left the cabin, Floyd knew a lot more about the Sakharov thrusters than he wished to remember, and much more than he wished to remember.He knew its fundamentals inside out—how to use pulsating thermonuclear reactions to heat and propel a spaceship.Pure hydrogen is the ideal fuel and works best; but hydrogen is too bulky and difficult to store for long periods of time.Methane and ammonia can be used instead, or even water, although the effect is rather poor. Leonov's approach was a compromise; huge tanks of liquid hydrogen provided the initial propulsion to propel the spacecraft, and would be jettisoned when it had gained the speed it needed to fly toward Jupiter.After reaching the destination, the ammonia will be used to slow down and rendezvous with Discovery, and finally return to the ground. This is only a theoretical idea, checked in countless tests and computer simulations.But the ill-fated Discovery has made it plain that all human design has to succumb to ruthless nature, or fate, or whatever is beyond the forces of the universe. "Then you are here, Dr. Freud." It was a woman's menacing voice, which interrupted Vasily's enthusiastic explanation about magnetic feedback. "Why don't you report to me?" Floyd switched hands and slowly floated around.He saw a burly woman in a strange uniform, riddled with pockets and holes, the effect of a Cossack cavalryman wearing bullet belts. "Nice to see you again, doctor. I'm visiting—I hope you've received my health report from Houston." "Those veterinarians in Teague! I can't believe they can tell if it's the feet or the head!" Floyd was well aware of the mutual respect that existed between Katerina Rudenko and Olin Teague Medical Center, though her fierce expression backed up what she said.Seeing his curious expression, she proudly played with the belt around her thick waist. "Regular med bags aren't practical at all in zero gravity - stuff floats out of there, and you can't find them when you need them. I designed this myself, and it's a small, all-purpose first aid kit. Got it It, I can cut out the appendix -- or deliver a baby." "I'm sure that problem doesn't happen here." "Ha! A good doctor prevents everything." What a difference, thought Floyd, between Captain Oleva and—or should he call her by the title of Chief Medical Commander? — Between this Ludenko.The captain has the grace and charm of a prima ballerina, and the doctor is the quintessential "Mother Russia"—a robust physique with an ordinary peasant face who only needs a turban to paint.Don’t let this fool you, Floyd told himself; this woman saved at least a dozen lives in the Komorov incident. ——Moreover, she used her spare time to write "Encyclopedia of Cosmic Medicine".She counts your luck on the ship. "Now, Dr. Floyd, you'll have plenty of time to look at our boat from now on. My colleagues are too polite to tell you this, but they have work to do and you're in their way. I Want to get you—the three of you—arranged quickly. That way we can have less trouble." "I'm a little scared of this, but I see what you mean. I'm always at your beck and call when you're ready." "I'm always ready. Come on, please—" The spaceship hospital only had room for an operating table, two exercise bikes, some cabinets with equipment, and an X-ray machine.Dr. Ruden's examination of Floyd was rapid and thorough, and she suddenly asked: "What is the gold post on the chain around Dr. Chandra's neck? - some kind of communication device? He won't take it off." —in fact, he's too shy to take anything off." Floyd couldn't help laughing.It's easy to imagine the reaction of the down-to-earth Indian to this fiery lady. "That's a phallic image." "what?" "You're a doctor—you should think. A symbol of masculinity." "Of course—I'm stupid. Is he a Hindu? It's a bit late for us to arrange another vegetarian diet for him." "Don't worry—we'd have told you if that was the case. It's just that he doesn't drink, and Chandra isn't crazy about anything but computers. He told me once that his grandfather was from Benares A priest, gave him that image—it's been in his family for generations." To Floyd's surprise, Dr. Ruden didn't sniff as he'd imagined; in fact, her expression became a little somber. "I understand how he feels. My grandmother gave me a beautiful icon - from the 16th century, and I want to bring it - but it's over five kilos." The doctor immediately changed his business-like attitude again, gave Floyd a completely painless injection with a pneumatic syringe, and then told him to come back as soon as he felt sleepy.As for the time, she confirmed to him, it would not exceed two hours. "In the meantime, relax completely," she ordered. "There's an observation window over there - D6. Why don't you go?" It seemed like a good idea, so Floyd obediently obeyed, drifting in the direction she pointed, in an attitude his friends would have been surprised to see.Dr. Rudenko glanced at her watch and dictated a simple command, setting the time for thirty minutes. When he came to the D6 observation window, Floyd found both Chandra and Kono there.They glanced at him without recognizing him at all, and turned to look out the window at the magnificent spectacle.Floyd found that too—the view from the window was marvelous—and Chandra couldn't possibly appreciate it.He squeezed his eyes shut. A totally alien planet hangs there, shimmering brilliant blue and blinding white.How strange, Freud told himself.What's wrong with the earth?Oh sure - no wonder he didn't recognize it!It's upside down!How unfortunate - he shed tears for those poor people who fell into space... He barely noticed the two crew members escorting the unresisting Chandra away.When they returned to help Kono, Floyd's own eyes were closed, but he was still breathing.When they came back to help him, he hadn't even breathed.