Chapter 44 Chapter 43 Hypothetical Experiment

When a person has been with a small closed group for a month, he becomes very sensitive to the states and emotions of the group members.Floyd is now aware of subtle changes in attitudes towards him, the most obvious sign being people calling him "Dr. Floyd," which he hasn't heard for so long that he often Can't react. He was sure no one thought he was really crazy, but they must have considered the possibility.He didn't hold a grudge about it, in fact, he was excited when he set out to prove his sanity. He does have weak evidence from Earth.Joss Flanders insists his wife says she had an encounter with David Bowman, which she still denies, and refuses to speak to the news media.It's hard to see what motive poor Joss would have for fabricating this fantastic story, especially since Betty seems to be a very stubborn and hotheaded lady.In the hospital bed, Joss says he still loves her and that it was just a momentary quarrel between them.

Floyd hopes Tanya's current indifference towards him is also temporary.He was sure she was unhappy about the situation, too, and he was sure she hadn't planned it.It's just that something happened that was difficult for her to accept, so she tried her best not to touch things related to it, that is to say, to have as little contact with Freud as possible-this is a very unfortunate situation, and the task of this mission The most critical stage is rapidly approaching. It's hard to explain Tanya's run-of-the-mill plan to the waiting billions of people around the planet—especially the edgy TV news networks who've grown tired of repeating the same stuff about Big Brother. "You've crossed so far into space, spent so much money, and just sat around watching it! Why can't you do something about it?" To all these accusations, Tanya always repeated the same answer: "I will— As long as the launch window is open, we can leave immediately if something happens."

The final plan to march to "Big Brother" has been drawn up and has been approved by the mission center.Leonov will slowly approach, simultaneously detecting signals in all frequency bands, and increasing power—should send reports to Earth at all times.When contact is finally made, it will try to collect a sample by drilling or bouncing off a laser beam.Nobody really believed these efforts would be successful, though for T. M. A-1 has been researched for ten years, and its material structure is still not clear.The best efforts of human scientists in this direction are like stone age people trying to pry open a bank safe with a flint axe.

Finally, sonar and other earthquake-monitoring equipment will be placed on Big Brother's surface, and they're carrying a lot of adhesive for that.And if the adhesive doesn't work, there are kilometers of strong old-fashioned guylines that can be resorted to, although the idea of ​​binding the most mysterious object in the solar system like a package for the post seems rather ludicrous. The Leonov will detonate a small amount of explosives when it returns safely, in the hope that detecting the shock waves propagating through Big Brother will reveal some of its internal structure.This measure of last resort has been hotly debated, with some arguing that it would yield nothing—and others worrying that it would have too many unintended effects.

For a long time, Freud vacillated between these two views, but neither seems to matter anymore. The moment of final contact with "Big Brother" - which should have been the climax of the expedition - was mistakenly placed after the mysterious deadline.Heywood Floyd was sure that would be out of reach, but he couldn't convince others to agree with him.