Chapter 15 Chapter 1: A Planned Adventure

Only thirty days had passed since the voyage left Earth; yet David Bowman sometimes found it difficult to imagine that he had ever lived in any world other than the small closed world of Discovery. .His years of training, his previous missions to the moon and Mars, all seemed to be someone else's experience, a world away. It started five years ago as Project Jupiter — the first crewed round-trip expedition to the large planet.The spacecraft for the two-year voyage was nearly ready, but quite suddenly the nature of the mission changed. "Discovery" is still going to Jupiter; but it will not stop there.It didn't even lose speed as it traversed the vast system of Jupiter's moons.Instead - it will use the gravity of that giant star as a catapult.Throw yourself farther from the sun.Like a comet, it will penetrate the outer layers of the solar system and finally reach the splendid realm of Saturn's rings.

It will never return. For Discovery, it was a one-way flight—however, its crew had no intention of committing suicide.If all goes well, they will return to Earth in seven years, of which five years - but a moment in the long night sky - they will go into complete hibernation, waiting for the yet-to-be-constructed Discovery Two to take them save. The word "rescue" is carefully avoided in all agency statements and documents, because it implies a slight failure of the plan; the approved term is "recovery."If something went wrong, there would certainly be no hope of rescue a billion miles from Earth.

It too, like all journeys into the unknown, is a planned adventure.But half a century of research has proven that putting humans into artificial hibernation is perfectly safe, opening up new realms of possibility in spaceflight.However, this possibility had not been fully exploited prior to this mission. The crew's three crew members will not be required to work until entering their final orbit around Saturn, and will sleep the entire one-way trip.In this way tons of food and other consumables would be saved; and, just as important, the investigative team would not be fatigued by the ten-month journey, but would be fresh and responsive when they set out to act.

Discovery will enter a docked orbit around Saturn, becoming a new moon for the giant planet.It will travel back and forth along a 2 million-mile-long elliptical orbit, sometimes approaching Saturn and sometimes crossing the orbit of Saturn's main moon.They would have one hundred days to map and study this other world, eighty Earths in size, with at least fifteen known moons, one of which was about the size of Mercury. The wonderlands there may be enough to study for hundreds of years; this expedition can only do a preliminary reconnaissance.What reconnaissance finds will be sent back to Earth by radio; even if the explorers cannot return, their discoveries will not be lost.

At the end of the hundred days, Discovery will shut down.The entire crew will go into hibernation; only the main systems will continue to function, under the command of the ship's tireless computers.The spacecraft will orbit Saturn in a perfectly calculated orbit, and in a thousand years it will be known where to find it.However, according to current plans, Discovery II will arrive in just five years.Even if six, seven, eight years passed, the sleeping crew of the spacecraft would not be aware of it.For the clock had stopped for all of them—as now for Whitehead, Kaminsky, and Hunter. Sometimes, as the chief captain of the "Discovery", Bowman was quite envious of the tranquility of his three colleagues who were unconscious in hibernation.They are never bored, freed from all responsibilities, and until they reach Saturn, the outside world does not exist for them.

However, the outside world observes them through physiological sensors.Between the multitude of instruments on the console, there were five small, inconspicuously placed panels bearing the names of five people: Hunter, Whitehead, Kaminsky, Poole, and Bowman.The last two boards are blank and silent, and they will not be activated until a year later; the other boards display small green lights in star shapes, indicating that everything is normal; there is also a small screen on each board, recording An even rhythm of pulse, breathing, and brain activity. Most intriguing were the EEG recordings—the electrical signatures of three people who had lived and would one day live again.These signatures are almost completely devoid of the peaks and troughs—the electrical waves that mark brain activity in waking (or even sleeping) people.If these people still retain the slightest sense of consciousness, it is beyond the reach of instruments and memories.

When it comes to memory, Bowman knows it from direct experience.Before he was selected for this mission, he was tested for his response to hibernation.He wasn't sure if he'd lost a week of his life--or if he'd ended up living an extra week. As electrodes were placed on his forehead and the hypnosis machine began to vibrate, he saw brief displays of kaleidoscopic figures and stars floating by.Then everything disappeared, and darkness enveloped him.He never felt those injections, let alone the cold when his body temperature began to drop to just a few degrees above zero... ... When he awoke, he seemed to have barely closed his eyes.But he knew it was an illusion; somehow he was convinced that years had actually passed.

Has the task been completed?Whether they have been to Saturn, conducted an investigation.Entered hibernation? Has "Discovery II" come to pick them up and return them to Earth? Warm air was blowing against him, blowing the chill off his extremities.A loudspeaker above his head blasted soft but stirring music.The voice slowly grew louder, and then a relaxed, friendly—yet he knew it was coming from the computer—voice spoke to him. "David, you are regaining mobility. Don't get up or make any drastic movements. Don't talk." "Don't get up!" thought Bowman.That was a joke.He wondered if he could hold up his finger.To his surprise, he found that he could still stretch his fingers.

He was in a drowsy, stupefied state, but he felt quite at ease. He vaguely knew that a rescue ship must have arrived, that the recovery process had begun automatically, and that other humans would be visible soon.That was fine, but he wasn't thrilled by it either. After a while, he felt hungry.Computers certainly foresaw this need. "David, there is a signal button next to your right hand. If you are hungry, please press it." Bowman forced his fingers to grope.After a while, a pear-shaped sphere was discovered. He forgot all about it, though he must have known such a thing.How many other things has he forgotten? —Will hibernation erase memory?

He pressed the button and waited.A few minutes later, a metal arm stretched out from under the bed, and a plastic nipple was brought to his lips.He sucked eagerly, a warm, sweet liquid running down his throat, each drop bringing new strength. Although he felt that his strength was recovering rapidly, he would still be willing to continue lying down like this, if there was no further external stimulation.But immediately another voice spoke to him—and this time it was entirely human, not a combination of electrical impulses assembled by Superman's memory.The tone sounded familiar too, though it took him a while to recognize it.

"David, hello! Your resuscitation went well. You can talk now. Do you know where you are?" He didn't think about it for a long time.If he was indeed orbiting Saturn, what happened in the months after he left Earth? Still, he didn't know where he was, and the person speaking on the other end of the circuit must have fully understood his situation. "David, don't worry. I'm Frank Poole. I'm watching your pulse and breathing—everything is perfectly normal. Take it easy—take it easy. We'll open the door and help you out." A soft light filled the room; he saw moving shadows through the door being opened.At this moment, he recovered all his memory and knew exactly where he was. Although he traveled far to the end of the dreamland, tasted the taste of death, and returned safely now, in fact it only took a week.He had come out of hibernation to see not the icy Saturnian sky; that would be a year later, half a billion miles away.He is currently in a test vehicle at the Space Center in Houston, Texas, where the sun is scorching.