Chapter 37 Chapter 2 Spaceships in Formation

A little far ahead, the four walls of the acupoint are faintly visible again, and some kind of still hidden light source emits dim light.Suddenly, the darkness disappeared, and the space capsule rushed into the sky again. He was back in the universe he knew, but he saw in a hasty glance that he was hundreds of light-years away from Earth.The stars, which had been familiar to man since the beginning of time, he knew were not to be found here; and perhaps none of the stars that shone around him were visible to the naked eye. He looked back at the place where he had just risen, and couldn't help being surprised.The huge polycrystalline world is gone, and there is no planet like Iapetus.There was nothing—except an inky shadow under the starlight, as if the door had been opened from a dark room into a still darker night.While he was still watching, the door abruptly closed.The door didn't recede from where he saw it; it just gradually filled in with stars, as if the universe were a great piece of cloth, and the torn holes were mended.So, he was once again alone under the strange sky.

The space capsule continued to rotate slowly, and brought a newer landscape - a huge red sun, many times larger than the moon seen from the earth.Bowman could look directly at it without discomfort; it was no brighter than a burning coal, as could be seen from its color.Here and there, against the dark red background, were bright yellow rivers—white-hot rivers that meandered for thousands of miles before disappearing into the desert above the dying sun. off?No--that was a complete delusion, an illusion of human experience combined with the emotions evoked by the colors of the setting sun and the light of the embers.This is a star that has gone through its fiery youth. It has experienced several spectral colors such as purple, blue, and blue in the billions of years that have passed by. Now it has safely entered the mature stage of peace. long age.The past is not a thousandth of the future; the history of this star has only just begun.

The space capsule stopped turning; the fiery sun was directly ahead.Though he felt no movement at this point, Bowman knew that the grip that had brought him here from Saturn still held him.All the scientific and engineering skills on earth are so primitive that they cannot hold a candle to the power that now controls his destiny. He looked ahead to the horizon, intending to discover the destination to which he was being taken—perhaps some planet orbiting the great sun.But he couldn't see any disks or special points of light; and if there were orbiting planets, he couldn't make them out from the background stars.

Then he noticed something strange happening around the edge of the sun's red disc.A streak of white light appeared, which quickly grew brighter; he wondered if what he was seeing were the sudden bursts or bursts of light that trouble most stars from time to time. The white light grew brighter, blue in white; it began to spread along the outer edge of the sun, and the scarlet tint of the sun faded relatively rapidly.thought Bowman (and at the same time found the idea grotesque).It's like watching the sunrise from the sun. He was indeed watching the sunrise.On the fiery horizon, soared into the sky was something not much bigger than a star, but too bright to look directly at.Like an arc, a blue-white light flashed across the surface of the great sun at an incredible speed.The light must have been near its great companion; for by its gravitational pull a pillar of fire a thousand miles high was not far below.The whole scene was like a wave of fire roaring along the star's equator, trying to chase the fiery ghost in the sky.

That incandescent light must have been a "white dwarf"—one of those curious little malevolent stars no bigger than the Earth but a million times more massive.Such mismatched couples were not uncommon; but Bowman never dreamed that he would one day see them with his own eyes. The white dwarf was already half way through its partner's golden disk—one orbit must have taken only a few minutes—and Bowman was finally sure he was moving, too.Ahead of him, a planet rapidly grew brighter and was clearly drifting against the background.It must be a small solid star—perhaps the world to which he was running.

It was coming towards him with unexpected speed; he saw that it was not a world. It is a group of metallic cobwebs or latticework that glows dimly, hundreds of miles in diameter, nowhere to be seen, but it fills the sky in an instant.Spread across its broad surface were structures that must have been as large as cities, but looked like machines.Around the many machine-like structures, dozens of smaller objects are gathered, neatly arranged in rows.It took Bowman a few sets to realize that they were a formation of spaceships; he was flying over a giant orbital dock. Because there is no familiar object to compare with to judge the scale of the scenery below him, he also has no way of estimating the size of the spaceship hanging in space.But they must all be large; some of them must have been miles long.They come in many types—spherical, faceted crystals, pencils, eggs, and disks.This must be an interstellar trade distribution center.

Or it was - maybe a million years ago.For Bowman could see no sign of activity anywhere; the vast spaceport was as lifeless as the moon. Not only was there no movement on it, but there were large cracks in the metal mesh, which were apparently formed by asteroids bumping into it like a wasp many years ago.So it's no longer a docking station, but a cosmic junkyard. He was disheartened at the thought of the centuries he had missed the builders of these ships.Although he didn't know what he was about to meet, he had at least hoped to meet some kind of intelligent being from the planet.Now it seems that he is late.He falls into an ancient automatic trap, whose original purpose has been lost to investigation, but which continues to function long after the creator has long since left the world.It rolled him across the galaxy, dumped him (how many others?) on the algae duckweed of this celestial kingdom, and left him to die when the air ran out.

Well, it would be unrealistic to complain even more.How many miracles he has seen, many people must be willing to pay with their lives for it.He thought of his dead companion; he had no reason to complain. Then he saw the abandoned spaceport still gliding past him, not slowing down a bit. He was flying over the outskirts of the spaceport; its irregular edge darted past, no longer partially obscuring the stars.After a few minutes, it was left behind. His fate was not here—it was far ahead, on the huge red sun, where the space capsule was now unmistakably descending. Now only the red sun fills the sky.He was close, so its surface no longer seemed motionless because of its size.On its surface, there are shining balls moving back and forth, gas storms churning up and down, and red flames shooting slowly into the sky.slow?They must be going up at a million miles an hour, or his naked eyes would never see them moving.

Bowman should have been apprehensive as the sea of ​​fire spread beneath him—but strangely enough, he felt only slightly apprehensive now.This was not because his mind had been paralyzed by the strange sight; but after rational analysis, he felt that there must be some supreme, almost omnipotent intelligence protecting him.He was very close to the red sun at this time, and if there hadn't been some invisible barrier to block the radiation, he would have been instantly reduced to ashes.And during his voyage, the acceleration he experienced should have crushed him instantly—but he didn't feel it.If so much effort had been expended to protect him, he certainly had reason to hope.

The space capsule is now moving along a flat arc, almost parallel to the surface of the star, but it is slowly descending to the star again.For the first time now Bowman was aware of a sound.There was a faint but continuous roar punctuated by cracks or distant lightning.It could only be the faint echo of an unimaginable noise; the atmosphere around him must have been shaken so violently that anything material would have been ripped to pieces.But he was protected from shock as from heat.Though tongues of flame shot up thousands of miles and scattered around him, he was completely cut off from the violence.The various energies of the stars roared past him, as if in another universe; the space capsules sailed leisurely among them, unaffected by impact or scorched by fire.

Once Bowman's eyes had adjusted to the grandeur of the surrounding landscape, they began to make out details that must have been there, but which he hadn't seen.The surface of the star is not a disembodied mess; it has its own pattern, like everything in nature. He first noticed small eddies of gas—probably no larger than Asia or Africa—roaming the star's surface.Sometimes he could look down on such a vortex directly from above, and see much farther, darker and cooler regions below.Curiously, there seemed to be no sunspot here; perhaps the sunspot was a peculiar ailment of the star that illuminated Earth. Occasionally there are clouds and mist here, like wisps of cooking smoke blown by a gentle wind.Perhaps they were smoke, for the sun was cold enough to produce fire.Compounds can be created that linger for a few seconds before being crushed by more intense nuclear violence around them. The sky gradually brightened, and the color changed from dark red to yellow, then blue, and finally approached pure purple. The "white dwarf" is rising from the horizon, trailing a wave of fire behind it. Bowman covered his eyes with his hands, avoiding the dazzling flash of the little sun, and concentrated on observing the strange sight caused by its gravitational field sucking upwards.He had seen waterspouts moving over the Caribbean Sea; the firepit was nearly identical now.Only the scale is a bit different, the base of the Pillar of Fire is probably larger than the cross-section of the Earth. Then, directly beneath him, Bowman noticed something that must have been new, for if he had seen it before, he could never have ignored it.On the surface of the sea of ​​burning gas, tens of thousands of pearls moved; their pearly flashes came and went every few seconds.And they all moved in the same direction, like salmon going up a river upstream; they sometimes swam back and forth, crossing paths, but never colliding.