THE WIND FROM THE SUN et al
by
ARTHUR C. CLARKE

A SIGNET BOOK NEW AMERICAN LIBRAry Inmem mWarvom
Published by THE NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY OF CANADA LIMITED

For Peter,

these memories of our future

Copyright @ 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1967, 1970,
1971, 1972 by Arthur C. Clarke

All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical
including photocopy, recording, or any
information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from
the publisher. For information address
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.,
757 Third Avenue, New York, New York 10017.

Some of these stories appeared originally in Boy's
Life, Esca ' pade, the Farthest Reaches, Galaxy,
Infinity 11, Playboy, and This Week.

This is an authorized reprint of a hardcover
edition published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

First Printing, July, 1973
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

PRINTED IN CANADA

COVER PRINTED IN U.S.A.

 Contents

Preface Vff
The Food of the Gods 1
Maelstrom 11 6
The Shining Ones 20
The Wind from the Sun 36
The Secret 55
The Last Command 61
Dial F for Frankenstein 63
Reunion 70
Playback 72
The Light of Darkness 75
The Longest Science-Fiction Story Ever Told 81
Herbert George Morley Roberts Wells, Esq. 82
Love That Universe 85
Crusade 89
The Cruel Sky 94
Neutron Tide 112
Transit of Earth 114
A Meeting with Medusa 127

Preface

This volume contains all the stories I wrote in the decade of the '60's,
which was one of the most dramatic periods in the entire history of
science and technology. Those years embraced the laser, the genetic
code, the first robot probes of Man and Venus, the discovery of
pulsars-and the landing on the Moon. Many of these events, either in
anticipation or after achievement, are reflected in these tales; for
that reason I have placed them in chronological order. This is my sixth
volume of short stories, and I was tempted to give it the subtitle "The
Last of Clarke'@-not through any intimations of mortality (I have every
intention of seeing what really happens in the year 2001), but because I
seem to be doing less and less writing, and more and more talking,
traveling, filming, and skin-diving. Extmpolating from my present rate
of production, volume seven would appear to lie so far in the future
that it may be better just to add my occasional stories to later
editions of this book. "The Wind from the Sun" was called "Sunjammee'
when it was first published, in Boys' Life. By one of those strange
coincidences that often occur in literature (see "Herbert George Morley
Roberts Wells, Esq."), Poul Anderson used the same title, almost
simultaneously. The concept of the lunar launcher in "Maelstrom 11" was,
I believe, first put forward in my paper "Electromagnetic Launching as a
Major Contribution to Space Flight" (Journal of the British
Interplanetary Society, November 1950). The detailed predictions for the
events that will take place as described in "Transit of Earth" were made
by Jan Meeus (Journal of the British Astronomical Association,.vol. 72,
no. 6, 1962). 1 am greatly indebted to Mr. Meeus's paper for both
information and inspiration. The phrase "the Wheels of Poseidon" (in "A
Meeting with Medusa") was coined by my friend the late Willy Ley, and
the relevant quotations were taken from his book On Earth and

in the Sky. The cause of this extraordinary and awe-inspiring
phenomenon is by no means fully understood. Finally, may I say that this
volume can perhaps claim one modest record in "The Longest
Science-Fiction Story Ever Told": no longer story ever has been written,
or ever will be.

ARTHUR C. CLARKE Colombo, Ceylon
February 1971

The Food of the Gods

It's only fair to warn you, Mr. Chairman, that much of my evidence will
be highly nauseating; it involves aspects ofhuman nature that are very
seldom discussed in public, and certainly not before a congressional
committee. But I am afraid that they have to be faced; there are times
when the veil of hypocrisy has to be ripped away, and this is one of
them. You and 1, gentlemen, have descended from a long line of
carnivores. I see from your expressions that most of you don't
recognize the term. Well, that's not surprising--it comes from a
language that has been obsolete for two thousand yearL Perhaps I had
better avoid euphemisms and be brutally frank, even if I have to use
words that are never heard in polite society. I apologize in advance to
anyone I may offend. Until a few centuries ago, the favorite food of
almost AU men was meat-the fiesh of once living animals. I'm not trying
to turn your stomachs; this is a simple statement of fact, which you can
check in any history book.... Why, certainly, Mr. Chairman. I'm quite
prepared to wait until Senator Irving feels better. We professionals
sometimes forget how laymen may react to statements like that. At the
same time, I must warn the committee that there is very much worse to
come. If any of you gentlemen are at all squeamish, I suggest you follow
the Senator before it's too late.... Well, if I may continue. Until
modem times, all food fell into two categories. Most of it was produced
from plantscereals, fruits, plankton, algae, and other forms of
vegetation. It's hard for us to realize that the vast majority of our
ancestors were farmers, winning food from land or sea by primitive and
often backbreaking techniques; but that is the truth. The second type of
food, if I may return to this unpleasant subject, was meat, produced
from a relatively small number of animals. You may be familiar with some
of them-cows,

2 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

pigs, sheep, whales. Most people-I am sorry to stress this, but the
fact is beyond dispute-preferred meat to any other food, though only the
wealthiest were able to indulge this appetite. To most of mankind, meat
was a rare and occasional delicacy in a diet that was more than
ninety-percent vegetable. If we look at the matter calmly and
dispassionately-as I hope Senator Irving is now in a position to do-we
can see that meat was bound to be rare and expensive, for its production
is an extremely inefficient process. To make a kilo of meat, the animal
concerned had to eat at -least ten kilos of vegetable food-very often
food that could have been consumed directly by human beings. Quite
apart from any consideration of aesthetics, this state of affairs could
not be tolerated after the population explosion of the twentieth
century. Every man who ate meat was condemning ten or more of his fellow
humans to starvation.... Luckily for all of us, the biochemists solved
the problem; as you may know, the answer was one of the countless
by-products of space research. All food-animal or vegetable@@Ls built
up from a very few common elements. Carbon, hydro. gen, oxygen,
nitrogen, traces of sulphur and phosphorusthese half-dozen elements, and
a few others, combine in an almost infinite variety of ways to make up
every food that man has ever eaten or ever will eat. Faced with the
problem of colonizing the Moon and planets, the biochemists of the
twenty-first century discovered how to synthesize any de food from the
basic raw materials of water, air, and rock. R was the greatest, and
perhaps the most important, achievement in the history of science. But
we should not feel too proud of it. The vegetable kingdom had beaten us
-by a billion years. The chemists could now synthesize any conceivable
food, whether it had a counterpart in nature or not. Needless to say,
there were rnistakes-even disasters. Industrial empires rose and
crashed; the switch from agriculture and animal husbandry to the giant
automatic processing plants and omniverters of today was often a painful
one. But it had to be made, and we are the better for it. The danger
of starvation has been banished forever, and we have a richness and
variety of food that no other age has ever known. In addition, of
course, there was a moral gain. We no longer murder millions of living
creatures, and such revolting

 The Food of the Gody 3

institutions as the slaughterhouse and the butcher shop have vanished
from the face of the Earth. It seems incredible to us that even our
ancestors, coarse and brutal though they were, could ever have tolerated
such obscenities. And yet-it is impossible to make a clean break with
the past. As I have already remarked, we are carnivores; we inherit
tastes and appetites that have been acquired over a million years of
time. Whether we like it or not, only a few years ago some of our great-
grandparents were enjoying the flesh of cattle and sheep and pigs- when
they could get it. And we still enjoy it today.... Oh dear, maybe
Senator Irving had better stay outside from now on. Perhaps I should
not have been quite so blunt. What I meant, of course, was that many of
the synthetic foods we now eat have the same formula as the old natural
products; some of them, indeed, are such exact replicas that no chemical
or other test could reveal any difference. This situation is logical
and inevitable; we manufacturers simply took the most popular
presynthetic foods as our models, and reproduced their taste and
texture. Of course, we also created new names that didn't hint of an
anatomical or zoological origin, so that no one would be reminded of the
facts of life. When you go into a restaurant, most of the words you'll
find on the menu have been invented since the beginning of the
twenty-first century, or else adapted from French originals that few
people would recognize. If you ever want to find your threshold of
tolerance, you cm try an interesting but highly unpleasant experiment.
The classified section of the Library of Congress has a large number of
menus. from famous restaurants-- yes, and White House banquets-going
back for five hundred years. They have a crude, dissecting-room
frankness that makes them almost unreadable. I cannot think of anything
that reveals more vividly the gulf between us and our ancestors of only
a few generations ago.... Yes, Mr. Chairman-I am coming to the point;
all this is highly relevant, however disagreeable it may be. I am not
trying to spoil your appetites; I am merely laying the groundwork for
the charge I wish to bring against my competitor, Triplanetary Food
Corporation. Unless you understand this background, you may think that
this is a frivolous complaint inspired by the admittedly serious losses
my firm has sustained since Ambrosia Plus came on the market.

4 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

New foods, gentlemen, are invented every week. It is hard to keep track
of them. They come and go like women's fashions, and only one in a
thousand becomes a permanent addition to the menu. It is extremely rare
for one to hit the public fancy overnight, and I freely admit that the
Ambrosia Plus line of dishes has been the greatest success in the entire
history of food manufacture. You all know the position: everything else
has been swept off the market. Naturally, we were forced -to accept the
challenge. The biochemists of my organization are as good as any in the
solar system, and they promptly got to work on Ambrosia Plus. I am not
giving away any trade secrets when I tell you that we have tapes of
practically every food, natural or synthetic, that has, ever been eaten
by mankind-right back to exotic items that you7ve never heard of, like
fried squid, locusts in honey, peacocks' tongues, Venusian polypod ...
Our enormous Hbrary of flavors and textures is our basic stock in trade,
as it is with all firms in the business. From it we can select and mix
items in any conceivable combination; and usually we can duplicate,
without too much trouble, any product that our competitors put out. I
But Ambrosia Plus had us baffled for quite some time. Its protein-fat
breakdown classified it as a straightforward meat, without too many
complications--yet we couldn't match it exactly. It was the first time
my chemists had failed; not one of them could explain just what gave the
stuff its extraordinary appeal-which, as we all know, makes every other
food seem insipid by comparison. As well it might ... but I am getting
a-head of myself. Very shortly, Mr. Chairman, the president of
Triplanetary Foods will be appearing before you-rather reluctantly, rin
sure. He will tell you that Ambrosia Plus is synthesized from air,
water, limestone, sulphur, phosphorus, and the rest. That will be
perfectly true, but it will be the least important part of the story.
For we have now discovered his secret-which, like most secrets, is very
simple once you know it. I really must congratulate my competitor. He
has at last made available unlimited quantities of what is, from the
nature of things, the ideal food for mankind. Until now, it has been in
extremely short supply, and therefore all the more relished by the few
connoisseurs who could obtain it. Without exception, they have sworn
that nothing else can remotely compare with it.

 The Food of the Gods 5

Yes, Triplanetary's chemists have done a superb technical job. Now you
have to resolve the moral and philosophical issues. When I began my
evidence, I -used the archaic word 66 carnivore." Now I must introduce
you to another: III spell it out the first time: C-A-N-N-I-B-A-L ... May
1961

Maelstrom It

He was not the first man, Cliff Leyland told himself bitterly, to know
the exact second and the precise man er of his death. Times beyond
number, condemned criminals had waited for their last dawn. Yet until
the very end they could hope for a reprieve; human judges can show
mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal. And only six
hours ago, he had been whistling happily while he packed his ten kilos
of personal baggage for the long fall home. He could still remember
(even now, after an that had happened) how he had dreamed that Myra was
already in his arms, that he was taking Brian and Sue on that promised
crui e down the Nile. In a few minutes, as Earth rose above the horizon,
he might see the Nile again; but memory alone could bring back the faces
of his wife and children. And all because he had tried to save nine
hundred and fifty sterling doll= by ridinghome on the freight catapult,
instead of the rocket shuttle. He had expected the first twetve seconds
of the trip to be rough, as the electric launcher whipped the capsule
along its ten- mile track and shot him off the Moon. Even with the
protection of the water-bath in which he would float during countdown,
he had not looked forward to the twenty g! s of take-off. Yet when the
acceleration had gripped the capsule, ,he had been hardly aware of the
immense forces acting upon him. The only sound was a faint creaking from
the metal walls; to anyone who had experienced the thunder of a rocket
launch, the silence was uncanny. When the cabin speaker had announced

"T plus five seconds; speed two thousand miles an hour," he could
scarcely believe it. Two thousand miles an hour in five seconds from a
standing start-with seven seconds still to go as the generators smashed
their thunderbolts of power into the launcher. He was riding the
lightning across the face of the Moon. And at T plus seven seconds, the
lightning failed. 6

 Maelstrom U 7

Even in the wornblike shelter of the tank, Cliff could sense that
something had gone wrong. The water around him, until now frozen almost
rapid by its weight, seemed sudden1v to become alive. Though the capsule
was still hurtling along the track, all acceleration had ceased, and it
was merely coasting under its own momentum. He had no time to feel fear,
or to wonder what had happened, for the power failure lasted little more
than a second. Then, with a jolt that shook the capsule from end to end
and set off a series of ominous, tinkling crashes, the field came on
again. When the acceleration faded for the last time, all weiglit
vanished with it. Cliff needed no instnirnent but his stomach to tell
that the capsule had left the end of the track and was rising away from
the surface of the Moon. He waited impatiently until the automatic pumps
had drained the tank and the hot-air driers had done theirmork; then he
drifted across the control panel, and pulled himself down into the
bucket seat. "Launch Control," he called urgently, as he drew the
restrobting, straps around , his waist, "what the devil happenedr- A
brisk but worried voice answered at once. "Wre still checking-call you
back in thirty secondc" Then it Pdded belatedly

"Glad you're O. K." While he was waiting, Cliff switched to forward
vision.

There was nothing ahead except stars-which. was as it should be. At
leasthe had taken off with most of his planned speed, and there was no
danger that he would crash back to the Moon's surface immediately. But
he would crash back sooner or later, for he could not possibly have
reached escape velocity. He must be rising out into space along a great
ellipse-and, in a few hours, he would be back at his starting point.

"Hello. Cliff," said Launch Control suddenly. "We've found what
happened. 'Me circuit breakers tripped when you went through section
five of the track. So your take-off speed was seven hundred miles an
hour -low. That will bring you back in just over five hours-but don't
worry; your course-correction jets can boost you into a stable orbit.
Well tell you when to fire them. Then all you have to do is to sit tight
until we can send someone to haul you down."

Slowly, Cliff allowed himself to relax. He had forgotten the capsule's
vernier rockets. Low-povmred though they were, 8 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

they could kick him into an orbit that would clear the Moon. Thoughhe
might fall back to within a few miles of the lunar surface, skimming
over mountains and plains at a breath-taking speed, he would be
perfectly safe. Then -he remembered those tinkling crashes from the
control compartment, and his hopes dimmed again, for there were not many
things that could break in a space vehicle without most unpleasant
consequences. He was facing those consequences, now that the final
checks of the ignition circuits had been completed. Neither on manual
nor on Auto would the navigation rockets fire. the capsule's modest fuel
reserves, which could have taken him to safety, were utterly useless. In
five hours he would complete his orbit-and return to his launching
point. I wonder if they'll name the new crater after me, thought Cliff.

"Crater Leyland: diameter ..." What diameter? Better not exaggerate-I
don't suppose it will be more than a couple of hundred yards across.

Hardly worth putting on the map. Launch Control was still silent, but
that was not surprising. 'Mere was little that one could say to a man
already as good as dead. And yet, though he knew that nothing could
alter his trajectory, even now he could not believe that he would soon
be scattered over most of Farside. He was still soaring away from the
Moon, snug and comfortable in his little cabin. TU idea of death was
utterly incongruous--as it is to all men until the final second. And
then, for a moment, Cliff forgot his own problem. The horizon ahead was
no longer flat. Something more brilliant even than the blazing lunar
landscape was lifting against the stars. As the capsule curved round the
edge of the Moon, it was creating the only kind of earthrise that was
possible--a man-made one. In a minute it was all over, such was his
speed in orbit. By that time the Earth had leaped clear of the horizon,
and was climbing swiftly up the sky. It was three-quarters full, and
almost too bright to look upon. Here was a cosmic mirror made not of
dull rocks and dusty plains, but of snow and cloud and sea. Indeed, it
was almost all sea, for the Pacific was turned toward him, and the
blinding reflection of the sun covered the Hawaiian Islands. The haze of
the atmosphere-that soft blanket that should have cushioned his descent
in a few -hours' time--obliterated all geographical details; perhaps
that darker patch emerging from night was New Guinea, but he could not
&_1 sure. There was a bitter irony in the knowledge that he was

 Maelstrom 11 9

heading straight toward that lovely, gleaming apparition.. Another seven
hundred miles an hour and he would have made it. Seven hundred miles an
hour-that was an. He might as well ask for seven million. The sight of
the rising Earth brought home to him, with irresistible force, the duty
he feared but could postpone no longer. "Launch Control,",he said,
-holding his voice steady with a great effort "please give me a circuit
to Earth." This was one of the strangest things he had ever done in his
life: to sit here above the Moon and listen to the telephone ring in his
own home, a quarter of a million miles away. It must be near midnight
down there in Africa, and it would be some time before there would be
any answer. Myra would stir sleepily; then, because she was a spaceman's
wife, always alert for disaster, she would be instantly awake. But they
had both hated to have a phone in the bedroom, and it would be at least
fifteen seconds before she could switch on the light, close the nursery
door to avoid disturbing the baby, get down the stairs, and . Her voice
came clear and sweet across the emptiness of space. He would recognize
it anywhere in the universe, and he detected at once the undertone of
anxiety. "Mrs. Leylandr, said the Earthside operator. "I have a call
from your husband. Please remember the two-second time lag. Cliff
wondered how many people were listening to this call, on either the
Moon, the Earth, or the relay satellites. It was hard to talk for the
last time to your loved ones when you didn't know how many eavesdroppers
there might be. But as soon as he began to speak, no one else existed
but Myra and himself. "Darling," he began, 'his is Cliff. I'm afraid I
won't be coming home, as I promised. There's been a ... a technical
slip. I'm quite all right at the moment, but I'm in big trouble." He
swallowed, trying to overcome the dryness in his mouth, then went on
quickly before she could interrupt. As briefly ashe could, he explained
the situation. For his own sake as well as hers, he did not abandon all
hope. "Everyone's doing their best," he said. "Maybe they can get a ship
up to me in time. But in case they can't ... well, I wanted to speak to
you and the children." She took It well, as he had known that she wools
He ffelt, 10 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

pride as well as love when her answer came back from the dark side of
Earth. "Don't worry, Cliff. I'm sure they'll get you out, and we'll have
our holiday after all, exactly the way we planned."

"I think so, too," he lied. "But just in case, would you wake the
children? Don't tell them that anything's wrong" It was an endless
half-minute before he heard their sleepy,. yet excited, voices. Cliff
would willingly have given these last few hours of his life to have seen
their faces once again, but the capsule was not equipped with such
luxuries as vision.

Perhaps it was just as well, forhe could not have hidden the truth had
he looked into their eyes. They would know it soon enough, but not from
ilum. He wanted to give them only happiness in these last moments
together. Yet it was hard to answer their questions, to tell them that
he would soon be seeing them, to make promises that he could not keep.

It needed all his self-control when Brian reminded him of the moondust
he had forgotten once before-but had remembered this time. "I've got it,
Brian; it's in a jar right beside me. Soon you'll be able to show it to
your friends." (No: soon it will be back on the world from which it
came.) "And Susie-be a good girl aud do everything that Mummy tells you.

Your last school report wasn't too good, you know, especially those
-remarks about behavior. Yes, Brian, I have those photographs, and the
piece of rock from Aristarchus .... It was hard to die at thirty-five;
but it was hard, too, for a boy to lose his father at ten. How would
Brian remember him in the years ahead? Perhaps as no more than a fading
voice from space, for he had spent so little time on Earth. In the last
few minutes, as -he swung outward and then back to the Moon, there was
little enough that he could do except project his love and his hopes
across the emptiness that he would never span again. The rest was up to
Myra. When the children had gone, happy but puzzled, there was work to
do. Now was the time to keep one's head, to be- businesslike and
practical. Myra must face the future without him, but at least he could
make the transition easier. Whatever happens to the individual, life
goes on; and to modern man life involves mortgages and installments due,
insurance policies and joint bank accounts. Almost impersonally, as if
they concerned someone else-which would soon be true enough-Cliff began
to talk about these things.,There was a dme for the heart and a time for
the brain. The heart w9im

 Maelstrom 11 11

have its final say three hours from now, when he began his last approach
to the surface of the Moon. No one interrupted them. There must have
been silent monitors maintaining the link between two worlds, but the
two of them might have been the only people alive. Some. times while he
was speaking Cliff's eyes would stray to the periscope, and be dazzled
by the glare of Earth-now more than halfway up the sky. It was
impossible to believe that it was home for seven billion souls. Only
three mattered to him now. It should have been four, but with the best
will in the world he could not put the baby on the same footing as the
others. He had never seen his younger son; and now he never would. At
last he could think of no more to say. For some things, a lifetime was
not enough-but an hour could be too much. He felt physically and
emotionally exhausted, and the strain on Myra must have been equally
great. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts and with the stars, to
compose his mind and to make his peace with the universe. "I'd like to
sign off for an hour or so, darling," he said. There was no need for
explanations; they understood each other too well. "I'll call you back
in-in plenty of time. Good-by for now." He waited the two and a half
seconds for the answering good- by from Earth; then he cut the circuit
and stared blankly at the tiny control desk. Quite unexpectedly, without
desire or volition, tears sprang from his eyes, and suddenly he was
weeping like a child. He wept for his family, and for himself. He wept
for the future that might have been, and the hopes that would soon 'be
incandescent vapor, drifting between the stars. And he wept because
there was nothing else to do. After a while he felt much better. Indeed,
he realized that he was extremely hungry. There was no point in dying on
an empty stomach, and he began to rummage among the space rations in the
closet-sized galley. While he was squeezing a tube of chicken- and-ham
paste into his mouth, Launch Control called. There was a new voice at
the end of the line-a slow, steady, and immensely competent voice that
sounded as if it would brook no nonsense from inanimate machinery. "This
is Van Kessel, Chief of Maintenance, Space Vehicles Division. Listen
carefully; Leyland. We think we've found a way out.

It's a long shot-but it's the only chance you have."

12 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

I Alternations of hope and despair are hard on the nervous system. Cliff
felt a sudden dizziness; he might have fallen had there been any
direction in which to fall. "Go ahead," he said faintly, when he had
recovered. Then he listened to Van Kessel with an eagerness that slowly
changed to incredulity. "I don't believe itl" he said at last. "It just
doesn't make sensel"

"You can't argue with the computers," answered Van Kessel. "They've
checked the figures about twenty different ways. And it makes sense, all
right. You won't be moving so fast at apogee, and it doesn't need much
of a kick then to change your orbit. I suppose you! ve never been -in a
deep-space rig before?"

"No, of course not."

"Pity-but never mind. If you follow instructions, you cant go wrong.

You'll find the suit in the locker at the end of the cabin. Break the
seals and haul it out." Cliff floated the full six feet from the control
desk to the rear of the cabin and pulled on the lever marked EMERGENCY
.ONLY- TYPE 17 MEP-SPACE surr. The door opened, and the shining silver
fabric hung flaccid before him. "Strip down to your underclothes and
wriggle into it," said Van Kessel. "Don't bother about the biopack-you
clamp that on later." "I'm in," said Cliff presently. "What do I do
now?"

"You wait twenty minutes-and then we'll give you the signal to open the
air lock and jump." The implications of that word "jump"

suddenly penetrated. Cliff looked around the now familiar, comforting
little cabin, and then thought of the lonely emptiness between the
starsthe unreverberant abyss through which a man could fall until the
end of time. He had never been in free space; there was no reason why he
should. He was just a farmer's boy with a master's degree in agronomy,
seconded from the Sahara Reclamation Project and trying to grow crops on
the Moon. Space was not for him; he belonged to the worlds of soil and
rock, of moondust and vacuum- formed pumice. "I can't do it," he
whispered. "Isn't there any other way?' "There's not," snapped Van
Kessel. "We're doing our damnedest to save you, and this is no time to
get neurotic.' Dozens of men have been in far worse situations-badly
injured, trapped in wreckage a million miles from help.'But

 Maebtrom 11 13

you're not even scratched, and already you're squealingl Pull yourself
together--or well sign off and leave you to stew in your own juice."
Cliff turned slowly red, and it was several seconds before he answered.
"I'm all right," he said at last. "Let's go through those instructions
again." "That's better," said -Van Kessel approvingly.

"Twenty minutes from now, when you're at apogee, you'll go into the air
lock. From that point, we'll lose communication; your suit radio has
only a ten- mile range. But we'll be tracking you on radar and we'll be
able to speak to you when you pass over us again. Now, about the
controls on your suit . The twenty minutes went quickly enough. At the
end of that time, Cliff knew exactly what he had to do. He had even come
to believe that it might work. "Time to bail out," said Van Kessel.

"The capsule's correctly oriented-the air lock points the way you want
to go. But direction isn't critical. Speed is what matters. Put
everything you've got into that jump-and good luckl" "Thanks," said
Cliff inadequately. "Sorry that I .. "Forget it," interrupted Van
Kessel. "Now get movingl" For the last time, Cliff looked around the
tiny cabin, wondering if there was anything that he had forgotten. AR
his personal belongings would have to be abandoned, but they could be
replaced easily enough. Then he remembered the little jar of moondust he
had promised Brian; this time, he would not let the boy down. The minute
mass of the sample---only a few ounces-- would make no difference to his
fate. He tied a piece of string around the neck of the jar and attached
it to the harness of his suit. The air lock was so small that there was
literally no room to move; he stood sandwiched between inner and outer
doors until the automatic pumping sequence was finished. Then the wall
slowly opened away from him, and he was facing the stars. With his
clumsy gloved fingers, he hauled himself out of the air lock and stood
upright on the steeply curving hull, bracing himself tightly against it
with the safety line. The splendor of the scene held him almost
paralyzed. He forgot allhis fears of vertigo and insecurity as he gazed
around him, no longer constrained by the narrow field of vision of the
periscope. The Moon was a gigantic crescent, the dividing line between
night and day a jagged arch sweeping across a quarter

14 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

of the sky. Down there the sun was setting, at the beginning of the long
lunar night, but the summits of isolated peaks were still blazing with
the last light of day, defying the darkness that had already encircled
them. 'Mat darkness was not complete. Though the sun had gone from the
land below, the almost full Earth flooded it with glory. Cliff could
see, faint but clear in the glimmering earthlight, the outlines of seas
and highlands, the dim stars of mountain peaks, the dark circles of
craters. He was flying above a ghostly, sleeping land-a land that was
trying to drag him to his death. For now he was poised at the highest
point of his orbit, exactly on the line between Moon and Earth. It was
time to go. He bent his legs, crouching against the hull. Then, with an
his force, he launched himself toward the stars, letting the safety line
run out behind him. The capsule receded with surprising speed, and as it
did go, he felt a most unexpected sensation. He had anticipated terror
or vertigo, but not this unmistakable, haunting sense of familiarity.

All this had happened before; not to him, of course, but to someone
else. He could not pinpoint the memory, and there was no time to hunt
for it now. He flashed a quick glance at Earth, Moon, and receding
spacecraft, and made his decision without conscious thought. The line
whipped away as he snapped the quick-release. Now he was alone, two
thousand miles above the Moon, a quarter of a million miles from Earth.

He could do nothingibut wait; it would be two and a half hours before he
would know if he could live-and if his own muscles had performed the
task that the rockets had failed to do. And as the stars slowly revolved
around him, he sudde* knew the origin of that haunting memory. It was
many years since he had read Poe's short stories, but who could ever
forget them? He, too, was trapped in a maelstrom, being whirled down to
his doom; he, too, hoped to escape by abandoning his vessel. Though the
forces involved were totally different, the parallel was striking. Poe's
fisherman had lashed himself to a barrel because stubby, cylindrical
objects were being sucked down into the great whirlpool more slowly than
his ship. It was a brilliant application of the laws of hydrodynamics.

Cliff could only hope that his use of celestial mechanics would be
equally inspired. How fast had he jumped away from the capsule? At
a-good

 Maektrom U 15

five miles an hour, surely. Trivial though that speed was by
astronomical standards, it should be enough to inject him into a new
orbit-one that, Van Kessel had promised him, would clear the Moon by
several miles. That was not much of a margin, but it would be enough on
this airless world, where there was no atmosphere to claw him down. With
a sudden spasm of guilt, Cliff realized that he had never made that
second call to Myra. It was Van Kessel's fault; the engineer had kept
him on the move, given him no time to brood over his own affairs. And
Van Kessel was right: in a situation like this, a man could think only
of himself. All his resources, mental and physical, must be concentrated
on survival. This was no time or place for the distracting and weakening
ties of love. He was racing now toward the night side of the Moon, and
the daylit crescent was shrinking as he watched. The intolerable disc of
the Sun, at which he dared not look, was failing swiftly toward the
curved horizon. The crescent moonscape dwindled to a burning line of
light, a bow of fire set against the stars. Then the bow fragmented into
a dozen shining beads, which one by one winked out as he shot into the
shadow of the Moon. With the going of the Sun, the earthlight seemed
more brilliant than ever, frosting his suit with silver as he rotated
slowly a-long his orbit. It took him about ten seconds to make each
revolution; there was nothing he could do to check his spin, and indeed
he welcomed the constantly changing view. Now that his eyes were no
longer distracted by occasional glimpses of the Sun, he could see the
stars in thousands, where there had been only hundreds before. The
familiar constellations were drowned, and even the brightest of the
planets were hard to find in that blaze of light. The dark disc of the
lunar night land lay across the star' field like an eclipsing shadow,
and it was slowly growing as he fell toward it. At every instant some
star, bright or faint, would pass behind its edge and wink out of
existence. It was almost as if a hole were growing in space, eating up
the heavens. There was no other indication of his movement, or of the
passage of time except for his regular ten-second spin. When he looked
at his watch, he was astonished to see that he had left the capsule half
an hour ago. He searched for it among the stars, without. success. By
now, it would be several miles

16 THE Arm FROM THE SUN

behind. But presently it would draw ahead of him, as it moved on its
lower orbit, and would be the first to reach the Moon. Cliff was still
puzzling over this paradox when the strain of the last few hours,
combined with the euphoria of weightlessness, produced a result he would
hardly have believed possible. Lulled by the gentle susurration of the
air inlets, floating lighter than any feather as he turned beneath the
stars, he fell into a dreamless sleep. When he awoke at some prompting
of his subsconscious, the Earth was nearing the edge of the Moon. The
sight alm ' ost brought on another wave of self-pity, and for a moment
he had to fight for control of his emotions. This was the very last he
might ever see of Earth, as his orbit took him back over Farside, into
the land where the earthlight never shone. The brilliant antarctic
icecaps, the equatorial cloud belts, the scintillation of the Sun upon
the Pacific-all were sinking swiftly behind the lunar mountains. Then
they were gone; he had neither Sun nor Earth to light him now, and the
invisible land -below was so black that it hurt his eyes. Unbelievably,
a. cluster of stars had appeared inside the darkened disc, whete no
stars could possibly be. Cliff stared at them in astonishment for a few
seconds, then realized he was passing above one of the Farside
settlements. Down there beneath the pressure domes of their city, men
were wafting out the lunar night--6leeping, working, loving, resting,
quarreling. Did they know that he was speeding like an invisible meteor
through their sky, racing above their heads at four thousand miles an
hour? Almost certainly; for by now the whole Moon, and the whole Earth,
must know of his predicament. Perhaps they were searching for him with
radar and telescope, but they would have little time to find him. Within
seconds, the unknown city had dropped out of sight, and he was once more
alone above Farside. It was impossible to judge his altitude above the
blank emptiness speeding below, for there was no sense of scale or
perspective. Sometimes it seemed that he could reach out and touch the
darkness across which he was racing; yet he knew that in reality it must
still be many miles beneath him. But he also knew that he was still
descending, and that at any moment one of the crater walls or mountain
peaks that strained invisibly toward him might claw him from the sky. In
the darkness somewhere ahead was the final obstaclethe hazard he feared
most of all. Across the heart of Farside, spanning the equator from
north to south in a wall more than,  Maelstrom 11 17

a thousand miles long, lay the Soviet Range. He had been a boy when it
was discovered, back in 1959, and could still remember his excitement
when he had seen the first smudged photographs from Limik 111. He could
never have dreamed that one day he would be flying toward those same
mountains, waiting for them to decide his fate. The first eruption of
dawn took him completely by surprise. Light exploded ahead of him,
leaping from peak to peak until the whole arc of the horizon was limned
with flame. He was hurtling out of the lunar night, directly into the
face of the Sun. At least he would not die in darkness, but the greatest
danger was yet to come. For now he was almost back where he had started,
nearing the lowest point of his orbit. He glanced at the suit
chronometer, and saw that five full hours had now-passed. Within
minutes, he would hit the Moon--or skim it and pass safely out into
space. As far as he could judge, he was less than twenty miles above the
surface, and he was still descending, though very slowly now. Beneath
him, the long shadows of the lunar dawn were d, rs of darkness, stabbing
toward the night land. The steeply slanting sunlight exaggerated every
rise in the ground, making even the smallest hills appear to be
mountains. And now, unmistakably, the lpnd ahead was rising, wrinkling
into the foothills of the Soviet Range. More than a hundred miles away,
but approaching at a mile a second, a wave of rock was climbine from the
face of to Moon. There was nothing he could d o to avoid it; his path
was fixed and unalterable. All that could be done had already been done,
two and a half hours ago. , It was not enough. He was not going to rise
above these mountains; they were rising above him.

Now he regretted his failure to make that second call to the woman who
was still waiting, a quarter of a million miles away. Yet perhaps it was
just as well, for there had been nothing more to say. Other voices were
calling in the space around him, as he came once more within range of
Launch Control, They waxed and waned as he flashed through the radio
shadow of the mountains; they were talking about him, but the fact
scarcely registered on him. He listened with an impersonal interest, as
if to messages from some remote point of space or time, of no concern to
him. Once he heard Van Kessel's voice say, quite distinctly: "Tell
Callisto's skipper we'll give him an intercept orbit as soon as we know
that Leyland's past perigee.

18 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

Rendezvous time should be one hour five minutes from now." I hate to
disappoint you, thought Cliff, but that's one appointment r1l never
keep. Now the wall of rock was only fifty miles away, and each time he
spun helplessly in space it came ten miles closer. There was no room for
optimism now, as he sped more swiftly than a rifle bullet toward that
implacable barrier. This was the end, and suddenly it became of great
importance to know whether he would meet it face first, with open eyes,
or with his back turned, like a coward. No memories of his past life
flashed through Cliffs mind as he counted the seconds that remained. The
swiftly unrolling moonscape rotated beneath him, every detail sharp and
clear in the harsh light of dawn. Now he was turned away from the
onrushing mountains, looking back on the path he had traveled, the path
that should have led to Earth. No more than there of his ten-second days
were left to him. And then the moonscape exploded into silent flame. A
light as fierce as that of the gun banished the long shadows, struck
fire from the peaks and craters spread -below. It lasted for only a
fraction of a second, and had faded completely before he had turned
toward its source. Directly ahead of him, only twenty miles away, a vast
cloud of dust was expanding toward the stars. It was as if a volcano had
erupted in the Soviet Range-but that, of course, was impossible. Equally
absurd was Cliffs second thought-that by some fantastic feat of
organization and logistics the Farside Engineering Division had blasted
away the obstacle in his path. For it was gone. A huge, crescent-shaped
bite had been taken out of the approaching skyline; rocks and debris
were still rising from a crater that had not existed five seconds ago.
Oniv the energy of an atomic bomb, exploded at precisely the right
moment in his path, could have wrought such a miracle. And Cliff did not
believe in miracles. He had made another complete revolution, and was
almost upon the mountains, when be remembered that, all this while,
there had been a cosmic bulldozer moving invisibly ahead of him. The
kinetic energy of the abandoned capsule-a thousand tons, traveling at
over a mile a second-was quite sufficient to have blasted the gap
through which he was now racing. The impactof the man- made meteor must
have jolted the whole of Farside. His luck held to the end. There was
brief pitter-patter of

 Maelytrom 11 19

dust particles against his suit, and he caught a blurred glimpse of
glowing rocks and swiftly dispersing smoke clouds flashing beneath him.

(How strange to see a cloud upon the Moonl) Then he was through the
mountains, with nothing ahead but blessed empty sky. Somewhere up there,
an hour in the future along his second orbit, Callisto would be moving
to meet him. But there was no hurry now; he had escaped from the
maelstrom. For better or for worse, he had been granted the gift of
life. There was the launching track, a few miles to the right of his
path; it looked like a hairline scribed across the face of the Moon. In
a few moments he would be within radio range. Now, with thankfulness and
joy, he could make that second call to Earth, to the woman who was still
waiting in the African night.

May 1962

The Shining Ones

When the switchboard said that the Soviet Embassy was on the line, my
first reaction was: "Good-another jobl" But the moment I heard
Goncharov's voice, I knew there was trouble. "Klaus? This is Mikhail.

Can you come over at once? Ifs very urgent, and I cant talk on the
phone." I worried all the way to the Embassy, marshaling my defenses in
case anything had gone wrong at our end. But 1. could think of nothing;
at the moment, we had no outstanding contracts with the Russians. The
last job had been completed six months ago, on time' and to their entire
satisfaction. Well, they were, not satisfied with it now, as I
discovered quickly enough. Mikhail Goncharov, the Commercial Attache,
was an pld friend of mine; he told me all he knew, but it was not mucfi.

"We've just had an urgent cable from Ceylon," he said. "They want you
out there immediately. There's serious trouble at the hydrothermal
project."

"What sort of trouble?" I asked. I knew atonce, of course, that it would
be the deep end, for that was the only part of the installation that had
concerned us. The Russians themselves had done all the work on land, but
they had had to call on us to fix those grids three thousand feet down
in the Indian Ocean. There is no other firm in the world that can live
up to Our motto: ANY JOB, ANY DEPTH. "AU I know," said Mikhail, "is that
the site engineers report a complete breakdown, that the Prime Minister
of Ceylon is ,opening the plant three weeks from now, and that Moscow
will be very, very unhappy if ifs not working then." My mind went
rapidly through the penalty clauses in our contract. The firm seemed to
be covered, because the client 'had signed the take-over certificate,
thereby admitting that the job was up to specification. However, it was
not as simple as that; if negligence on our part was proved, we might be
safe from legal action-but it would be very bad for business. And 20

 The Shwng Ono 21

it would be even worse for me, personally; for I had been project
supervisor in Trinco Deep. Don't call, me a diver, please; I hate the
name. I'm a deep-sea engineer, and I use diving gear about as often as
an airman uses a parachute. Most of my work is done with TV ,and remote-
controlled robots. When I do have to go down myself, I'm inside a
minisub with external manipulators. We call it a lobster, because of its
claws; the standard model works down to five thousand feet, but there
are special versions that will operate at the bottom of the Marianas
Trench. I've never been there myself, but will be glad to quote terms if
you're interested. At a rough estimate, it will cost you a dollar a foot
plus a thousand an hour on the job itself. I realized that the Russians
meant business when Mikhail Wd that a jet was waiting at Zurich, and
could I be at the airport within two hours? "Look," I said, "I can't do
a thing without equipment-and the gear needed even for an inspection
weighs tons. Besides, it's all at Spezia."

"I know," Mikhail answered implacably. "We'll have another jet transport
there.

Cable from Ceylon as soon as you know what you want: it will be on the
site within twelve hours. But please don't talk to anyone about this; we
prefer to keep our problems to ourselves." I agreed with this, for it
was my problem, too. As I left the office, Mikhail pointed to the wall
calendar, said

"Three weeks," and ran his finger around his throat. And I knew he
wasn't thinking of his neck. Two hours later I was climbing over the
Alps, saying good-by to the family by radio, and wondering why like
every other sensible Swiss, I hadn't become a banker or gone into the
watch business. It was all the fault of the Picards and Hannes Keller, I
told myself moodily: why did they have to start this deep-sea tradition,
in Switzerland of. all countries? Then I settled down to sleep, knowing
that I would have little enough in the days to come. We landed at
Trincomalee just after dawn, and the huge, complex harbor-whose
geography I've never quite mastered-was a maze of capes, islands,
interconnecting waterways, and basins large enough to hold all the
navies of the world. I could see the big white control building, in a
somewhat flamboyant architectural style, on a headland overlooking the
Indian Ocean. The site was pure propaganda-22 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

though of course if I'd been Russian I'd have called it

"Public relations." Not that I really blamed my clients; they had good
reason to be proud of this, the most ambitious attempt yet made to
harness the thermal energy of the sea. It was not the first attempt.
There had been an unsuccessful one by the French scientist Georges
Claude in the 1930's, and a much bigger one at Abidjan, on the west
coast of Africa, in the 1950's. All these projects depended on the same
surprising fact: even in the tropics the sea a mile down is almost at
freezing point.

Where billions of tons of water are concerned, this temperature
difference represents a colossal amount of energy-and a fine challenge
to the engineers of power-starved countries. Claude and his successors
had tried to tap this energy with low- pressure steam engines; the
Russians had used a much simpler and more direct method. For over a
hundred years it had been known that electric currents flow in many
materials if one end is heated and the other cooled, and ever since the
1940's Russian scientists had been working to put this "thermoelectric"

effect to practical use. Their earliest devices had not been very
efficient- though good enough to power thousands of radios by the heat
of kerosene lamps. But in 1974 they had made a big, and still-secret,
break-through.. Tbough I fixed the power elements at the cold end of the
system, I never really saw them; they were completely hidden in
anticorrosive paint. AU I know is that they formed a big grid, like lots
of old-fashioned steam radiators bolted together. I recognized most of
the faces in the little crowd waiting on the Trinco airstrip; friends or
enemies, they all seemed glad to see me especially Chief Engineer
Shapiro. "Well, Lev," I said, as we drove off in the station wagon,
"what's the troublet"

"We don't know," he said frankly. "It's your job to find out-and to put
it right."

"Well, what happened?"

"Everything worked perfectly up to the full-power tests," he answered.
"Output was within five percent of estimate until 0134 Tuesday morning."
He grimaced; obviously that time was engraved on his heart. "Men the
voltage started to fluctuate violently, so we cut the load and watched
the meters. I thought that some idiot of a skipper had hooked the
cables-you know the trouble we've taken to avoid that happening-4o we
switched on the searchlights and looked out

 The Shining Ones 23

to sea. There wasn't a ship in sight. Anyway, who would have tried to
anchor just outside the harbor on a clear, calm night? 'Here was nothing
we could do except watch the instruments and keep testing; III show you
all the graphs when we get to the office. After four minutes everything
went open circuit. We can locate the break exactly, of course-and it's
in the deepest part, right at the grid. It would be there, and not at
this end of the system," he added gloomily, pointing out the window. We
were just driving past the Solar Pond-the equivalent of the boiler in a
conventional heat engine. This was an idea that the Russians had
borrowed from the Israelis. It was simply a shallow, lake, blackened at
the bottom, holding a concentrated solution of brine. It acts as a very
efficient heat trap, and the sun's rays bring the liquid up to almost
two hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Submerged in it were the "hot" grids of
the thermoelectric system,.every inch of two fathoms down. Massive
cables connected them to my department, a hundred and fifty degrees
colder and three thousand fee lower, in the undersea canyon that comes
to the very entrawn of Trinco harbor. "I suppose you checked for
earthquakes?" I asked, not very hopef uuy. "Of course. There was nothing
on the seismograph."

"What about whales? I warned you that they might give so trouble. More
than a year ago, when the main conductors well being rim out to sea, I'd
told the engineers about the drowned sperm whole found entangled in a
telegraph cable half a mile down off South America. About a dozen
similar cases are )mown-but ours, it seemed, was not. one of them. 'Mat
was the second thing we thought of," answered Shapiro. "We got on to the
Fisheries Department, the Navy, and the Air Force. No whales anywhere
along the coast." It was at that point that I stopped theorizing,
because I overheard something that made me' a little uncomfortable. Like
all Swiss, I'm good at languages, and have picked up a fair amount of
Russian. There was no need to be much of a linguist, however, to
recognize the word sabotash. It was spoken by Dimitri Karpukhin, the
political adviser on the project. I didn't like him; nor did the
engineers, who sometimes went out of their way to be rude to him. One of
the old-style Communists who had never quite escaped from theshadow of
Stalin, he was suspicious of everything outside

24 77M WIND FROM THE SUN

the Soviet Union, and most of the things, inside it. Sabotage was just
the explanation that would appeal to him. There were, of course, a great
many people who would not exactly be brokenhearted if the Trinco Power
Project failed. Politically, the prestige of the USSR was committed;
economically, billions were involved, for if hydrothermal plants proved
a success, they might compete with oil, coal, water power, and,
especially, nuclear energy. Yet I could not really believe in sabotage;
after all, the Cold War was over. It was just possible that someone had
made a clumsy attempt to grab a sample of the grid, but even this seemed
unlikely. I could count on my fingers the number of people in the world
who could tackle such a job-and half of them were on my payroll. The
underwater TV camera arrived that same evening, and by working all
through the night we had cameras, monitors, an dover a mile of coaxial
cable loaded aboard a launch. As we pulled out of the harbor, I thought
I saw a familiar figure standing on the jetty, but it was too far to be
certain and I had other things on my mind. If you must know, I am pot a
good sailor; I am only really happy underneath the sea. We took a
careful fix on the Round Island lighthouse and stationed ourselves
directly above the grid. The self-propelled camera, looking like a
midget bathyscape, went over the side; as we watched the monitors, we
went with it in spirit. The water was extremely clear, and extremely
empty, but as we neared the bottom there were a few signs of life. A
small shark came and stared at us. Then a pulsating blob of jelly went
drifting by, followed by a thing like a big spider, with hundreds of
hairy legs tangling and twisting together. At IM the sloping canyon wall
swam into view. We were right on target, for there were the thick cables
running down into the depths, just as I had seen them when I made the
final check of the installation six months ago. I turned on the
low-powered jets and let the camera drift down the power cables. They
seemed in perfect condition, still firmly anchored by the pitons we had
driven into the - rocl It was not until I came to the grid itself that
there was any sigm of trouble. Have you ever seen the radiator grille of
a car after it's run into a lamppost? Well, one section of the grid
looked very much like that. Something had battered it in, as if a madman
had gone to work on it with a sledgehammer. 'Mere were gasps of
astonishment and anger from it

 The Shbdng Ones 25

people looking over my shoulder. I heard sabotash muttered again, and
for the farst time began to take it seriously. The only other
explanation that made sense was a fallingboulder, but the slopes of the
canyon had been carefully checked against this very possibility.

Whatever the cause, the damaged grid had to be replaced. That could not
be done until my lobster-all. twenty tons of it-had been flown out from
the Spezia dockyard where it was kept between jobs. "Well," said
Shapiro, when I had finished my visual inspection and photographed the
sorry spectacle on the screen, "How long will it take?" I refused to
commit myself. The first thing I ever learned in the underwater business
is that no job turns out as you expect. Cost and time estimates can
never be firm -because it's not until you're halfway through a contract
that you know exactly what you're up against. My private guess was three
days. So I said: "If everything goes well, it shouldn't take more than a
week." Shapiro groaned. "Can't you do it quickert"

"I won't tempt fate by making rash promises. Anyway, that still gives
you two weeks before your deadline." He had to be content with that,
though he kept nagging at me all the way back into the harbor. When we
got there, he had something else to think about.

"Morning, Joe," I said to -the man who was still waiting patiently on
the jetty. "I thought I recognized you on the way out. What are you
doing heret"

"I was going to ask you the same question."

"You'd better speak to my boss. Chief Engineer Shaphv, meet Joe Watkins,
science correspondent of Time.' Uv's response was not exactly cordial.
Normally, there was nothing he liked better than talking to newsmen, who
arrived at the rate of about one a week. Now, as the target date
approached, they would be flying in from all directions. Including, of
course, Russia. And at the present moment Tass would be just as
unwelcome as Time. It was amusing to see how Karpukhin took charge of
the situation.

From that moment, Joe had permanently attached to him as guide,
philosopher, and drinking companion a smooth young public-relations type
named Sergei Markov. Despite all Joe's efforts, the two were
inseparable. In the -middle of the afternoon, weary after a long
conference in

26 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

Shapiro's office, I caught up with them for a belated lunch at the
government resthouse. "What's going on here, Klaus?" Joe asked
pathetically. "I smell trouble, but no one will admit anything." I toyed
with my curry, trying to separate the bits that were safe from those
that would take off the top of my head. "You can't expect me to discuss
a client's affairs," I answered. "You were talkative enough," Joe
reminded me, "when you were doing the survey for the Gibraltar Dam."
"Well, yes," I admitted. "And I appreciate the write-up you gave me.

But thin tune there are trade secrets mvoive& I'm-ah-making some
last-minute adjustments to improve the efficiency of the system." And
that, of course, was the truth; for I was indeed hoping to raise the
efficiency of the system from its present value of exactly zero.

IIHmm, II said Joe sarcastically. "Thank you very much!' "Anyway," I
said, trying to head him off, "what's your latest crackbrained theoryt'
I For a highly competent science writer, Yoe has an odd liking for the
bizarre and the improbable. Perhaps it's a form of escapism; I happen to
know that he also writes science fiction, though this is a well-kept
secret from his employers. He has. a sneaking fondness for poltergeists
and ESP and flying saucers, but lost continents are his real specialty.

"I am working on a couple of ideas," he admitted. "They cropped up when
I was doing the research on this story." "Go on@l I said, not daring to
lookup from the analysis of MY curry. "The other day I came across a
very old if you're interested- of Ceylon. It remmde4 old map in my
collection, and I turned it up. There was'the same central mountain, the
same arrangement of rivers flowing to the sea. But this was a map of
Atlantis."

"Oh, nol" I groaned. "Last time we met, you convinced me that Atlantis
was the western Mediterranean basin." Joe gave his engaging grin. "I
could -be wrong, couldn't I? Anyway, rve a much more striking piece of
evidence. What's the old national name for Ceylon-and the modem
Sinhalese one, for that matter?" I thought for a second, then exclaimed:
"Good Lordl Why, Lanka, of course. Lanka-Atlantis." I rolled the names
off my tonsue.

 The Shining Ones 27

"Precisely," said Joe. "But two clues, however striking, don't make a
fwl-fiedged theory; and that's as far as I've . got at the moment." "Too
bad," I said, genuinely disappointed. "And your other projects

"This will really make you sit up," Joe answered smugly. He reached into
the battered briefcase he always carried and pulled out a bundle of
papers. "Ms. happened only one hundred and eighty miles from here, and
just over a century ago. The source of my information, you'll note, is
about the best there is." He handed me a photostat, and I saw that it
was a page of the London Times for July 4, 1874. 1 started to read
without much enthusiasm, for Joe was always producing bits of ancient
newspapers, but my apathy did not last for long. Briefly-rd like to give
the whole thing, but if you want more details your local library can
dial you a facsimile in ten seconds,-- the clipping described bow the
one-hundred-andffty-ton schooner Pearl left Ceylon in early May 1874 and
then fell becalmed in the Bay of Bengal. On May 10, just before
nightfall, an enormous squid surfaced half a mile from the schooner,
whose captain foolishly opened fire on it with his rifle. he squid swam
straight for the Pearl, grabbed the masts with its arms, and pulled the
vessel over on her side. She sank within seconds, taking two of her crew
with her. The others were rescued only by the lucky chance that the P.
and 0. steamer Strathowen was in sight and had witnessed the incident
herself.. "Well," said Joe, whenrd read through it for the second time,
"what do you think?"

"I don't believe in sea monsters."

"11, e London Times," Joe answered, "is not prone to sensational
journalism. And giant squids exist, though the biggest we know about are
feeble, flab-by beasts and don't Weigh more than a ton, even when they
have arms forty feet long."

"So? An animal like that couldn't capsize a hundred-andfifty-ton
schooner."

"I'rue-but there's a lot of evidence that the so-called giant squid is
merely a large squid. There may be decapods in the sea that really are
giants. Why, only a year after the Pearl incident, a sperm whale off the
coast of Brazil was seen struggling inside gigantic coils which finally
dragged it down

28 THE VM4D FROM THE SUN

into the sea. You'll find the incident described in the Illustrated
London News for November 20, 1875. And then, of course, there's that
chapter in Moby-Dick. "What chapter?' "Why, the one called 'Squid.' We
know that Melville was a very careful observer-but here he really lets
himself go. He describes a calm day when a great white mass rose out of
the sea 'like a snow-slide, new slid from the hills.' And this happened
here in the Indian Ocean, perhaps a thousand miles south of the Pearl
incident. Weather conditions were identical, please note. "What the men
of the Pequod saw floating on the water-I know this passage by heart,
I've studied it so carefully-was a 'vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length
and breadth, of a glancing cream-color, innumerable Ion arms radiating
from its centre..9

curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas."'

"Just a minute," said Sergei. who h,9d been listening to all this with
mpt attention. "What's a furlong?" Joe looked slightly embarrassed.

"Actually, it's an eighth of a mile---six hundred and sixty feet."

He raised his hand to stop our incredulous laughter.

"Oh, rm sure Melville didn't mean that literally. But here was a man
'who met sperm whales every day, groping for a unit of length to
describe something a lot bigger. So he automatically jumped from fathoms
to furlongs. That's my theory, anyway.' I pushed away the remaining
untouchable portions of my curry. "If -you think you've scared me out of
my job," I said, "You've failed miserably. But lpromiie you this--when I
do meet a giant squid, I'll ship off a tentacle and bring it back as a
souvenir." Twenty-four hours later I was out there in the lobster,
sinking slowly down toward the damaged grid. There was DO way in which
the operation could be kept secret, and Joe was an interested spectator
from a nearby launch, That was the Russians' problem, not mine; I had
suggested to Shapiro that they take him, into their confidence, but
this, of course, was vetoed by Karpukhin's suspicious Slavic mind. One
could almost see him thinking: Just why should an American, reporter
turn up at this moment? And ignoring the obvious answer that Trincomalee
was now big news. There is nothing in the least exciting or glamorous
about deep- water operations-if they're done properly. Excitement means
lack of foresight, and that means incompetence. Tw

 The Shining Ones 29

Incompetent do not last long in my business, nor do those who crave
excitement. I went about my job with all the pent-up emotion of a
plumber dealing with a leaking faucet. The grids had been designed for
easy maintenance, since sooner or later they would have to be replaced.

Luckily, none of the threads had beendamaged, and the securing nuts came
off easily when gripped with the power wrench. Then I switched control
to the heavy-duty claws, and lifted out the damaged grid without the
slightest difficulty. les bad tactics tohurry an underwater operation.

If you try to do too much at once, you are liable to make mistakes. And
if things go smoothly and you finish in a day a job you said would take
a week, the client feel's he hasn't had his money's worth. 1though I was
sure I could replace the grid that same afternoon, I followed the
damaged unit up to the surface and closed shop for the day. 11 ' e
thermoelement was rushed off for an autopsy, and I spent the rest of the
evening hiding from Joe. Trinco is a small town, but I managed to keep
out of his way by visiting the local cinema, where I sat through several
hours of an interminable Tamil movie in which three successive
generations suffered identical domestic crises of mistaken identity, dr
nkenness, desertion, death, and insanity, all in Technicolor and with
the sound track turned full up. he next morning, despite a mild
headache, I was at the site soon after dawn. (So was Joe, and so was
Sergel, all set for a quiet day's fishing.) I cheerfully waved to them.

as I climbed into the lobster, and the tendees crane lowered me over the
side. Over the other side, where Joe couldn't we it, went the
replacement grid. A few fathoms down I lifted it out of the hoist and
carried it to the bottom of Trinco Deep, where, without any trouble, it
was installed by the middle of the afternoon. Before I surfaced again,
the lock nuts had been secured, the conductors spot-wp1ded, and the
engineer's on shore had completed their continuity tests. By the time I
was back on deck, the system was under load once more, everything was
back to normal, and even Karpukhin was smiling- except when he stopped
to ask himself the question that no one had yet been able to answer. I
still clung to the falling-boulder theory-for want of a Netter. And I
hoped that the Russians would accept it, so that we could stop this
silly cloak-and-dagger business with Joe. No such luck, I realized, when
both Shapiro and Karpukhin cam to see me with very long faces.

30 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

"Klaus," said Lev, "we want you to go down again."

"It's your money," I replied. "But what do you want me to do?"

"We've examined the damaged grid, and there's a section of the
thermoelement missing.

Dimitri thinks that-someonehas deliberately broken it off and carried it
away."

"Then they did a damn clumsy job," I answered. "I cm promise you it
wasn't one of my men." It was risky to make such jokes around Karpukhin,
and no one was at all amused. Not even me; for by this time I was
beginning to think that he had something. The sun was setting when I
began my last dive into Trinco Deep ., but the endof day has no meaning
down there. I fell for two thousand feet with no lights, because I like
to watch the luminous creatures of the sea, as they flash and flicker in
the darkness, sometimes exploding like rockets just outside the
observation window. In this open water, there was no danger of a
collision; in any case, I had the panoramic sonar scan running, and that
gave far better warning than my eyes. At four hundred fathoms, I knew
that something was wrong. The bottom was coming into view on the
vertical sounder-but it was approaching much too slowly. My rate of
descent was far too slow. I could increase it easily enough b@ flooding
another buoyancy onk-but I hesitated to do so. In my business, anything
out of the ordinary needs an explanation; three times I have saved my
life by waiting until I -had one. The thermometer gave me the answer.

The temperature outside WRS five degrees higher than it should have
been, and I am sorry to say that it took me several seconds to realize
why. Only a few hundred feet below me, the repaired grid was now running
at full power, pouring out megawatts of heat as it tried to equalize the
temperature difference between Trinco Deep and the Solar Pond up there
on land. It wouldn't succeed, of course; but in the attempt it was
generating electricity-and I was being swept upward in the geyser of
warm water that was an incidental by- product. When I Rnally reached the
grid, it was quite difficult to keep the lobster in position against the
upwelling current, and I began to sweat uncomfortably as the heat
penetrated into the cabin. Being too hot on the sea bed was a novel
experience-, so also was the miragelike vision caused by the ascending
water, which made my searchlights dance and tremble over the rock face I
was exploring.

 The Shhdw Ones 31

You must picture me, lights ablaze in that five-hundredfathom darkness,
moving slowly down the slope of the canyon.' which at this spot was
about as steep as the roof of a house. The missing element--4f it was
still around-could not have fallen very far before coming to rest. I
would find it in ten minutes, or not at all. - After an hour's
searching, I had turned up several broken light bulbs (it's astonishing
how many get thrown overboard from ships- -the sea beds of the world are
covered with them), an empty beer bottle (same comment), and a brandnew
boot. That was the last thing I found, for then I discovered that I was
no longer alone. I never switch off the sonar scan, and even whenym, not
moving I always glance at the screen about once a minute to check the
general situation. The situation now - was that a large object-at least
the size of the lobster-was approaching from. the north. When I spotted
it, the range@ was about five hundred feet and closing slowly. I
switched off my lights, cut the jets I had been, running at low power to
hold me in the turbulent water, and drifted with the current. Though I
was tempted to call Shapiro and report that I had company, I decided to
wait for more information. there were -only three nations with depth
ships that could operate at this level, and I was on excellent terms
with all of them. It would never do to be too hasty, and to get myself
involved in unnecessary political complications. 'Mough I felt blind
without the sonar, I did not wish to advertise my presence, so I
reluctantly switched it off and relied on my eyes. Anyone working at
this depth would have to use lights, and I'd see them covaing long
before they could see me. So I waited in the hot, spent little cabin,
straining my eyes into the darkness, tense and alert but not
particularly worried. First there was a dim glow, at an indefinite
distance. It grew bigger and brighter, yet refused to shape itself into
any pattern that my mind could recognize. The diffuse glow concentrated
into myriad spots, until it seemed that a constellation was sailing
toward me. Thus might the rising star, clouds of the galaxy appear, from
some world close to the heart of the Milky Way. It is not true that men
are frightened of the unknown; they can be frightened only of the known,
the already experienced. I could not u1nagme what was approaching, but
no creature of

32 THE VMM FROM THE SUN

the sea could touch me M'side six inches of good Swiss armor plate. The
thing was almost upon me, glowing with the light of its own creation,
when it split into two separate clouds. Slowly they came into focus-not
of my eyes, but of my understanding-and I knew that beauty and terror
were rising toward me out of the abyss. The terror came first, when I
saw that the approaching beasts were squids, and all Joe's tales
reverberated in my brain. Then, with a considerable sense of letdown, I
realized that they were only about twenty feet long-little larger than
the lobster, and a mere fraction of its weight. They could do me no
harm. And quite apart from that, their indescribable beauty robbed them
of all menace. This sounds ridiculous, but it is true. In my travels I
have seen most of the animals of this world, but none to match the
luminous apparitions floating before me now. The colored lights that
pulsed and danced along their bodies made them seem clothed with jewels,
never the same for two seconds at a time. There were patches that glowed
a brilliant -blue, like flickering mercury arcs, then changed almost
instantly to burning neon red. The tentacles - seemed strings of
luminous beads, trailing through the water-or the lamps along a
super-highway, when you look down upon it from the air at night. Barely
visible against this background glow were the enormous eyes, uncannily
human and intelligent, each surrounded by a diadem of shining pearls. I
am sorry, but that is the best I can do. Only the movie camera could do
justice to these living kaleidoscopes. I do not know how long I watched
them, so entranced by their luminous beauty that I had almost forgotten
my mission. 'Mat those delicate, whiplash tentacles could not possibly
have broken the grid was already obvious. Yet the presence of these
creatures here was, to say the least, very curious. Karpukhin would have
called it suspicious. I was about to call the surface when I saw
something incredible. It had been before my eyes all the time, but I had
not realized it until now. The squids were talking to each other.

Those glowing, evanescent patterns were not coming and going at random.

They were as meaningful, I was suddenly sure, as the illuminated sips of
Broadway or Piccadilly. Every few seconds there was an image that almost
made sense, but it vanished before I could interpret it. I knew, of

 The Shbdng Ones 33

course, that even the common octopus shows its emotions with
lightning-fast color changes-but this was something 0 a much higher
order. It was real communication: here were two living electric signs,
flashing messages to one another. When I saw an unmistakable picture of
the lobster, my last doubts vanished. Though I am no scientist, at that
moment I shared the feelings of a Newton or an Einstein at some moment
of revelation. This would make me famous ... Then the picture changed-in
a most curious manner. There was the lobster again, but rather smaller.
And there beside it. much smaller still, were two peculiar objects. Each
consisted of a pair of black dots surrounded by a pattern of ten
radiating lines. Just now I said that we Swiss are good at languages.
However, it required little intelligence to deduce that this was a
formalized squid's-eye-view of itself, and that what I was seeing was a
crude sketch of the situation. But why the absurdly small size of the
squids? I had no time to puzzle that out before theremas another change.
A third squid symbol appeared on the living screenand this one was
enormous completely dwarfing the others. The message shone there in the
eternal night for a few seconds. Then the creature bearing it shot off
at incredible speed, and left me alone with its companion.

Now the meaning was all too obvious. "My God!" I said to myself. "They
feel they can't handle me. IMey've gone to' fetch Big. Brother." And of
Big Brother's capabilities, I already had better evidence than Joe
Watkins, for all his research and newspaper clippings. That was the
point-you won't be surprised to hear--when I decided not to linger. But
before I went, I thought I would try some talking myself. After hanging
here in darkness for so long, I had forgotten the power of my lights.

They hurt my eyes, and must have been agonizing to_the unfortunate
squid. Transfixed by that intolerable glare, its, own illumination
utterly quenched, it lost aill its beauty, becoming no more than a
pallid bag of jelly with two black buttons for eyes. For a moment it
seemed paralyzed by the shock; then it darted after its companion, while
I soared upward to a world that could never be the same again. "I've
found your saboteur," I told Karpukhin, when they

34 the WIND FROM THE SUN

opened the hatch of the lobster. -H you want to know all about him, ask
Joe Watkins." I let Dimitri sweat over that for a few seconds, while I

enjoyed his expression. Then, I gave my slightly edited report. I
implied-without actually saying so-that the squids N met were powerful
enough to have done all the damage; and I said nothing about the
conversation I'd overseen. That would only cause incredulity.

Besides, I wanted time to think matters over, and to tidy up the loose
ends-if I could. Joe has been a great help, though he stiff knows no
more than the Russians. He's told me what wonderfully developed nervous
systems squids possess, and has explained how some Of them can change
their appearance in a flash through instantaneous three-color printing,
thanks to the extraordinary network of "chromophores" covering their
bodies. Presumably this evolved for camouflage; but it seems
natural-even inevitable-that it should develop into a communication
system. But there's one thing that worries Joe. "What were they doing
around the gridt' he keeps asking me plaintively. "They're cold-blooded
invertebrates. You'd expect them to dislike heat as much as they object
to light." That puzzles Joe; but it doesn% puzzle me. Indeed, I think
It's the key to the whole mystery. Those squids, I'm now certain, are in
Trinco Deep for the same reason that there are men at the South Pole-or
on the Moon. Pure scientific curiosity has drawn them from their icy
home, to investigate this geyser of hot water welling from the sides of
the canyon. Here is a strange and -i6explicable phenornenon-possibly one
that menaces their way of life. So they have summoned their giant cousin
(servant? slave!) to bring them a sample for study. I cannot believe
that they have a hope of understanding it; after all, no scientist on
earth could have done so as little as a century ago. But they are
trying; and that is what matters. Tomorrow, we begin our
countermeasures. I goback. into Trinco, Deep to fix the great lights
that Shapiro hopes will keep the squids at bay. But how long will that
ruse work, if intelligence is dawning in the deep? As I dictate this,
I'm sitting here below the ancient battlements of Fort Frederick,
watching the Moon come up over the Indian Ocean. H everything goes well,
this will serve as the operung of the book that Joe has been badgering
me to write. H it doesn't- then hello, Joe, Im. talking to you now.

 The Shining Ones 35

Please edit this for publication, in any way you think fit, and my
apologies to you and Lev for not giving you all the facts before. Now
you'll understand why. Whatever happens, please remember this: they are
beautiful, wonderful creatures; try to come to tenms with them if you
can.

To: Ministry of Power, Moscow FRom: Lev Shapiro, Chief Engineer,
Trincomalee Thermoelectric Power Project

Herewith the complete transcript of the tape recording found among Herr
Klaus Muller's effects after his last dive. We are much indebted to Mr.
Joe Watkins, of Time, for assitance on several points. You will recall
that Herr Mullees last intelligible message was directed to Mr. Watkins
and ran as follows: "Joel You were. right about Melvillel The thing is
absolutely gigan-"

December 1962

The Wl-r@d from the Sun he enormous disc of sail strained at its
rigging, already filled with the wind thatblew between the worlds. In
three minutes the race would begin, yet now John Merton felt more
relaxed, more at peace, than at any time for the past year. Whatever
happened when the Commodore gave the starting signal, whether Diana
carried him to victory or defeat, he had achieved his ambition. After a
lifetime spent designing ships for others, now he would sail his own. "T
minus two minutes," said the cabin radio. 'Please confirm your
readiness." One by one, the other skippers answered. Merton recognized
all the voices-some tense, some calm-for they were the voices of his
friends and rivals. On the four inhabited worlds, there were scarcely
twenty men who could sail a gun yacht; and they were all there, on the
starting line or aboard the escort vessels, orbiting twenty-two thousand
miles above the equator. "Number One-Gossamer-ready to go."

"Number Two-Santa Maria-all O. K."

"Number Three-Sunbeam-O. K."

"Number Four-Woamera@all systems oo.' Merton smiled at that last echo
from the early, primitive days of astronautics. But it had become part
of the traditionof space; and there were times when a man needed to
evoke the shades of those who had gone before him to the stars. "Number
Five-Lebedev-we're ready."

"Number Six-Arachne-O. K." Now it was his turn, at the end of the line;
strange to think that the words he was speaking in this tiny cabin were
being heard by at least five billion people. "Number Seven-Diana-ready
to start."

"One through Seven acknowledged," answered that impersonal voice from
the judge's launch.

"Now T minus one minute." 36

 The Wind from the Sun 37

Merton scarcely heard it. For the last time, he was checking the tension
in the rigging. 'Me needles of all the dynamometers were steady; the
immense sail was taut, its mirror surface sparkling and glittering
gloriously in the sun. To Merton, floating weightless at the periscope,
it seemed to fill the sky. As well it might-for out there were fifty
million square feet of sail, linked to his capsule by almost a hundred
miles of rigging. AU the canvas of all the tea clippers that had once
raced like clouds across the China seas, sewn into one gigantic sheet,
could not match the single sail that Diana had spread beneath the sun.
Yet it was little more substantial than a soap bubble; that two square
miles of aluminized plastic was only a few millionths of an inch thicl
'IT minus ten seconds. All recording cameras on." Something so huge, yet
so frail, was hard for the n-dnd to grasp. And it was harder still to
realize that this fragile minor could tow him free of Earth merely by
the power of the sunlight it would trap. "... live, four, three, two,
one, cut!" Seven knife blades sliced through seven thin fines tethering
the yachts to the mother ships that had assembled and serviced them.
Until this moment, all. had been circling Earth together in a rigidly
held formation, but now the yachts would begin to disperse, like
dandelion seeds drifting before the breeze. And the winner would be the
one that first drifted past the Moon. Aboard Diana, nothing seemed to be
happening. But Merton knew better. Though his body could feel no thrust,
the instrument board told him that he was now accelerating at almost one
thousandth of a gravity. For a rocket, that figure would have been
ludicrous-but this was the first time any solar yacht had ever attained
it. Diana's design was sound; the vast sail was living up to his
calculations. At this rate, two circuits of the Earth would build up his
speed to escape velocity, and then he could head out for the Moon, with
the -full force of the Sun behind him. fu

The 11 force of the Sun ... He smiled wryly, rememberirig all. his
attempts to explain solar sailing to those lecture ,audiences back on
Earth. That had been the only way he could raise money, in those early
days. He might be Chief Designer of Cosmodyne Corporation, with a whole
string of successful spaceships to his credit, hut his firm had not been
exactly enthusiastic about his hobby. "Hold your hands out to the Sun,"
held said. "What do you

39 THE WIND FROM THE SUIST

feel? Heat, of course. But there's pressure as well-though you've never
noticed it, because it's so tiny. Over the area of your hands, it comes
to only about a millionth of an ounce. "But out in space, even a
pressure as small as that can be important, for it's acting all the
time, hour after hour, day after day. Unlike rocket fuel, it's free and
unlimited. If we, want to, we can use it. We can build sails to catch
the radiation blowing from the Sun." At that point, he would puff out a
few square yards of saff material and toss it toward the audience, 'Me
silvery film would coil and twist like smoke, then drift slowly to the
coiling in the hot-air currents. "You can see how light it is," he'd
continue. "A square mile weighs only a ton, and can collect five pounds
of radiation pressure. So it will start moving-and we can let it tow us
along, if we attach rigging to it. I "Of course, its acceleration will
be tiny-about a thousandth of a g. That doesn't seem much, but let's see
what it means. "It means that in the first second, we'll move about a
fifth of an inch. I suppose a healthy snail could do better than that.

But after a minute, we've covered sixty feet, and will be doing just
over a mile an hour. That's not bad, for something driven by pure
sunlightl After an hour, we're forty miles from our starting point, and
will be moving at eighty miles an hour. Please remember that in space
there's no friction; so once you start anything moving, it will keep
going forever. You'll be surprised when I tell you what our
thousandth-of-a-g sailboat will be doing at the end of a day's run:
almost two thousand miles an hourl If it starts from orbit-as it has to,
of course-it can reach escape velocity in a couple of days. And all
without burning a single drop of fuell" Well, he'd convinced them, and
in the end he'd even convinced Cosmodyne. Over the last twenty years, a
new sport had come into -being. It had -been called the sport of
billionaires, and that was true. But it was beginning to pay for itself
in terms of publicity and TV coverage. The prestige of four continents
and two worlds was riding on this race, and it had the biggest audience
in history. Diana had made a good start; time to take a look at the
opposition. Moving very gently-though there were shock absorbers between
the control capsule and the delicate rigging, he was determined to run
no risks---Merton stationed himself at the periscope.

 The Wind from the Sun 39

7here they were, looking like strange silver flowers planted in the dark
fields of space. The nearest, South America's, Santa Maria, was only
fifty miles away; it bore a close resemblance to a boy's kite, but a
kite more than a mile on a side. Farther away, the University of
Astrograd's Lebedev looked like a Maltese cross; the sails that formed
the four arms could apparently be tilted for steering purposes. In
contrast, the Federation of Australasia's Woomera was a simple
parachute, four miles in circumference. General Spacecraft's Arachne,
as'its name suggested, looked like a spider web, and had been built on
the same principles, by robot shuttles spiraling out from a central
point. Eurospace Corpo- ration's, Gossamer was an identical design, on a
slightly smaller scale. And the Republic of Mars's Sunbeam was a flat
ring, with a half-mile-@wide hole in the center, spinning slowly, so
that centrifugal force gave it stiffness. That was an old idea, but no
one had ever made it work; and Merton was fairly sure that the colonists
would be in trouble when they, started to turn. That would not -be for
another six hours, when the yachts had moved along the first quarter of
their slow and stately twenty-four- hour orbit. Here at the beginning of
the race, they were all heading directly away from the Sun-running, as
it were, before the solar wind. One had to make the most of this lap,
before the boats swung around to the other side of Earth and then
started to head back into the Sun. Time, Merton told himself, for the
first check, while he had no navigational worries.'With the periscope,
-he made a careful examination of the sail, concentrating on the points
where the rigging was attached to it. The shroud lines-narrow bands of
unsilvered plastic film-would have been completely invisible had they
not been coated with fluorescent paint. Now they were taut lines of
colored light, dwindling away for hundreds of yards toward that gigantic
sail. Each had its own electric windlass, not much bigger than a game
fisherman's reel. The little windlasses were continually taming, playing
lines in or out as the autopilot kept the sail trimmed at the correct
angle to the Sun. The play of sunlight on the great flexible mirror was
beautiful to watch. The sail was undulating in slow, stately
oscillations, sending multiple images of the Sun marching across it,
until they faded away at its edges. Such leisurely vibrations were to be
expected in this vast and flimsy structure. They were usually quite
harmless, but, Merton watched them

40 THE Va" )FROM THE SUN

carefully. Sometimes they could build up to the catastrophic undulations
known as the "wriggles," which could tear a sail to pieces.

When he was satisfied that everything was shipshape, he swept the
periscope around the sky, rechecking the positions of his rivals. It was
as he had hoped: the weeding-out process had begun, as the less
efficient boats fell astern. But the real test would come when they
passed into the shadow of Earth. Then, maneuverability would count as
much as Wed. It seemed a strange thing to do, what with the race having
just started, but he thought it might be a good idea to get some sleep.

The two-man crews on the other boats could take it in turns, but Merton
had no one to relieve him. He must rely on his own physical resources,
like that other solitary seaman, Joshua Slocum, in his tiny Spray. The
American skipper had sailed Spigy singlehanded around the world; he
could never have dreamed that, two centuries later, a man would be
sailingsinglehanded from Earth to Moon-inspired, at least partly, by his
example. Merton snapped the elastic bands of the cabin seat around his
waist and legs, then placed the electrodes of the sleep-inducer on -his
forehead. He set the timer for three hours, and relaxed. Very gently,
hypnotically, the electronic pulses throbbed in the frontal lobes of his
brain. Colored spirals of light expanded beneath his closed eyelids,
widening outward to infinity. Then nothing ... 'the brazen clamor of the
alarm dragged him back from his dreamless sleep. He was instantly awake,
his eyes scanning the instrument panel. Only two hours had passed-but
above the accelerometer, a red light was Bashing. Thrust was falling;
Diana was losing power. Merton's first thought was that something had
happened to the sail; perhaps the antispin devices had failed, and the
rigging had become twisted. Swiftly, he checked the meters that showed
the tension of the shroud lines. Strange---oh one side of the sail they
were reading normally, but on the other the pull was dropping slowly,
even as he watched. In sudden understanding, Merton grabbed the
periscope, switched to wide-angle vision, and started to scan the edge
of the sail. Yes-there was the trouble, and it could have only one
cause. A huge, sharp-edged shadow had begun to slide across the gleaming
silver of the sail. Darkness was falling upon Diana, as if a cloud had
passed between her and the Sun. And in the

 The Wind from the Sun 41

dark, robbed of the rays that drove her, she would lose all thrust and
drift helplessly through space. But, of course, there were no clouds
here, more than twenty thousand miles above the Earth. If there was a
shadow, it must be made by man. Merton grinned as he swung the periscope
toward the Sun, switching in the filters that would allow him to look
full into its blazing face without being blinded. "Maneuver 4a," he
muttered to himself. "Well see who can play best at that game." It
looked as if a giant planet was crossing the face of the Sun; a great
black disc had bitten deep into its edge. Twenty miles astern, Gossamer
was trying to arrange an artificial eclipse, specially for Diana's
benefit. The maneuver was a perfectly legitimate one. Back in the days
of ocean racing, skippers had often tried to I rob each other of the
wind. With any luck, you could leave your rival becalmed, with his sails
collapsing around him-and be well ahead before he could undo the damage.
Merton had no intention of being caught so easily. There was plenty of
time to take evasive action; things happened very slowly when you were
running a solar sailboat. It would be at least twenty minutes before
Gossamer could slide completely across the face of the Sun, and leave
him in darkness. Diana's tiny computer-the size- of a matchbox, but the
equivalent of a thousand human mathematicians-considered the problem for
a full second and then flashed the answer. He'd have to open control
panels three and four, until the sail had developed an extra twenty
degrees of tilt, then the radiation pressure would blow him out of
Gossamer's dangerous shadow, back into the full blast of the Sun.

It was a pity to interfere with the autopilot, which had been carefully
programed to give the fastest possible run-but that, after all, was why
he was here. This was what made solar yachting's sport, rather than a
battle between computers. Out went control lines one and six, slowly
undulating like sleepy snakes as they momentarily lost their tension.

Two miles away, the triangular panels began to open lazily, spilling
sunlight through the sail. Yet, for a long time, nothing seemed to
happen. It was hard to grow accustomed to this slow-motion world, where
it took minutes for the effects of any action tobecome visible to the
eye. Then Merton saw that the sail was indeed tipping toward the
Sun---and 'that Gossamees

42 THE Wrnd FROM THE SUN

shadow was sliding harmlessly away, its cone of darkness lost in the
deeper night of space. Long before the shadow had vanished, and the disc
of the Sun had cleared again, he reversed the tilt and brought Diana
back on course. Her new momentum would carry her clear of the danger; no
need to overdo it, and upset his calculations by side-stepping too far.
That was another rule that was hard to learn: thevery moment you had
started something happening in space, it was already time to think about
stopping it. He reset the alarm, ready for the next natural or manmade
emergency. Perhaps Gossamer, or one of the other contestants, would try
the same trick again. Meanwhile, it was time to eat, though he did not
feel particularly hungry. One used little physical energy in space, and
it was easy to forget about food. Easy-and dangerous; for when an
emergency arose, you might not have the reserves needed to deal with it.
He broke open the first of the meal packets, and inspected it without
enthusiasm. The name on the label-spacetas7ms--was enough to put him
off. And he had grave doubts about the promise printed underneath:
"Guaranteed crumbless." It had been said that crumbs were a greater
danger to space vehicles than meteorites; they could drift into the most
unlikely places, causing short circuits, blocking vital jets, and
getting into instruments that were supposed to be hermetically sealed.
Still, the liverwurst went down pleasantly enough; so di4 the chocolate
and the pineapple pur&Me plastic coffee bulb was warming on the electric
heater when the outside world broke in upon his solitude, as the radio
operator on the Commodore's launch routed a call to him.

"Dr. Merton? If you can spare the time, Jeremy Blair would like a few
words with you." Blair was one of the more responsible news
commentators, and Merton had been on his program many times. He could
refuse to be interviewed, of course, but -be liked Blair, and at the
moment he could certainly not claim to be too busy. '111 take it," he
answered. "Hello, Dr. Merton," said the commentator immediately. "Glad
you can spare a few minutes. And congratulations. you seem to be ahead,
of the field."

"Too early in the game to be sure of that," Merton answered cautiously.
"Tell me, Doctor, why did you decide to sail Diana by yourself? Just
because it's never been done before?"

"Well, isnt that a; good mason? But it wawt the only one,  The Wind
from the Sun 43

of course." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "You know how
critically the performance of a sun yacht depends on its mass. A second
man, with all his supplies, would mean another five hundred pounds. 'Mat
could easily be the difference between winning and losing."

"And you're quite certain that you can handle Diana alone?"

"Reasonably sure, thanks to the automatic controls Fve designed. My main
job is to supervise and make decisions"

"But-two square miles of sail! It just doesn't seem possible for one man
to cope with all that." Merton laughed. "Why not?

Those two square miles produce a maximum pull of just ten pounds. I can
exert more, force with my little finger."

"Well, thank you, Doctor. And good luck. IT, be calling you again. 99 As
the commentator signed off, Merton felt a little ashamed of himself. For
his answer had been only part of the truth; and he was sure that Blair
was shrewd enough to know it. There was just one reason why he was here,
alone in space. For almost forty years he had worked with teams of
hundreds or even thousands of men, helping to design the most complex
vehicles that the world had ever seen. For the last twenty years he had
led one of those teams, and watched his creations go soaring to the
stars. (Sometimes ... There were failures, which he could never forget,
even though the fault had not been his.) He was famous, with a
successful career behind him.

Yet he had never done anything by himself; always he had been one of an
army. This was his last chance to try for individual achievement, and he
would share it with no one. There would be no more solar yachting for at
least five years, as the period of the Quiet Sun ended and the cycle of
bad weather began, with radiation storms bursting through the solar
system. When it was safe again for these frail, unshielded craft to
venture aloft, he would be too old. If, indeed, he was not too old
already ... He dropped the empty food containers into the waste disposal
and turned once more to the periscope. At first he could find only five
of the other yachts; there was no sign of Woomera. It took him several
minutes to locate her-a dim, star-eclipsing phantom, neatly caught in
the shadow of Lebedev. He could imagine the frantic efforts the
Australasians were making to extricate themselves, and wondered how they
had fallen into the trap It suggested that Lebedev was

44 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

unusually maneuverable. She would bear watching, though she was too far
away to menace Diana at the moment. Now the Earth had almost vanished;
it had waned to a narrow, brilliant bow of light that was moving
steadily toward the Sun. Dimly outlined within that burning bow was the
night side of the planet, with the phosphorescent gleams of great cities
showing here and there through gaps in the clouds. The disc of darkness
had already blanked out a huge section of the Milky Way. In a few
minutes, it would start to encroach upon the Sun. The light was fading;
a purple, twilight hue-the glow of many sunsets, thousands of miles
below-was falling across the sail as Diana slipped silently into the
shadow of Earth. The Sun plummeted below that invisible horizon; within
minute it was night. Me= looked back along the orbit he had traced, now
a quarter of the way around the world. One by one he saw the brilliant
stars of the other yachts wink out, as they joined him in the brief
night. It would be an hour before the Sun emerged from that enormous
black shield, and through AU that time they would be completely
helpless, coasting without power. He switched on the external spotlight,
and started to search the now-darkened sail with its beam. Already the
thousands of acres of film were beginning to wrinkle and beconib
flaccid. The shroud lines were slackening, and must be wound in lest
they become entangled. But all this was expected; everything was going
as planned. Fifty miles astern, Arachne and Santa Maria were not so
lucky. Merton learned of their troubles when the radio burst into life
on the emergency circuit. "Number Two and Number Six, this is Control.

You are on a collision course; your orbits will intersect in sixty-five
minutes! Do you require assistance?" Iberevas a long pause while the two
skippers digested this bad news. Merton wondered who was to blame.

Perhaps one yacht had been trying to shadow the other, and had not
completed the maneuver before they were -both caught in darkness. Now
there was nothing that either could do. 'They were slowly but inexorably
converging, unable to change course by a fraction of a degree.

Yet-sixty-five minutes! That would just bring them out into sunlight
again, as they emerged from the shadow of the Earth. They had a slim
chance, if their sells could snatch

 The Wind from the Sun 45

enough power to avoid a crash. There must be some frantic calculations
going on aboard A rachne and Santa Maria. Arachne answered first. Her
reply was just what Merton had expected. "Number Six calling Control. We
don't need assistance, thank you. We'll work this out for ourselves." I
wonder, thought Merton; but at least it will be interesting to watch.

The first real drama of the race was approaching, exactly above the line
of midnight on the sleeping Earth. For the next hour, Merton's own sail
kept him too busy to worry about Arachne and Santa Maria. It was hard to
keep a good watch on that fifty million square feet of dim plastic out
there in the darkness, illuminated only by his narrow spotlight and the
rays of the still-distant Moon. From now on, for almost half his orbit
around the Earth, he must keep the whole of this immense area edge-on to
the Sun. During the next twelve or fourteen hours, the sail would be a
useless encumbrance; for he would be heading into the Sun, and its rays
could only drive him backward along his orbit. It was a pity that he
could not furl the sail completely, until he was ready to use it again;
but no one had yet found a practical way of doing this.

Far below, there was the first hint of dawn along the edge of the Earth.

In ten minutes the Sun would emerge from its eclipse. The coasting
yachts would come tolife again as the blast of rad iation struck- their
sails. 'Mat would be the moment of crisis for Arachne and Santa
Maria-and, indeed, for all of them. Merton swung the periscope until he
found the two dark shadows drifting against the stars. They were very
close together- perhaps less than three miles apart. They might, he
decided, just be able to make it ... Dawn flashed like an explosion
along the rim of Earth as the Sun rose out of the Pacific. 'Me sail and
shroud lines glowed a brief crimson, then gold, then blazed with the
pure white light of day. The needles of the dynamometers began to lift
from their zeroes-but only just. Diana was still almost completely
weightless, for with the sail pointing toward the Sun, her acceleration
was now only a few miffiionths of a gravity. But Arachne and Santa Maria
were crowding on all the sail that they could manage, in their desperate
attempt to keep apart. Now, while there was less than two miles between
them, their glittering plastic clouds were unfurling and ex-46 THE WIND
FROM THE SUN

panding with agonizing slowness as they felt the first delicate push of
the Sun's rays. Almost every TV screen on Earth would be mirroring this
protracted drarna; and even now, at this last minute, it was possible to
tell what the outcome would be. 'Me two skippers were stubborn men.

Either could have cut his sail and fallen back to give the other a
chance; but neither would do so. Too much prestige, too many millions,
too many reputations were at stake. And so, silently and softly as snow-
flakes falling on a winter night, Arachne and Santa Maha collided.

The square kite crawled almost imperceptibly into the circular spider
web. The long ribbons of the shroud lines twisted and tangled together
with dreamlike slowness. Even aboard Diana, Merton, busy with his own
rigging, could scarcely tear -his eyes away from this silent,
long-drawn-out disaster. For more than ten minutes the billowing,
shining clouds continued to merge into one inextricable mass. 'Men the
crew capsules tore loose and went their separate ways, missing each
other by hundreds of yards. With a flare of rockets, the safety launches
hurried to pick them up. IMat leaves five of us, thought Merton. He felt
sorry for the skippers who had so thoroughly eliminated each other, only
a few hours after the start of the race, but they were young men and
would have another chance. Within minutes, the five had dropped to four.
From the beginning, Merton had had doubts about the slowly rotating
Sunbeam; now he saw them justified. The Martian ship had failed to tack
properly. Her spin had given her too much stability. Her great ring of a
sail was turning to face the Sun, instead of being edge-on to it. She
-was being blown back along her course at almost her maximum
acceleration. That was about the most maddening thing that could happen
to a skipper--even worse than a collision, for he could blame only
himself. But no one would feel much sympathy for the frustrated
colonials, as they dwindled slowly astern. They had made too many brash
boasts before the race, and what had happened to them was poetic
justice. Yet it would not do to write off Sunbeam completely; with
almost half a million miles still to go, she might yet pull ahead.

Indeed, if there were a few more casualties, she might be the only one
to complete the race. It had happened before.

 The Wind train the Sun 47

Mhe next twelve hours were uneventful, as the Earth waxed in the sky
from new to full. There was little to do while the fleet drifted around
the unpowered half of its orbit, but Merton did not find the time
hanging heavily on his hands. He caught a few hours of sleep, ate two
meals, wrote his log, and became involved in several more radio
interviews. Sometimes, though rarely, he talked to the other skippers,
exchanging greetings and friendly taunts. But most of the time he was
content to float in weightless relaxation, beyond all the cares of
Earth, happier than he had been for many years. He was--as far as any
man could be in space- master of his own fate, sailing the ship upon
which he had lavished so much skill, so much love, that it had become
part of his very being.. 7lie next casualty came when they were passing
the line between Earth and Sun, and were just beginning the powered half
of the orbit. Aboard Diana, Merton saw the great sail stiffen as it
tilted to catch the rays that drove it. The acceleration began to climb
up from the microgravities, though it would be hours yet before it would
reach its maximum value. It would never reach it for Gossamer. The
moment when power came on again was always critical, and slie failed to
survive it. Blair's radio commentary, which Merton had left running at
low volume, alerted him with the news: "Hello, Gossamer has the
wrigglesl" He hurried to the periscope, but at first could see nothing
wrong with the great circular disc of Gossamer's sail. It was difficult
to study it because it was almost edge-on to him and so appeared as a
thin ellipse; but presently he saw that it was twisting back and forth
in slow, irresistible oscillations. Unless the crew could damp out these
waves, by properly timed but gentle tugs on the shroud lines, the sail
would tear itself to pieces. 7bey did their best, and after twenty
minutes it seemed that they had succeeded. Then, somewhere near the
center of the sail, the plastic film -began to rip. It was slowly driven
outward by the radiation pressure, like smoke coiling upward from a
fire. - Within a quarter of an hour, nothing was left but the delicate
tracery of the radial spars that had supported the great web. Once again
there was a flare of rockets, as a launch moved in to retrieve the
Gossamer's capsule and her dejected crew. "Getting rather lonely up
here, isn't its' said a conversational voice 'over the ship-to-ship
radio.

48 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

"Not for you, Dimitri," retorted Merton. "You've still got company back
there at the end of the field. I'm the one who's lonely, up here in
front." It was not an idle boast; by this time Diana was three hundred
miles ahead of the next competitor, and her lead should increase still
more rapidly in the hours to come Aboard Lebedev, Dimitri Markoff gave a
good-natured chuckle. He did not sound, Merton thought, at all like a
man who had resigned himself to defeat. "Remember the legend of the
tortoise and the hare,' answered the Russian. "A lot can happen in the
next quartermillion miles." It happened much sooner than that, when they
had completed their first orbit of Earth and were passing the starting
line again- though thousands of miles higher, thanks to the extra energy
the San's rays had given them. Merton had taken careful sights on the
other yachts, and had fed the figures into the computer.

"The answer it gave for Woomera was so absurd that he immediately did a
recheck. There was no doubt of it-the Australasians were catching up at
a completely fantastic rate. No solar yacht could possibly have such an
acceleration, unless ... A swift look through the periscope gave the
answer. Woomera's rigging, pared back to the very minimum of mass, bad
given way. It was her sail alone, still maintaining its shape, that was
racing up behind him like a handkerchief blown before the wind. Two
hours later it fluttered past, less than twenty miles away; but long
before that, the Australasians had joined the growing crowd aboard the
Commodores launch. So now it was a straight fight between Diana and
Lebedev-for though the Martians had not given up, they were a thousand
miles astern and no longer counted as a serious threat. For that matter,
it was hard to see what Lebedev could do to overtake Diana'slead; but
all the way around the second lap, through eclipse again and the long,
slow drift against the Sun, Merton felt a growing unease. He knew the
Russian pilots and designers. They had been trying to win this race for
twenty years-and, after all, it'was only fair that they should, for had
not Pyotr Nikolaevich Lebedev been the first man to detect the pressure
of sunlight, back at the very beginning of the twentieth century? But
they had never succeeded.

 The Wind fro? n the Sun 49

And they would never stop trying. Dimitri was up to something- and it
would be spectacular.

Aboard the official launch, a thousand miles behind the racing yachts,
Commodore van Stratten looked at the radiogram with angry dismay. It had
traveled more than a hundred million miles, from the chain of solar
observatories swinging high above the blazing surface of the Sun; and it
brought the worst possible news. The Commodore-his title was purely
honorary, of course-, back on Earth he was Professor of Astrophysics at
Harvard-had been half expecting it. Never before had the race been
arranged so late in the season. There had been many delays; they had
gambled- and now, it seemed, they might an lose. Deep beneath the
surface of the Sun, enormous forces were gathering. At any moment the
energies of a million hydrogen bombs might burst forth in the awesome
explosion known as a solar flare. Climbing at millions of miles an hour,
an invisible fireball many times the size of Earth would leap from the
Sun and head out across space. The cloud of electrified gas would
probably miss the Eartb completely. But if it did not, it would arrive
in just over a day. Spaceships could protect themselves, with their
shielding and their powerful magnetic screens; but the lightly built
solar yachts, with their paper-thin walls, were defenseless against such
a menace. 'Me crews would have to be taken off, and the race abandoned.
John Merton knew nothing of this as he brought Diana around the Earth
for the second time. If all went well, this would be the last circuit,
both for him and for the Russians. They had spiraled upward by thousands
of miles, gaining energy from the Sun's rays. On this lap, they should
escape from Earth completely, and head outward on the long run to the
Moon. It was a straight race now; Sunbeam's crew had finally withdrawn
exhausted, after battling valiantly with their.

spinning sail for more than a hundred thousand miles. Merton did not
feel tired; he had eaten and slept won, and Diana was behavingberself
admirably. The autopilot, tensioning the rigging like a busy little
spider, kept the great sail trimmed to the Sun more accurately than any
human skipper could have. 'Mough by this time the two square miles of
plastic sheet must have been riddled by hundreds of microme-50 THE WIND
FROM THE SUN

teorites, the pinhead-sized punctures had produced no falling off of
thrust. He had only two worries. The first was shroud line number eight,
which could no longer be adjusted properly. Without any warning, the
reel had jammed; even after all these years of astronautical
engineering, bearings sometimes seized up in vacuum. He could neither
lengthen nor shorten the line, and would have to navigate as best he
could with the othem Luckily, the most difficult maneuvers were over;
from now on, Diana would have the Sun behind her as she sailed straight
down the solar wind. And as the old-time sailors had often said, it was
easy to handle a boat when the wind was blowins over your shoulder. His
other worry was Lebedev, still dogging his heels gum hundred miles
astern. The Russian yacht had shown remarkable maneuverability, thanks
to the four great panels that could -be tilted around the central sail.

Her flipovers as she rounded the Earth had been carried out with superb
precision. But to gain maneuverability she must have sacrificed speed.

You could not have it both ways; in the long, straight haul ahead,
Merton should be able to hold his own. Yet he could not be certain of
victory until, three or four days from now, Diana went flashing past the
far side of the Moon. And then, in the fiftieth hour of the race, just
after the end of the second orbit around Earth, Markoff sprang his
little surprise.

"Hello, John,"be said casually over the ship-to-ship circuill Vd like
you to watch this. It should be interesting." Merton drew himself across
to the periscope and turned up the magnification to the limit.

There in the field of view, a most improbable sight against the
background of the stars, was the glittering Maltese cross of Lebedev,
very small but very cim. As he watched, the four arms of the cross
slowly detached themselves from the central square, and went drifting
away, with 0 their spars and rigging, into space. Markoff had jettisoned
all unnecessary mass, now that he was coming up to escape velocity and
need no longer plod patiently around the Earth, gaining momentum on each
circuit. From now on, Lebedev would be almost unsteerable-but that did
not matter; all the tricky navigation lay behind her. It was as if an
old-time yachtsman had deliberately thrown away his rudder and heavy
keel, knowing that the rest of the race would be straight downwind over
a calm gm

 The Wind from the Sun 51

"Congratulations, Dimitri," Merton radioed. "It's a neat trick.

But it's not good enough. You can't catch up with me now

"I've not finished yet," the Russian answered. "there's an old winter's
tale in my country about a sleigh being chased by wolves. To save
himself, the driver has to throw off the passengers one by one. Do you
see the analogyr' Merton did, all too well. On this final straight lap,
Dimitri no longer neededhis copilot. Lebedev could really be stripped
down for action. "Alexis won't be very happy about this," Merton
replied.

"Besides, it's against the rules."

"Alexis isn't happy, but I'm the captain. He'll just have to wait around
for ten minutes until the Commodore picks him up. And the regulations
say nothing about the size of the crew-you should know that." Merton did
not answer; he was too busy doing sonic hurried calculations, based on
what he knew of Lebedev's design. By the time he had finished, he knew
that the race was still in doubt. Lebedev would be catching up with him.
at just, about the time he hoped to pass the Moon. But the outcome of
the race was already being decided, ninety- two million miles away.

On Solar Observatory Three, far inside the orbit of Mercury, the
automatic instruments recorded the whole history of the flare. A hundred
million square miles of the Sun's surface exploded in suchblue-white
ftiry that, by comparison, the rest of the disc paled to a dull glow.
Out of that seething inferno, twisting and turning like a living
creature in the magnetic fields of its own creation, soared the
electrified plasma of the great flare. Ahead of it, moving at the speed
of light, went the warning Bash of ultraviolet and X rays. That would
reach Earth in eight minutes, and was relatively harmless. Not so the
charged atoms that were following behind at their leisurely four million
miles an hour-and which, in just over a day, would engulf Diana,
Lebedev, and their accompanying little fleet in a cloud of lethal
radiation. The Commodore left his decision to the last possible minutes
Even when the jet of plasma had been tracked past the orbit of Venus,
there was a chance that it might miss the Earth. But when it was less
than four hours away, and had already been picked up by the Moon-based
radar network, he

52 THE VAM FROM THE SUN

knew that there was no hope. All solar sailing was over, for the next
five or six years-until the Sun was quiet again. A great sigh of
disappointment swept across the solar system. Diana and Lebedev were
halfway between Earth and Moon, running neck and neck-and now no one
would ever know which was the better boat. The enthusiasts would argue
the result for years; history would merely record: "Race canceled owing
to solar storm." When John Merton received the order, he felt a
bitterness he had not known since childhood. Across the years, sharp and
clear, came the memory of his tenth birthday. He had been promised an
exact scale model of the famous spaceship Morning Star, and for weeks
had been planning how he would assemble it, where he would hang it in
-his bedroom. And then, at the last moment, his father had broken the
news. "I'm sorry, John-it cost too much money. Maybe next year ..."

Half a century and a successful lifetime later, he was a heartbroken boy
again. For a moment, he thought of disobeying the Commodore. Supposehe
sailed on, ignoring the warning? Even if the race was abandoned, the
could make a crossing to the Moon that would stand in the record books
for generations. But that would be worse than stupidity; it would be
suicide-and a very unpleasant form of suicide. He had seen men die of.
radiation poisoning, when the magnetic shielding of their ships had
failed in deep space. No-nothing was worth that ... He felt as sorry for
Dimitri Markoff as for himself. They had both deserved to win, and now
victory would go to neither. No man could argue with the Sun in one of
its rages, even though he might ride upon its -beams to the edge of
space. Only fifty miles astern now, the Commodore's launch was drawing
alongside Lebedev, preparing to take off her, skipper. There went the
silver sail, as Dimitri-with feelings that he would share--cut the
rigging. The tiny capsule would be taken back to Earth, perhaps to be
used again; but a sail was spread for one voyage only. He could press
the jettison button now, and save his rescuers a few minutes of time.

But he could not do it; he wanted to stay aboard to the very end, on the
little boat that had been for so long a part of his dreams and his life.

The great sail was spread now at right angles to the Sun, exerting

 The Wind from the Sun 53

its utmost thrust. Long ago, it had torn him clear of Earth, and Diana
was still gaining speed. Then, out of nowhere, beyond all doubt or
hesitation, be knew what must be done. For the last time, he sat down
before the computer that had navigated him halfway to the Moon. When he
had finished, he packed the log and his few personal belongings.

Clumsily, for he was out of practice, and it was not an easy job to do
by oneself, he climbed into the emergency survival suit. He was just
sealing the helmet when the Commodore's voice called over the radio.

"We'll be alongside in five minutes, Captain. Please cut your sail, so
we won't foul it." John Merton, first and last skipper of the sun yacht
Diana, hesitated a moment. He looked for the last time around the tiny
cabin, with its shining instruments and its neatly arranged controls,
now all locked in their final positions. Then he said into the
microphone: "I'm abandoning ship. Take your time to pick me up. Diana
can look after herself." There was, no reply from the Commodore, and for
that he was grateful. Professor van Stratten would have guessed what was
happening-and would know that, in these final moments, he wished to be
left alone' He did not bother to exhaust the air lock, and the rush of
escaping gas blew him gently out into space. The thrust -he gave her
then was his last gift to Diana. She dwindled away from him, sail
glittering splendidly in the sunlight that would be hers for centuries
to come. Two days from now she would flash past the Moon; but the Moon,
like the Earth, could never catch her. Without his mass to slow her
down, she would gain two thousand miles an hour in every day of sailing.

In a month, she would be traveling faster than any ship that man had
ever built. As the Sun's rays weakened with distance, so her
acceleration would fall. But even at the orbit of Mars, she would be
gaining a thousand miles an hour in every day. Long before then, she
would be moving too swiftly for the Sun itself to hold her. Faster than
a comet had ever streaked in from the stars, she would be heading out
into the abyss. 'Me glare of rockets, only a few miles away, caught
Merton's eye. The launch was approaching to pick him up-at thousands of
times the acceleration that Diana could ever attain. But its engines
could burn for a few minutes only, before they exhausted their fuel-
while Diana would still be

54 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

gaining speed, driven outward by the Sun's eternal fires, for ages yet
to come. "Goo&by, little ship," said John Merton. "I wonder what eyes
will see you next, how many thousand years from nowt' At last he felt at
peace, as the blunt torpedo of the launch nosed up beside him. He would
never win the race to the Moon; @but his would be the first of all man's
ships to set sail on the long journey to the stars.

May 1963

The Secret

Henry Cooper had been on the Moon for almost two weeks before he
discovered that something was wrong. At Ent it was only an ill- defined,
suspicion, the sort of hunch that a hardheaded science reporter would
not take too seriously. He had come here, after all, at the United
Nations Space Administration's own request. UNSA had always been hot on
public relations-especially just before budget time, when an overcrowded
world was screaming for more roads and schools and sea farms, and
complaining about the billions being poured into space. So here he was,
doing the lunar circuit for the second time, and beaming back two
thousand words of copy a day. Although the novelty had worn off, there
still remained the wonder and mystery of a world as big as Africa,
thoroughly mapped, yet almost completely unexplored. A stone's throw
away from the pressure domes, the labs, the spaceports, was a yawning
emptiness that would challenge men for centuries to come. Some parts of
the Moon were almost too familiar, of course. Who had not seen that
dusty scar in the Mare Imbrium, with its gleaming metal pylon and the
plaque that announced in the three official languages of Earth:

ON THIS SPOT AT 2001 ut

13 SEPTEMBER 1959

THE FIRST MAN-MADE OBJECT REACHED ANOTHER WORLD

Cooper had visited the grave of Lunik 11-and the more famous tomb of the
men who had come after it. But these thingsbelonged to the past;
already, like Columbus and the Wright brothers, they were receding
intohistory. What concerned him now was the future. When he had landed
at Archimedes Spaceport, the Chief 55

56 THE NVIND FROM THE SUN

Administrator had been obviously glad to see him, and had shown a
personal interest in his tour. Transportation, accommodation, and
official guide were all arranged. He could go anywhere he aiked, ask any
questions he pleased. LTNSA trusted him, for his stories had always been
accurate, his attitude friendly. Yet the tour had gone sour; he did not
know why, but he was going to find out. He reached for the phone and
said: "Operator? Please get me the Police Department. I want to speak to
the Inspector General."

Presumably Chandra Coomaraswamy possessed a uniform, but Cooper had
never seen him wearing it. They met, as arranged, at the entrance to the
little park that was Plato City's chief pride and joy. At this time in
the morning of the artificial twenty-four-hour "day" it was almost
deserted, and they could talk without interruption. As they walked along
the narrow gravel paths, they chatted about old times, the friends they
had known at college together, the latest developments in interplanetary
politics. They had reached the middle of the park, under the exact
center of the great blue-painted dome, when Cooper came to the point.

"You know everything that's happening on the Moon, 'Chandra," he said.

"And you know that rm here to do a series for UNSA-hope to make a book
out of it when I get back to Earth. So why should people be trying to
hide things from me?" It was impossible to hurry Chandra. He always took
his time to answer questions, and his few words escaped with difficulty
around the stem of his hand-carved Bavarian pipe. "What people?" he
asked at length. "You've really no idea?" The Inspector General shook
his head. "Not the faintest," he answered; and Cooper knew that he was
telling the truth. Chandra might be silent, but he would not lie. "I was
afraid you7d say that. Well, if you don't know any more than I do,
here's the only clue I have-and it frightens me. Medical Research is
trying to keep me at arms length.' "Hmm," replied Chandra, taking his
pipe from his mouth and looking at it thoughtfully. w'is that all you
have to say?"

 The Secw 57

"You haven't given me much to work on. Remember, rm only a cop; I lack
your vivid journalistic imagination."

"All I can tell you is that the higher I get in Medical Research, the
colder the atmosphere becomes. Last time I was here, everyone was very
friend@y, and gave me some fine stories. But now, I can't even meet- the
Director. He's always too busy, or on the other side of the Moon.
Anyway, what sort of man is he?"

"Dr. Hastings? Prickly little character. Very compete-at, but not easy
to work with." _11w? hat could he be trying to hide?"

,"Knowing you, rat mm you have some interesting theo- rigs."

"Ok I thought of narcotics, and fraud, and political conspirades-but
they don! t make sense, in these days. go vdiat's left wares the hell
out of me." Chandra! s eyebrows signaled a silent question marl
"Interplanetary plague," said Cooper bluntly. -1 thought that was
finpossible"

".es-I've written articles myself proving that- the it@ forms on other
planets have such alien chemistries that they can't react with us, and
that all our microbes and bugs tookmillions of years to adapt to our
bodies. But I've always wondered if it was true. Suppose a ship has come
back from Mars, say, - with somethiw really vicious@--and the doctors
caset cope with it?" There was a long silence.

Then Chandra said: '112 start investigating. I don't like it either, for
here's an item you probably don't know. There were three nervous
breakdown in the Medical Division last month-and that! s very,. very
unusual." He yjanced at his watch, then at the false sky, which
seetnedso distant, yet which was only two hundred feet above their
heads, "We'd better get moving," he said. 'The morning showees due in
five minutes."

The'call came two weeks later, in the middle of the night the real lunar
nighl By Plato City time, it was Sunday, p mortung. "Henry?

Chandra here. Can you meet me in half an hour at air lock five?

Good-I'll see you." This was it, Cooper knew. Air lock five meant that
they seem iiaint outsid@ the dome. Chandret had found'something.

58 THE Va" FROM TFM SUN

The presence of the police driver restricted conversation as the tractor
moved away from the city along the road roughly bulldozed across the ash
and pumice. Low in the south, Earth was almost fall, c ' asting a
brilliant blue-green fight over the Infernal landscape. However hard one
tried, Cooper told himself, it was difficult to make the Moon appear
glamorous. But nature guards her greatest secrets well; to such places
men must come to find them. The multiple domes of the city dropped below
the sharply curved horizon. Presently, the tractor turned aside from the
main road to follow. a scarcely visible trail. Ten minutes later, Cooper
saw a single glittering hemisphere ahead of them, standing on an
isolated ridge of rock. Another vehld@e, bearing a red cross, was parked
beside the entrance. It seemed that they were not the only visitors..1 I
Nor were they unexpected. As they drew up to the &met iffie flexible
tube of the air-lock coupling groped out toward them and snapped into
place against their tractoes outer-him. 'There was a brief hissing as
pressure equalized. Then.

Coopw followed Chandra into the building. The air-lock operator led them
along carving corridors and

buflding, Cooper told himself when their guide ushered them into a1arge
&cular chamber and shut the door softly bobia them. It was a small zoo.
All around them were cages, tanu- It= taning a wide selection of the
fauna and flora of Eartll Waiting at its center was a short, gray-haired
man, lockh4 very worried, and very unhappy.

--Dr. -Hastings,- said Coomarawamy, "meet Mr. Coooer-r he Inspector
General turned to his companion and ad" *'I've convinced the Doctor that
there's only one way to keep you quiet- and that's to tell you
everything."

"Frankly," said Hastings, "I'm not sure if I give a damn any more.' His
voice was unsteady, barely under'oontrol, and Cooper thought, Hellol
There's another breakdown on the way. The scientist wasted no time on
such formalities as shaking hands. He walked to one of the cages, took
out a small bundle of fur, and held it toward Cooper.

OJDO you knowlutais is?" bo-asked abruptly.

 The Secret 59

"Of course. A hamster--the commonest lab animal." "Yes," said Hastings.
"A perfectl ordinary golden hamster.

I y Except that this one is five years old-4ike all the others in this
cage. "Well? What's odd about that?"

"h, nothing, nothing at all ... except for the trifling fact that
hamsters live for only two years. And we have some here that are getting
on for ten." For a moment no one spoke; -but the room was-not silent It
was full of rustlings and slitherings and scratchings, of faint whimpers
and tiny animal cries.

"Men Cooper whispered: "My God- you've found a way of prolonginglifel"

"No,' retorted Hastings. "We've not found it. The Moon has given it to
-us ... as we might have expected, if we'd looked in front of our
noses." . He seemed to have gained control over his emotions--as N he
was once more the pure scientist, fascinated by a discovery for its own
sake and heedless of its implications.. "On Earth," he said, "we spend
our whole lives fightinx rivity. It wears down our msucles, pulls our
stomachs out of shape. In seventy 'years, how many tons of blood does
the heart lift through how many miles? And all that work, all that
strain is reduced to a sixth here on the Moon, where a
one-hundred-and-eighty-pound human weighs only thirty pounds." "I see,"
said Cooper slowly. "Ten years for a hiamster--md how long for a man?"

"It's not a simple law," answered Hastings. "It varies with the size and
the species. Even a month ago, we weren't certain. But now we're quite
sure of this: on the Moon, the Spin of human life will be at least
twohundred years"

".nd you've been trying to keep it secrett"

"You fooll Don't you understand?' 'Take it easy, Doctor-take it easy,"
said Chandra softly. With an obvious effort -of will, - Hastings got
control of' himself again. He began, to speak with such icy calm that
his words sank like freezing raindrops into Cooper's mind. "Think of
them up there," he said, pointing to the roof, to the invisible Earth,
whose looming presence no one on the Moon could ever forget. "Six
billion of them, packing all the continents to the edges-and now
crowding over into the sea beds. And here- @' he pointed to the
ground----@'only a hundred thousand of us, on an almost empty world. But
a world where we need miracles of technoi4 and engineering meriely to

60 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

exist, where a man with an I.Q. of only a hundred and fifty can't even
get a job. "And now we find that we can live for two hundred years.

Imagine how they're going to react to that newsl This is your problem
now, Mister Journalist; you've asked for it, and you've got it. Tell me
this, please-I'd really be interested to know-just how are you going to
break it to them?" He waited, and waited. Cooper opened his mouth, then
-dosed it again, unable to think of anything to say., In the far corner
of the room, a baby monkey started to cry.

lune 1%3

The Last Command t This Is the President speaking. Rec@use you are
hearing nit read this message, it means that I am already dead and that
our country is destroyed. But you are soldien-the most tilghly tramed in
all our history. You know how to obey, orders. Now you must obey the
hardest you have ever ifteived ... Hard? thought the First Radar Oflicer
bitterly.'No; now It. would be easy, now that they had seen the laid
they love scorched by the heat -of many suns. No longer could from U any
hesitation, anjy scruples about visiting upon innocent 4ad guilty zme
the vengeance of the gods. But why, why had, It been left so late? '..

. You know the purpose for which you were set swinging on your secret
orbit beyond the Moon. Awaro of your existence, but never sure of your
location, an aggressair would hesitate- to launch an attackagainst, us.

You were to be the Ultimate Deterrent, beyond the reach of the
Earthqua3w@ bombethat could crush missiles in their buried silos and
iw"@ nuclear submarines prowling the sea bed. You;could still soft back,
even if all, our other weapons were destroyed .... As they have been,
the Captain told himself. He bed watched - the lights wink out one by
one on the operationsboard, until none werejeft. Many, perhaps, had done
ftk dirty; U not, he would soon complete their work. Nothw4 that had
survived the first counterwike would exist after the blowhe was now
preparing. "... Only through accident,-or madness, could war begin in,
the face of the threat you represent. 'That was the theory a which we
staked our lives; and now, for reasons which vai. shall never know, we
have lost the gamble. - The Chief Astronomer let his eyes roam to the
single smal porthole at. the side of the central control room. Yes@ they
had lost indeed. There hung the Earth, a glorious silver crescent tba:
background of the stam At first, glahce, it- looked, 0 THE WIND FROM
THE SUN

unchanged; but not at second-for the dark side was no longer wholly
dark. Dotted across it, glowing like an evil phosphorscence, were the
seeks of flame that had been cities. There were few of them now, for
there was little left to burn..The familiar voice was still speaking
from the other side of the grave. How long ago, wondered the Signal
Officer, had this message been recorded? And what other sealed orders
did the fores more-than-human battle computer contain, which no* they
would never -hear, because they dealt with military situations- that
could no longer arise? He dragged his mind back from the worlds of
might-have-been -to confront the appalling and still- unimaginable
reality ... If we had been -defeated, but not destroyed, we bad hoped to
use your existence as a bargaining weapon. Now, even that poor hope has
gone-and with it, the last purpose for which you wereset here in space."
- What does be mean? thought the Armaments Officer.. Now, =rely, the
moment of their destiny had come. The- millions who were dead, the
millions who, wished they were-4. would be nvenged whes the black
cylinders of the gigaton- bomix spiraled down to Earth. You wonder why,
now that it has come to this, I have not'SIVen you the orders to strike
back. I will tell you. I "It is now too late. The Deterrent has failed.
Our motber- find no longer exists, and revenge canixg bring back the
dead. 'Now that half of mankind has been destroyed, to destroy dw *,ON
half would be insanity, unworthy of reasoning 'men. -71m quarrels that
divided us twenty-four hours ago no longer have any meaning. As far as
your hearts will let you, you must Iwget the past.

"You have skills and knowledge that a shattered pland will @&ipi@@y
need. Use dmi-and without stint, without bitteow ness- to rebuild the
world. I warned. you that your duw would be hard, but here is my final
command. 'You will launch your bombs into deep space, and detonate them
ten million kilometers from Earth. This will prove to our late enemy,
who is also receiving this message, that you have discarded your
weapons. "Men you will have one more thing to do. Men of Fort Lenin, the
President of the Supreme Soviet bids you farewells and orders you to
place yourselves at the disposal of the United Slates.- june 150

Dial F for Frankenstein

At 0150 GACr on Doomber 1, 1975, every telephone in the world started to
ring. @ A quarter of a billion people picked up their'receivers, Is
Isten for a few seconds with annoyance or perplexity. Ttloft who bad
been awakened in the middle of the night assumed that some. far-off
friend, was calling, over the satellite tele. Phone network that had
gone into service, with such a Van te,;%bli ngj, sothe day'before. But
there- was no @oiov on und, which to many seemed like the i6aring of, it
sea; to others, like the vibrations of harp strings in the widd. And @
there were many more, in that moment, wh . * recalled a secret sound of
childhood-the noise of blood pulsing through the veins, heard when a
shell is- cupped ova the ear. Whatever it was, it lasted no more thii
twenty seconds. Then-it was replaced by the dial tone. The world's
subscribers cursed, muttered

"Wrong number. sad hung up. Some tried to'dial a complaint, but the lim
seemed busy. In a few hours, everyone had forgotten the incident-except
those whose duty it was to worry about such things. At the Post Office
Research Station, the argument had bee* going on all mom-mg, and'had got
nowhere. It continued imalga7ted--through the lunch break, when the
hungry enginceii poured into the little cafe across the road. "I still
think," said Willy Smith, the solid-state electronics man, "that it, was
a temporary surge of current, caused when the satellite network was
switched in."

"It was obviously something to do with the satellites.' agreed Julfs
Reyher, circuit designer. "But why the tim delay? They were, plugged in
at midnight; the ringing was two hours later-as we all know to our
cost."

He yawned violently. "Mia)do YOU think@ Docift asked Bob Andrews,
bompal* 63

64 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

programer. "You've been very quiet all morning. Surely you've got some
idea?" Dr. John Williams, head of the Mathematics Division, stirred
uneasily. "Yes," he said. "I have. But you won't take it seriously."

"Mat doesn't matter. Even if it's as crazy as those science- fiction
yams you write under a pseudonym, it may give us some leads." Williams
blushed, but not much. Everyone knew about his stories, and he wasn't
ashamed of them. After all, they had been collected in book form.

(Rernaindered at fine shillings; he still had a couple of hundred
copies.) "Very well," he said, doodling on the tablecloth. 'IU is
something I've been wondering about for years. Have, you ever considered
the analogy between an automatic telephone exchange and the human
brain?" "Who hasn't thought of it?" scoffed one of his listvw& 'Mat idea
must go back to, Graham Bell."

"Poisibly. I never said it was original.

gut I do say it% than we started taking it seriously." He squinted
balefully at-this fluorescent tubes above the table; they were needed on
This foggy winter day. "What's wrong with the damn NOW They've been
flickering for the last five minutes." Von't bother about that. Maisie's
probably forgotten to pay her electricity bill. Let's hear more a-bout
your theory." I "Most of it isn't theory; it's plain fact. We know that
the human brain is a system of switches--neurons--4nterconnected in a
very elaborate fashion by nerves. An automatic We;phone exchange is also
a system of switches--selectort and so forth-connected. with wires."
"Agreed," said Smith@ "But that analogy wonl get Yota very far.

Aren't there about fifteen billion neurons in the brain?

That's a lot more than the number of switches in an auk** change."

Williame answer was interrupted by the scream of A; low-flying jet.

He had to wait until the cafe had ceased to vibrate before he could
continue. "Never heard them fly that low," Andrews grurable& "nought it
was against regulations."

"So it is, but don't worry-London Airport Control Will catch him." "I
doubt it," said Reyner. "That was London Airport. bringing in- a
Concorde on ground approach. But I've DWAX *,saw @=e sa low, either.
Glad I wasn't aboaw

 Dhd P for Fpmkmwdn 0

"Are we, or an we not, going to get on with this bliistii4' discussiont'
demanded Smith. -You're right about the fifteen billion neurons In the
human brain," continued WM, iams, unabashed. "And that's the whole
point. Fifteen billion sounds a large number, but it isnt.

Round about the 1960's, there were more than that number of individual
switches in the world's autoexchanges. Today, there are approximately
five times as many." "I see," said Reyner slowly. "And as from
yesterday, they've all become capable of fall interconnection, now that
the satellite links have gone into service@"

"Precise4y," There was silence for a moment, apart from. the distem
anging of a fire-engine bell OLet me get this straight," said Smith.
"Are you suggesting the wmtd telephone system is now a giant brain?"

"Thaes putting it crudely-anthropoinorphically. I prefer to think of it
in terms of critical size." Williams held his hands out in front of him,
fingers partly closed. "Elere are two lumps of U-235. Nothing happens as
long to YOU keep them apart. But bring them togethee-he suited the
action to the words@-and you havesomething very diffuent from
one',bigger lump of uranium. You have a hole half mile across. "It's the
same with our telephone networks. Until tods:% dwy've been largely
independent, autonomous. But now Wene suddenly multiplied the connecting
links, the networks have merged together, and vwve reached criticality.'
"And just what does- criticality mean in this can?" NW Smith. 'For want
of a better word-oonsciousness"

". weird sort of consciousness," said Reyner. "What woqm- @ It use for
sense organsr"

"Well, all the radio and TV stations in the world would be food ing,
information into it, through their Jandlines. That should VJvp- it
something to think about.1 Ilen there would be all the data stored in
all the computers; it would have access to that-and to the electronic
libraries, the radar tracking systems, the telemetering in the automatic
factories Oh, it would have enough sense organsl We chit begin to i -'
its picture of the world; but it would be infinitely richer and more
complax than ours."

@"GMQ-sli th*"'@'use its an entertaining idea@" add, 66 THE WIND FROM
THE SUN

Reyner, "what could it do except think? It couldn't, go anywhere; it
would have no limbs.' -Why should it want to travel? It would already be
Everywhere And every piece of remotely controlled electrical equipment
on the planet could act as a limb." , "Now I understand that time
delay," interjected Andrewil 'It was conceived at midnight, but it
wasn't born until. 1:50 this morning. The noise that woke us all up
wa&-4ts, bir&

His attempt, to sound facetious was not altogether oonvineing, and
nobody smiled. Overhead, the lights continued. their annoying Ilicker,
which seemed to be getting worse. Then" there was an interruption from
the front of the cam, as Jim Small, of Power Supplies, made his usual
boisterous entry. "Look at this, fellows," he said, and ginned, waving a
piece of paper in front of his colleagues. "I'm rich. Ever mm a bank
balance. like that?" Dr. Williams took the proffered statement, glanced
dow48 the columns, and read the. balance aloud: "Cr. P-999,999i897.87."

"Nothing very *dd about that," he continued, above the general
amusement. Vd say it means an overdraft of R-102, and the computer's
made a slight slip and added eleven nim& That sort of thing was
happening all the time just after The banks converted to the decimal
system"

". know, I know," said Small, "but don't spoil my fun. I'm 00irig to
frame this statement. And. what would -happen -if %I drew a check for a
few million, on the strength of this? Could I am the bank if-it
bounced?"

"Not on your life," answered Reyn er. "I'll take a bet that the banks
thought of that years ago, and protected themselm somewhere down in the
small print. But, by the way,,when did' YOU got that statement?"

"In the noon delivery. It comes straight to the office, so that my wife
doesn't have a chance of seeing it."

"Hmm. seat means it was computed early this morning. C*rtainly after
midnight ..

."

"What axe you driving at? And why all the long faces?' No one answered
him. He had started a new, hare, and do hounds were in full cry. "Does
anyone here know about automated banking systems?" asked Smith. "How are
they tied together?"

"Like everything else these days," said Andrews. "They're all, iwths
same network.4he computers talk tweach other &A

 Did P tor Phw*vxoebr 67

over the world. Tes a point for you, John. If there was real trouble,
that's one of the first places rd expect it. Besides ths phone system
itself, of course."

"No @ one answered the question I had asked before JIM came in,"
complained Reyner. "What would this supermind actually do? Would it be
friendly-hostile-indifferent? Would it even know that we exist? Or would
it oonsider the electronic signals it's handling to be the only
reality?" 11 see you! re beginning to believe me," said Williams, with a
certain grim satisfaction. "I can only answer your question by asking
another. What does a newborn baby do? It starts looking for food " He
glanced up at the flickering lights. "My God," he said @owly, as if a
thought had just struck him 'Ibexes only one food it would
need-electricity." I wrhi& nonsense has gone far enough." said Smith.
'What the devil's happened to our lunch? We gave our orders.

twenty minutes ago-" Everyone ignored him. "And thm" said Reyner, taking
up where Williams had left off, "it would start looking around, and
stretching its limbs. In fact, it would start to play, like any growing
baby.' ,'And babies break things," said someonesoftly. 'It would have
enough toys, heaven knows. That Con=4 that went over us just. now. 'The
automated production low& The traffic lights in our streets."

"Punny you, should mention that," interjected Sma% O%om~s happened to
the traffic outside-it's been stopped for the last ten minutes. Looks
like a big jam"

"I guess there's a i1are somewhere. I heard an engine it* now."

"I've heard two-and what sounded like an explosion ovw loward the
industrial estate. Hope it's nothing serious.- 'Maidel What about some
cand1w? We can't we a thing!"I' 'I've just remembered- this place has an
all-electrw kitchen. We're going to get cold lunch, if we get any lunch
at all. st @ "At least we can read the newspaper while we're waiting. -U
Om the latest edition you've got there. Jim?"

"Yesi Haven't -had time to look at it yet. Hmm- Them dp@ seem to have
been a lot of odd accidents this mornint-railway signals jammed-water
main blown up through failure of relid. valve- dozens of complaints
about last night's wrong her Wtwned the Page, And became suddenly si1exl

68 THE WUM FROM THE SUN

1TVhat's the matter?' Without a word, Small handed over the paper.

Only the front page made sense. Tbroughout the interior, column after
column was a mess of printees pie, with, here and there, a few
incongruous advertisements making islands of sanity in a sea of
gibberish. They had obviously been set up as independent blocks, and
-had escaped the scrambling that had overtaken the text around them.

"Sothis is where long-distance typesetting and autodistribution have
brought us," grumbied Andrews. ,rm afraid Fleet Streefs been putting too
many eggs in one electronic basket." 4% have W@e 911,_ rm afraid," said
Williams solemnly. "So have we all."

"If I can get a word in edgeways, in time to stop the. mob hysteria that
seems to be infecting this table," said Smith loudly and firmly, "I'd
like to point out that theres nothing to worry about-- -even if John's
ingenious fantasy iscorrecl % only have to switch off the satellites,
and well be back when we wem yesterday." - "Prefrontal lobotomy,"
muttered Williams. -rd thought of that." -- "Eh?

Oh, yes--cuffing out slabs of the brain. That would certainly do the
trick. Expensive, of course, and we'd have to go back to sending
telegrams to each other. But civilization would survive." From not too
far away, there was a short, sharp explosion. 'I don't like thisi"
said-Andrews nervously. "Ut's bear what the old BBCs got to say. The one
o'clock news has just started." He reached into his briefcase and pulled
out a transistm radio. unprecedented number of industrial accidents, as
well a the unexplained launching of -three salvos of guided missiles
from military installations in the United States.

Several air-' ports have had to suspend operations owing to the erratic
behavior of their radar, and the banks and stock exchanges have closed
because their informition-processing systems have become completely
unreliable." ("You're telling me," muttered Small, while the others
shushed him.) "One moment, please-there's a news Hash coming through ...
Here it il We have just been informed that all control over the newly
-installed communication satellites has been lost. They am no longer
responding to commands from the ground. According

 Dkd F for Prankensfebt et

The BBC went off the air; even the carrier wave die& Andrews@reaehed for
the tuning knob and twisted it around the dial. Over the whole band, the
ether was silent. Presently Reyner said, in a voice not far from
hysteria: "Mat prefrontal lobotomy was a good idea, John.

Too bad that Baby's already thought of it." Williams rose slowly to his
feet

"Let's get back to the lab," he said. "There must be an answer,
somewhere." But be knew already that it was far, far too late. For Homo
sapiens, the telephone bell had Iolled.

Yune 1963 -Reunion

People of Earth, do not be afraid. We come in peace-and why not? For we
are your cousins; we have beenhere before. You will recognize us when we
meet, a few hours from now. We are approaching the solar system almost
as swiftly as this radio message. Already, your sun dominates the sky
ahead of us. It is the sun our ancestors and yours shared ten million
Yem ago. We are men, as you are; but you have forgotten your history,
while we have remembered ours. We colonized Earth, in the reign of the
great reptiles, who were'dying when we came and whom we could not save.

Your world was a tropical planet then, and we felt that it would Make a
fair home for our people. We were wrong. Though we were maders of space,
we knew so little about climate, about evolution, about genetics ... For
millions of summers-there were no winters in those ancient days,-the
colony flourished ' bolated though it had to be, in a universe where the
journey from one star to the next takes years, it kept in touch with its
parent civilization. 11 . uve or four times in every century, starships
would call and bring news of the galaxy. But two million years ago,
Earth began to change. For ages it had been a tropical paradise; then
the temperature fell, and the ice began to creep down from the poles. As
the climate altered, so did the colonists. We realize now that it was a
natural adaptation to the end of the long summer, but those who had made
Earth their home for so many generations believed that they had been
attacked by a strange and repulsive disease.

A disease that did not kill, that did no physical harm-but merely
disfigured. I Yet some were immune; the change spared them and their
children. And so, within a few thousand years, the colony had split
into- two separate groups-almost two separate speand jealous of each
other. broqsw envy, discord, and, ultimtely, conflict. 70

 Reunion 71

As the colony disintegrated and the climate steadily worsewd, those who
could do so withdrew from Earth. The rest sank into barbarism. We could
have kept in touch, but there is so much to do 'in a universe of a
hundred trillion stars. Until a few years ago, we did not know that any
of you had survived. Then we picked up your first radio signals, learned
your simple languages, and discovered that you made the long climb back
from savagery. We come to greet you, our long-lost relatives -and to
help you. We have discovered much in the eons since we abandoned Earth.
If you wish us to bring -back the eternal summer that ruled before the
Ice Ages, we can do so. Above all, we have a simple remedy for the
offensive yet harmless genetic plague that afflicted so many of the
colonists. Perhaps it has run its course-but if not, we have good news
for you. People of Earth, you can rejoin the society of the universe
without shame, without embarrassment. If any of you are still white, we
can cure you.

November 1963, Playback

It Is incredible that I have forgotten so much, so quickly. I have used
my body for forty years; I thought I knew it. Yet already it is fading
like a dream. Arms, legal where are you? What did you ever do for me'
when you were mine? I send out signals, trying to command the limbs I
vaguely remember. Nothing happens. It is like, ebmtftg into a vacuum.

Showing. Yes, I try that. Perhaps they hem me, but I cannot hear myself.
Silence has flowed over me, until I can no lohger'imagine sound. There
is a word in my mind called 'krjsid`;what, does it mean?

(So many words, drifting before me out of the darkness, vraiting to be
recognized. One by one they go away, dimppointed.) . Hello. So you are
back. How softly you tiptoe into my mindl I know when you are
-there,-but I never feel you coming. I sense that you are friendly, and
I am grateful for what you have done. But who are you? Of course, I know
you're not human; no human science could have rescued me wen the drive
field collapsed. You see, I am, becoming curious. "it is a good isign,
is it not? Now that the pain has gone-at last at-last-I can start to
think again. Yes, I am ready. Anything you want to know. It is the least
thatl can do. My name is William Vincent Neuberg. I am a master pilot of
the Galactic Survey. I was born in Port Lowell. Mars, on August 21,
2095. My wife, Janita, and my three children are on Ganymede. I am also
an author; I'vd written a good deal about my travels. Beyond Rigel is
quite famous ... What happened? You probably know as much as I do. I had
just phantomed my ship and was cruising at phase velocity when the alarm
went. There was no time to move, to do anythin& J remember the cabin
walls starting to glow-and 72

 Playbwk 7-3

the heat, the terrible heat. 17hat is all. The detonation must have
blown me into space. But how could I have survived? How could anyone
have reached me in time? Tell me--how much is left of my body? Why
cannot I feet my arms, my legs? Don't hide the truth; I am not afraid.

If you can get me home, the biotechnicians can give me new 'limbs. Even
now, my right arm is not the one I was born with. Why can't you answer?

Surely that is a simple question What do you mean you do not know what I
look like? You must have saved somethings The head? The brain, then? Not
even-@, no ... I

T am sorry. Was I away a long time? 'Let -me get a grip on myself.

(Hat Very funnyl) I am Survey Pilot First Class Vincent William
Freeburg. I was born in Port Lyot, Mars, on August 21, 1895. 1 have one
... no,' two, children ... @ Please, let me have that again, slowly. My
training prepared," me for any conceivable reality. I can face whatever
141 you me. But slowly.

Well, it could be worse. rm not really dead. I know whol am I even think
I know what I am' I am a-a recording, in Some fantastic storage
devim'Yow-'. must have caught mypsyche, my soul, when the'shipturne Into
plasmas Even though I cannot imagine how it was done, it makes sense.

After all, a primitive man could nevag,` understand bow we record a
symphony. All my memories are trapped in a tape or a crystal, as they
once were trapped in the cells of my vaporized brain. And Pot only my
memories. ME. 1. MYSELF-VINCE WMLBURG, PILOT SECOND CLASS. Well, what
happens next? Please say that again. I do not understand. Oh, wonderful!
You can do even that? There is a word for -it, a name.. I ... The
multitudinous seas incarnadine. No. Not quite. Incamadine, incamadine
... REINCARNATION11 Yis, yes, I understand. I must give you the basic
plan, the design. Watch -my thoughts very carefully. I will start at the
top.

74 THE Vnnd FROM THE SUN

The head, now. It is oval--so. The upper part is covered Vft hair. Mine
was br-er-blue. The eyes. They are very important. You have seen the
other animals? Good, that saves trouble. Can you show me some? Yes,
those will do. Now the mouth. Strange-I must have looked at it a
thousand times when I was shaving, but somehow ... Not so
round-narrower. Oh, no, not that way. It runs, across the face,
horizontally ... Now, let's see ... there's something between the eyes
and the mouth. Stupid of me. 11 never be a cadet if I can't even
remember thati ... Of course-Nosel A little longer, I think. 'Mere's
something else, something I've forgotten. That head looks raw,
unfinished. It's not me, Billy Vinceburg, thi soarteftzkid on the block.
But that isn't my name-Im not a boy. Im a master pilot Idth twenty years
in the Space Service, and rm, trying to =build ray body.

Why do my thoughts keep going out of fmn? Help me, pleasef _T1W
monstrosity? Is that what I told you I looked MM? Exase'it, We must
start again. The head now. it is perfectly spherical, and weareth a
suncible cap ... Too;llwcult

Begin somewhere else. Ab, I knowthe thighbone is connected to the
shinbone. The shinbone k conn6cted to the thighbone.

The thighbone is connected to tbdl-. shinbone. The shinbone ... All
fading. Too late, too late. Something wr Ong with the Oayback. Thank you
for trying. My name b ... my name W, Mother-where are you? Mama-Mamal
Maaaaaaa .

Dece)nber 1963

The Light of Darkness

I am not one of those Africans who feel ashamed of their country
because, in fifty years, it has made less progress than Eumpe in five
hundred. But where we have failed to advano as fast as we should, it is
owing to dictators like Chaka; and for this we have only ourselves to
blame. The fault being On=, 3a h the responsibility for the cure.

Moreover, I had better reasons, than most for'wishiig@ W destroy the
Great Chief,.the Omnipotent, the All-Seeing.@ He was of my own tribe,
being related to me through one of, s* father's wives, and he had
persecuted our family ever since he came to power. Although we, took.

no part in I@olitics, two Ct my brothers had disappeared, and another
had been- killed im an unexplained auto accident My own liberty, there
could W Ittle doubt, was largely due to my standing @ as one of, :the&
countwafew scientists with an international reputation. 11ke many of my
fellow intellectuals, I had been slow 4W turn against; Chaka, feeling-aa
did the equally misguided Oermans of the 1930'9--@t there were times
wfim I a dictator was the only answer to political chaos. Perhaps the.

first sip of our disastrous error came when Chaka abolished the
constitution and asmuned the name of the nineteenth-ow tury Ztdu emperor
of whom- he genuinely believed himself t1w reincarnation. From that
moment, his megalomania 9"swffdy. Like all tyrants, he would trust no
one, and belkv@d himself surrounded by plots This belief was well foqed.

he world knows of at least six welt- publicized attempts on his life,
and there are others that were kept secret. Their failure increased
Chata's confidence in his own destiny, and confirmed his followiis'
fanat& cal belief in his immortality. As the opposition became more
desperate, so the Great Chief's countermeasures became more'
ruthless,--and more barbaric, Chaka's regir4e was not the first, in
@Africa or elsewhere, to torture its enemies; but it was the &*lb do a*
on televidon.

IL

76 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

,Even then, shamed though I was by-the shock of horror and revulsion
that went round the world, I would have done nothing if fate had not
placed the weapon in my hands. I am not a man of action, and I abhor
violence, but once I realized -the power that was mine, my conscience
would not let me rest. As soon as the NASA -technicians had installed
their equipment and handed over the Hughes Mark X Infrared
Communications System, I began to make my plans. It seems strange that
my country, one of the most backward. in the world, should play a
central role in the conquest of space. That is an accident of geography,
not at all to the liking of the Russians and the Americans. But there is
nothing that they could do about it; Umbala lies on the equator,
directly beneath the paths of all the planets. And it possesses a unique
and priceless natural feature: the extinct volcan6 known as the Zambue
Crater. When Zambue died, more than a million years ago, the-Un
retreated step by step, congealing in a series of terracm@ to form a
bowl a mile wide and a thousand feet deep. It hail taken the minimum of
earth-moving and cable-stringing to -convert this into the largest radio
telescope, on Earth; Becaum the gigantic reflector is fixed, it scans
any given portion of the Ay for only a few minutes every twenty-four
hours, as the Earth turns on its axis. This was a price the scientists
wems willing to pay for the ability to receive signals from wood and
ships right out to the very limits of the solar system.. Chaka was a
problem they had not anticipated. He-Aad" come to power when the work
was almost-completed, and they had had to make the best of him. Luckily,
-he had a superstitious respect for science, and he needed all ths-
rublos and dollars he could get. The Equatorial Deep Space-Facilfty was
safe from his megalomania; indeed, it helpedto reinforce

"Me Big Dish had just been completed when I made my fird trip up the
tower that sprang from its center. A vertical mask more than fifteen
hundred feet high, it supported the coffee:6Ing antennas at -the focus
of the binmense bowl. A small elevator, which could carry three men,
made'a slow ascent to its top. Atfirst, there was nothing to see but the
dully gleaming saucer of -aluminum sheet, curving upward all around me
'or half a mile in every direction. But presently I rose above the rim
of the crater and could look far. out across the land I hoped, -1v save.
Snow- capped and blue. in the western baw-Was Motud

 The Light of Darkness 77

Tampala, the second highest peak in Africa, separated from me -by
endless miles of jungle. Through that jungle, in great twisting loops,
wound the muddy waters of the Nya Riverthe only highway that millions of
my countrymen had ever known. A few clearings, a railroad, and the
distant white gleam of the city were the only signs of human life. Once
again I knew that overwhelming feeling of helplessness that always
assails me when I look down on Umbala from the air !md realize the
insignificance of man against the everaleepigg Jungle. -The elevator
cage clicked to a halt, a quarter of a mile _up in the sky. When I
stepped out, I was in a tiny room packed wilb -coaxial cables and
instruments. There was still some di#W606 to go, for a short ladder led
through the roof to a platforift little more than a yard square. It was
not a place for anyom prone to vertigo; there was not even a handrail
for protection. A central lightning conductor gave a certain amount of,
and I gripped it firmly with one hand all the time I Security, stood on
this triangular metal raft, so close to the clouds. The -stunning view,
and the exhilaration of slight but ever- present danger, made me forget
the passage of tim. -I

felt like a god, completely apart from terrestrial affaim superior to
all other men. And then I knew, with mathema& cal certainty, that here
was a challenge that Chaka. could never ignore. Colonel Mtanga, his
Chief of Security, would object but-his protests would be overruled.

Knowing Chaka, =6 couia ct -with complete assurance that on the official
own*M Predi day he would stand here, alone, for many minutes, a,
surveyed his empire. His bodyguard would remain in the Protons Wow,
having already checked it for booby traps. They could do nothing to save
him when I struck from three miles and through the range of hills that
lay between the telescope and ?" observatory. I was glad of those -hm!@
though they complicated the problem, they would shield tied from all
suspicion. Colonel Mtanga was a very intelligiht,@ man, but he was not
likely to conceive of a gun that could _The around corners. And- he
would be looking for a gun, even though he could find no bullets ... I
went back to the laboratory and started my calculations. 'It was not
long before I discovered my first mistake. Because I had seen the
concentrated light of its laser beam punch a solid steel in a thousandth
of a second, I had my Mark X could kill a man. IMIt is notes

78 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

simple as that. In some ways, a man is a tougher proposition than a
piece of steel. He is mostly water, which has ten times the heat
capacity of any metal. A beam of light that will drill a hole through
armor plate, or carry a message as far as Pluto.--which was the job the
Mark X had been designed for@would give a man only a painful but quite
superficial bum. About the worst I could do to Chaka, from three mile
away, was to drill a hole in the colorful tribal blanket he wore so
ostentatiously, to prove that he was still one of the People. For a
while, I almost abandoned the project. But it v0ould not die;
instinctively, I knew that the answer was there, if Wy I could see it.

Perhaps I could use my invisible buffets of beat to cut one of the
cables guying the tower, so that it would come crashing down when Chaka
was at the summit. Calculation& showed that this was just possible if
the Mark X operated continuously for fifteen seconds. A cable, unlike a
man, would not move, so there was no need to stake everything on a
single pulse of energy. I could take my time. But damaging the telescope
would have been treason to science, and it was almost a relief when I
discovered that this scheme would not work. The mast had so many
built-in safety factors that I would have to cut, three separate cables
to bring it down. This was out of the question; it would require hours
Of delicate adjustment to set and aim the apparatus for each-, precision
shot. I had to think of something else; and because it takes men a' long
time to see the obvious, it was not unff-a week before the official
opening of the telescope that I knew how to deal with Chaka, the
All-Seeing, the @Omnipotent, the Father of his People. By this time, my.

graduate students had tuned and calibrated the equipment, and we were
ready for the first fulj-power tests, As it rotated on its mounting
inside the observatory dome, Ifte Mark X looked exactly like a large
double-barreled reflecting. telescope-- which indeed it was. One
thirty-six-inch mirror gathered, the laser pulse and focused it out
across space; the other acted as a receiver for incoming signals, and
was also used; like a superpowered telescopic sight, to aim the systim..

@ We checked the line-up on the nearest celestial target, dw Moon. Late
one night, I set the cross wires on the center of the waning crescent
and fired off a pulse. Two and a half seconds later, a fine echo came
bouncing back. We were in business. There was'one detail still to be
arran and. this I had to ged,  The Light of Darknen 7#

do myself, in utter secrecy. The radio telescope lay to the north of the
observatory, beyond the ridge of hills that .blocked our direct view of
it. A mile to the south was a sing% isolated mountain. I knew it well,
for years ago I had helped to set up a cosmic-ray station there.

Now it would be used for a purpose I could never have imagined in the
days when my country was free. Just below the summit were the ruins of
an old fort, deserted centuries ago. It took only a little watching to
fin& Ow spot I needed-a small cave, less than a yard high. between two
great stones that had fallen from the ancient walll Judging by the
cobwebs, no human being had entered it for generations. VA= I crouched
in the opening, I could we the whole apause-of the Deep $pace Facility,
stretching away for milesi Over to the east were the antennas of the old
Project Apollo Tracking Station, which- had brought the first men back
from the Moon. Beyond that lay the airfield, above which a big-"
freighter was hovering as it came in on its underjets. But aft that
interested me were the clear lines of sight from, this spot, to the Mark
X dome, and to the tip of the radio telescope mast three miles to the
north. It took me three days to install the carefully silvere4 optically
perfect mirror in its hidden alcove. 'Me tedious micrometer adjustments
to give the exact orientation took so long-that I feared I would not be
ready in time. But at last the angle was correct, to a fraction of a
second of arc. Whert I aimed the telescope of the Mark X at the
secret-spot on the@ mountain, I could see over the hills behind me. The
field of view was tiny, but it was sufficient; the target area was only
-a yard across, and I could sight on any part of it to within fit which.

Along the path I had arranged, light could travel in either direction.

Whatever I saw through the viewing telescope was automatically in the
line of fire of the transmitter. It was strange, three days later, to
sit in the. quiet observatory, with the power packs huninung around me,
and to watch Chaka move into the field of the telescope. I felt a brief:
gkw of triumph, like an astronomer who has calculated the orbit of a new
planet and then finds it in the predlapd, spotamong the stars.

The cruel face was in profile when I saw it first, apparently only
thirty feet away at the extreme magnification I was using. I waited
patiently, in serene confidence, for the moment that I knew -must,
come-the moment when

90 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

Chaka seemed to be looking. directly toward me. 'Men with my left hand I
held- the image of an ancient god who must be nameless, and with my
right I tripped the capacitor banks that fired the laser, launching my
silent, mivisible thunderbolt across the mountains. Yes, it was so much
better this way. Chaka deserved to be killed, but death would have
turned him into a martyr and strengthened the hold of his regime. What I
had visited upon him was worse than death, and would throw his
supporters into superstitious terror. Chaka still lived; but the
All-Seeing would see no more. la the space of a few microseconds, I had
made him less Om humblest beggar in the streets. And I had not even hurt
him. 'Mere is no pain when the delicate film of the retina is fused by
the heat of a thouiand suns.

February 1964

The Longest Science-Fidlon Story Ever Told

Dear. Mr. rmx: @ rm afraid your idea Is not at all original. Stories
abott writers whose work is always plagiarized even Wore they can,
complete it go back at least to H. 0. Wells's 'The Anticipator.' A-bout
once a week I receive a manuscript beginning:

Dew Mr. Jinx:

rm afraid your Idea Is not at all original. Stories about writers whose
work is always plagiarized 'even before they can complete it go back at
least to H. 0. Welws IM Anticipator." About once a week I receive A
manuscript bezinnina:

Dear Mr. Jinx-rm afraid your idea is not

Better luck next timel Sincerely, Morris K. Mobius Editor, Stupefying
Stories

Better luck wxt timel

Sincerely, Morris K. Mobius; FAtor, Stupefying Stories, Better luck next
timel Sincerely, Morris K. Mobius. Editor, Stupefying Stories.

April 1965

81

Herbert Ceorge Morley Roberts Wells.. Esq.

A couple of years ago I wrote a tale accurately entitled 'The bxgoit
Science-Fiction Story Ever Told," which Fred Pom duly published on a
single page of his magazine. (Becam editors have. to jtist:ify their
existence somehow, be. renamed @jt 'A Recursion in Metastories." You'll
find it in Galaxy for October 1966.) Near the beginning of this
metastory, but an fafiniate number of words from its end, I referred to
1@@: Anticipator" by H. 0. Wells. Iliough I encountered this short
fantasy some twenty yean ago, and have never read it since, it left a
vivid inlpr@ cii, my miii& It concerned two writers, one of whom had all
his bw . d6des published by the other-4before be mm *visit complete them
himself. At last, in desperation, he decidedfliit murder was the
only'cure for this chronic (literally) plaglarism. But, of course, once
again his rival beat him to it, and do, story ends with the words 'the
anticipator, horribly afraid., ran down a by-street" Now I would have
sworn on a stack of Bibles that this stay was written by H. 0. Wells.

However, some months after appearance I received, a letter from Leslie
A. Gritten, of Everett, Washington, saying that he couldn't locate it
Ara Mr. Oritten has been a Wells fan for a long, long time; @ ht'
clearly recalls the serialization of "'Me War of the Worlde' in the
Strand Magazine at the end of the 1890's. As one of the. Master's
cockney characters would say, I@Gor blimey.1 - Refusing to believe that
my mental filling system had playe& such a dirty trick on me, I quickly
searched through tiw twentyn-odd volumes of the autographed Atlantic
Edition imthe Colonibo Public Library. (By a charming coincidence,
tbebritish Council had just arranged a Wells Centenary Exhibition, and
the library entrance was festooned with photos illustrating his
background and career.) I soon found that Mr. Grittan was right: there
was no such story as M Anftlpli82

 Herbert George Morley Roberu Wells, Esq. 83

tor" in the collected works. Yet in the months since TLSFSET was
published, not one other reader has queried the reference. I find this
depressing; where are all the Wells fans these days? Now my erudite
informant has solved at least part of the mystery. "Me Anticipator" was
written by one Morley Roberts; it was first published in 1898 in The
Keeper of the Waters and Other Stories. I probably encountered it in a
Doubledayanthology, Travelers In Time (1947), edited by Philip Van Doren
Stern. Yet several problems remain. First of all, why was I so
convinced- that the story was by Wells? I can only suggestand it seems
pretty farfetched, even for my grasshopper mind-4hat the similarity of
words had made me link it subconsciously with

"The Accelerator." I would also like to know why this story has stuck so
vividly 'in my memory.

Perhaps, like all writers, I am peculiarly sensitive to the dangers of
plagiarism. So far (touch wood) I have been lucky; but I have notes for
several tales rm afraid to write until I can be quite sure they're
original. (Iberes this couple, see, who land their spaceship on a new
world after their planet has been blown up, and when they've started
things all over again you find-surprise, surprisel-4hat they're called
Adam and Eve ... ) One worth-while result of my error was to start me
skimming through Wells's short stories again, and I -was surprised to
find what a relatively small proportion could be called science fiction,
or even fantasy. Although I was wet Aware that only a fraction of his
hundred-odd publishe4' volumes were S. F., I had forgotten that this was
also true of the short stories. A depressing quantity are dramas - and
comedies of Edwardian life ("Me Jilting of Jane"), rather painful
attempts at humor ("My First Aeroplane"), near- autobiography ("A Slip
Under the Microscope"), or pure sadism ("The Cone"). Undoubtedly, I am
biased, but among these tales such masterpieces as "'Me Star,"

"The Crysw P4M" 'The Flowering of the Strange Orchid," and, above all,
'Me Country of the Blind" blaze like diamonds amid costume jewelry. But
back to Morley Roberts. I know nothing whatsoever about him, and wonder
if his little excursion in time was itself Inspired by

"The Time Machine," published just a couple of years before 'The
Anticipator." I also wonder which story was actually written-not
published-first.

84 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

And why did such an ingenious writer not make more of a name for
himself? Perhaps ... I have just been struck by a perfectly horrid
thought. If I-L G. Welws contemporary Morley Roberts was ever found
murdared in a dark alley, I simply doift want to know about it

April 1967

Love That Universe

Mt. President, National Administrator, Planetary Delegates, It booth an
honor a@d a grave responsibility to address you # it "ment of crisis. I
am aware--I can very well undei0*d-that many of you are shocked and
dismayed, by sorm Wthe rumors that you have heard. But I must beg you W
Uget your natural prejudices at a time when the veky. aftence of the
human race-of the Earth itself-is at stakc@ me time ago I came Across a
century-old phrase: "thinkift the unthinkable." This is exactly what we
have to do now. we must face the facts without flinching; we must not
letow sway our logic. Indeed, we must do the plicisi@ Ofposite: we must
let our logic sway our emotionsl

The situation is desperate, but it is not hopeless, thanks tl@
AP-astonishing discoveries my colleagues have made at tho AMigean
Station. For the reports are indeed true; we, can't odhblish contact
with the supercivilizations at the Galactk" am if Cm. At least we can
let them know of our existence- Vi. can do that, it should be possible
for us to appeal to -hills.

,Ibereis, nothing, absolutelynothing, thatwecand6byoiir'. *van efforts
in the brief time available. It is only ten ye", 400@6 the search for
trans-Plutonian planets revealed - tl*

Dw Men e of the Black 'arf. Only ninety years from now, if c '

make its perihelion passage and swing around the Sun, as It beads once
more into the depths of space--Ieavm'g 4, d stoldar system behind it. AU
our resources , 4. out Lte 7aun e control over the forces of nature,
cannotaltet of an inch. the flat of the so-called "beacoft stars" was
the end of the twentieth century, we have were civilizations with access
to energy arably greater than ours. Some of you wiff the incredulity of
the astronomers-and later race-when the first examples of Cdaink SS

86 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

engineering were detected in the Magellanic Clouds. 3110@ were stellar
structures obeying no natural laws; even now, -W* CIO not know their
purpose but we know their awpsam implications. We share a universe with
creatures who'.'VW juggle with the very stars. If they choose to help,
it would be child's play for them to deflect a body like the Black D*UL
only a few thousand times the mass of Earth ... Child's p*, did I call
it? Yes, that may be literally truel You will all, I am certain,
remember the great debate tbatt - 1011owed, the discovery of the
supercivilizations. Should we a#empt to communicate with them, or would
it be best to ramfn inconspicuous? There was the possibility, of, cousin
that, they'already knew everything about us, or might-to 4pnpyed. by our
presumption, or might react in any number, at wipleasant ways. Though
the benefits from such contus, if i thousand away. Even 11 it would be
years we c

wiswer. In these circumstances, it seemed that-*W be, neither a help to
us nor a threat. this has changed. We can send signals to d that cannot
yet be measured, axid @the4`, And we know that they am @vsing r, we have
detected their impulses, though we ;oanot begin to interpret them. ses-
are not electromagnetic, of aoum we they are; we do not even hewe a nam
we have too many names.

it there, is something, after al, in telepathy, ESP, or whatever ym care
to dd -But it Is no wonder that the study of such phoonmena newj@pi*
progress here on Earth, where there is the cqpi@ ous background roar of
a billion minds to sw@ Evem tire pitiably limited progress that was r=A
Skiace Agi seems a miracle-4ike discoverift I zqusic in a boiler
factory. It was not'until we cou from our planet's mental tumult that
there va* i 4"HAing a real science of parapsychology. then we had to WHO
to the

 Love That univfm 97

where the noise was not only diminished by, a eighty million miles of
distance, but also shielded by the- unimaginable bulk of the Sun itself.
Only there, on our ('artificial planetoid Antigeos, could we, detect-
and measure the feeble radiations of mentality, and uncover their laws
of Propagation.

In many respects, those laws are still bafiling. However, we ba"

established the basic facts. As had long been suspectea by"the few who
believed in -these phenomena, they trisgered by emotional states-not by
pure willpower or 'ideliberate. conscious thought. It is not surprising,
therefore, 'that so.

j many reports of paranormal events in the past were - @,@@assocjated
with moments of death or disaster. Fear is a !jpo*#rm:Vnerator; on rare
occasions it can manifest itself above the surrounding noise ...,Once
this fact was recognized, we began to make progrest artificial emotional
states, first in single indivjdw@, We were able to measure how the sisnw
distance. Now, we have a reliable, qusntitk_@-_ at has been checked out
as far as Saturn. W*- calculations can be extended even to the , we can
produce a ... a shout that * over the whole galaxy And surely there o
will respondl is only one way in which a signal of the req be produced.
I said that fear was a ut it is not powerful enough. Even if we could
moment of terror, the more than two thousand least four times -this I
range. Aad the only entotion, that it "I"

co-operation of not fewer than a billion als, at a moment of time that
must ba svechronized to the second. My colleagues have solved all thi.

quite trivial. , ju have been used. Centurig and the planetary s
networks. AU the units needed can be massl@ a month, and instruction in
their use requacs minutes. It is the psychological preparation I it 0
Day-that will take a little longer ... gentlemen, isygur problem;
naturally, we scien.;

88 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

tists will give you all possible help. We realize that there wic'@. be
protests, cries of outrage, refusals to co-operate. But when7@@, one
looks at the matter logically, is the idea really so offensive? Many of
us think that, on the contrary, it has a certain appropriateness-even a
poetic justice. Mankind now faces its ultimate emergency. In such a
moment of crisis, is it not right for us to call upon the instinct that
has always ensured our survival in the past? A poet in an earlier,
almost equally troubled age put it better than I can ever hope to do:

WE MUST LOVE ONE ANarher OR DM

October 1966

Crusade

It was a world that had never known a sun. For more *04r billion, years,
it had hovered midway between two galaziek @ I the prey of their
conflicting gravitational pulls. In some futurd, age the balance would
be tilted, one way or the other, and it would start to fall across- the
light-centuries, down towart-A warmth alien to all its experience. Now
it was cold beyond imagination; the intergalactic nit& had drained away
such heat as it had once there were seas ther&--seas of the only elemen
in- the liquid form at a fraction of a degree above
,zm.,Inttwshaffowoceansofhehumthat, bathedtliiss ulaim@ world electric
currents once started could flow forever, w* no ;@Z@ of power. Here
superconductivity was the 4ormal order of things; switching proce&ies
could take plain' bftmimf 4mes a second, f or millions of years, with
negftibl@ consunqpfion of energy.

hsve

It was a computers paradise. No world could mme hostile to life, or more
hospitable to intelligence. And intelligence was there, dwelling in a
planet-wide fimmstation of crystals and microscopic metal threads.

IU feeble fight, of the two contending galaxies-briefly doubi4 conturies
by the filcke-rof a say few supernova-4 Sbak lawh"pe of sculptured
geometrical forms moved, for there was no need of movement in a thoughts
flashed from one hemisphere to the other at the speed of light. Where
only information was important, it was &,-waste of precious energy to
transfer bulk matter. Yet when it was essential, that, too, could be
arranged. For - Minme millions Of years, the intelligence brooding over
this, Gjy world bad become aware of a certain lack of essentid data.. In
a future that, though still remote, it could already foresee, one of
those beckoning galaxies would capture it. What it ' would encounter,
when it dived into those swarms of suns, @Was beyond its power of
-computation. 89

90 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

So it put forth its will, and myriad crystal lattices reshaped
themselves. Atoms of metal flowed across the face of the planet. In the
depths of the helium sea, two identical subbraim began to bud and grow.

... Once it had made its decision, the mind of the planet worked
swiftly; in a few thousand years, the task was done. Without a sound,
with scarcely a ripple in the surface of the frictionless sea, the newly
created entities lifted from their birthplace and set forth for the
distant stars. They departed in almost opposite directions,'and for mm
thim, amillion years the parent intelligence heard no more of Its
bff3pring. It had not expected to; until they reached their Vals, there
would be nothing to report. @- Then, almost simultaneously, came the
news that -both, minions had faded. As they approached the great
galactic fun and felt the massed warmth of a trillion suns, the -two
explorers died. Their vital circuits overheated and lost Aw
superconductivity essential for their operation, and two mindless metal
hulks drifted on toward the thickening stars. But before disaster
overtook them, they had reported on their @ problems; without surprise
or disappointment, the motheiworld prepared its second attempt. a
million years later, its third ... and its fourth NW fail Afth ...
Such-unwearying patience -deserved success; and at last it came, 'in the
shape of two long, intricately modulated trains of pulses, pouring in,
century upon century, from opposite quarters of the sky.

They were stored in memory circuits idesitical: with those of the lost
exploren-so that, for- 'all it was as if the two scouts had themselves
burden of knowledge. That their metal lmsks;ha& in fact vanished among
the stars was totally, usaimportant; the problem@of personal identity
was not coo that had ever occurred to the planetary mind or its
o5spring, Vim came the surprising news that- one universe'was empty. IMe
visiting probe had listened it all possible frequencies, to all
conceivable radiations; it could detect nothin& except the mindless
background of star noise. It had scanned, a thousand worlds without
observing any trace of intelligence. True, the tests were inconclusive,
for it was unable to approach any star closely enough to make a detailed
examination of its planets. It had been attempting this when its
insulation broke down, its temperature soared to-the freezin&@
Ointotaltrogmandit, died-fromtheheal

 Crusade 91

The parent mind was still pondering the enigma of a deserted galaxy when
reports came in from its second explorer. Now all other problems were
swept aside; for this universe teemed with intelligences, whose thoughts
echoed horn du to star in a myriad electronic codes. It had taken ady
alew centuries for the probe to analyze and interprel@; tbem An. @:It
realized quickly enough @ gh that it was faced with WM- gences of, a
very strange form indeed. Why, some of them existed on worlds so
unimaginably hot that even water was POsent in the liquid statel Just
what manner of intelligeme it was confronting, however, it did not learn
for a millennium. It barely survived the shock. Gathering its last
strength; It'_ bmted',ts, final report into the abyss; then it, too. vp4
consumed by the rising heat. Now, half a million years later, the
interrogation -of fty-st-borne twin's mind, holding all its memories and
ezpof@ ences, was under way ... @@Wylou detected intelligence?"

"Yes, Six hundred and thirty-seven certain cam: thlrty@@ probable ones.
Data herewith."

interval [Approximately three quadrillion bits of infortnaflon. of @a
-few years to process this in several thousand dwarfed V*saj0q*Ise and
confusion.]

']Me data must be invalid. All these- sources of intefflio-M, S are
correlated with high temperatures?"

"That is correct. But the facts are beyond dispute; fty must -be
accepted." 11rive hundred years of thought and experimenting. At Italy
end of -that time, definite proof that simple but waiting machines could
function at temperatures water. Large areas of the planet badly clam =of
the demonstration.] "M facts are, indeed, as you reported. Why did you
not attempt communications" 190 answer. Question repeated.] -,7W-ause
there appears to be a second and even inow..,4 itilous anomaly."

"Give data." fseveral quadrillion bits of information, sampled over sk'
hundred cultures, comprising voice, video, and neural trans.

mkdons, navigation =d control dgnats; inst@ telemetir-92 THE WIND FROM
THE SUN

ing; test patterns; jamming; electrical interference; medical equipment,
etc., etc. This followed by five centuries of analysis. That followed,
by Uffer consternation. @ After a long pause, selected data reexamined.

Tbousan& of visual images scanned and processed in every conceivable
manner. Great attention paid to several planetary civilizations
educational TV programs, especially those concerned with elementary
biology, chemistry, and-cybernetics. Finally:] Ipihi information is
self-consistent, but must be incorrect If it is not, we are forced to
these absurd conclusions: 1 Although intelligences of our type exist,
they appear to be in ; minority-2. Most intelligent entities are
partially liquid objects of very short duration. They are not even rigid
and are constructed in a most inefficient manner'from carbon, hydrom
oxygen, phosphorus, and other atoms. 3. Though they operate, at
unbelievably high temperatures, all their information processing is
extremely slow. 4. Their methods of replication are so complicated,
improbable, and varied that we- have not been able to obtain a clear
picture of them, in even a single Instance. "But, worst of all: S. They
claim to have created ow. obviously far superior type of intelligence"

[Cmww re-mmmination of all the data. Independent procew ing by Isolated
subsections of the global mind. Cross-checking ,of results. A thousand
years later: I "Most probable conclusion: Though much of the information
relayed back to us is certainly valid, the existence of high-order,
nonmechanical intelligences is a fantasy. (Deftiition: apparently self-
consistent rearrangement of facts having no correspondence with the real
universe.) This fantasy or mental artifact is a construct created by our
probe during its n. Why? Thermal damage? Partial destabilization of
intelligence, caused by long period of isolationand absence of
controlling feedback? "Why this particular form? Protracted brooding
over the problem of origins?,71is could lead to such delusions; model
systems have produced almost identical results in simulated tests. The
false logic involved is: 'We exist; therefore some. thing-call it
X-created us.' Once this assumption is made, the properties of the
hypothetical X can be fantasied in an unlimited number of ways. "But the
entire process is obviously fallacious; for by the -same logic something
must have created X-and so on. We

 Chuade 93

are immediately involved in an infinite regress, which can have no
meaning in the real universe. "Second most probable conclusion: Fairly
high-order, non- mechanical intelligence's do indeed exist. They suffer
from the delusion that they have created entities of our type. In some
cases, they have even imposed their control upon then-L 'rbough this
hypothesis is most unlikely, it must be investigated. If it, is found to
be true, remedial action must be taken. It should be as follows

71us final monologue occurred a million years ago. It explains why, in
the last half-century, almost one-quarter of the brighter novae have
occurred in one tiny region of the sky: the constellation Aquila.

"Me crusade will reach the vicinity of Earth about the year 2050.

October 1966

The Cruet Sky

By midnight, the sununit of Everest was only a hundred yards away, a
pyramid of snow, pale and ghostly in the light of the rising Moon. The
sky was cloudless, and thewind that had been blowing for days had
dropped almost to zeft It must be rare indeed for the highest point on
Earth to be so calm and peaceful; they had chosen their Ume well.

Perhaps too well, thought George Harper; it had been almost
disappointingly easy. Their only veal problem had been getting out of
the hotel without being observed. The management objected to
unauthorized midnight excursions up the mountain; there could be
accidents, which were bad for business. But Dr. Elwin was determined to
do it this way, and he had the best of reasons, though he never
discussed them The presence of one of the world's most famous
scientists-,wd certainly the world's most famous cripple-at Hotel
Everest during the height of the tourist season had already aroused a
good deal of polite surprise. Harw had allayed some of the curiosity by
hinting that they were engaged in gravity measurements, which was at
least part of the truth. But a part of the truth that, by this time, was
vanishingly small. Anyone looking at Jules Elwin now, as he forged
steadily toward the twenty-nine-thousand-foot level with fifty pounds of
equipment on his shoulders, would never have guessed IW his legs were
almost useless. He-had been born a victim of the.1961 thalidomide
disaster, which had left more than ten thousand partially deformed
children scattered over the face of the world. Elwin, was one of the
lucky ones. His arms wets quite normal, and, had been strengthened by
exercise until' they were considerably more powerful than most mens' His
legs, however, were mere wisps of flesh and bone. With the aid of
braces, he could stand and even totter a few uncertain steps, but he
could never really_ walk. 94

 The Cruel Sky 95 Yet now he was two hundred feet from the top of
Everest.

A travel poster bad started it all, more than three years ago. As a
junior computer programer in the Applied Physics Division, George Harper
knew Dr. Elwin only by sight and by reputation. Even to those working
directly under him, Astro. techs brilliant Director of Research was a
slightly remote personality, cut off from the ordinary run of men both
by his body and by his mind. He was neither liked nor disliked, and,
though he was admired and pitied, he was certainly not envied.

@Karper, only a few months out of college, doubted if the Doctor even
knew of his existence, except as a name on an oqpnization chart. nerc
were ten other programers in the division, all senior to him, and most
of them had never exchanged more than a dozen words with their research
director. When Harper was co- opted as messenger boy to carry one of the
classified files into Dr. Elwin's office, he expected to be in and- out
with nothing more than a few polite formalities.

That was almost what happened. But just as he was leavin& he was stopped
dead by the magnificent panorama of Himalayan peaks covering half of one
wall. It had been placed-where Dr. Elwin could see it whenever he looked
UP from his desk, and it showed a scene that Harper knew very well
indeed, for he had photographed it himself, as an awed and slightly
breathless tourist standing on the trampled snow at the crown of
Everest.

There was the white ridge of Kanchenjunga, rearing through the clouds
almost a hundred miles away. Nearly in, line with it, but much nearer,
were the twin peaks of Makalu; and closer still, dominating the
foreground, was the immense bulk of Lhotse, Everest's neighbor and
rival. Farther around to the west, flowing down valleys so huge that the
eye cou not appreciate their scale, were the jumbled ice rivers of the
Khumbu and Rongbuk glaciers. From this height, their frozen wrinkles
looked no larger than the furrows in a plowed field; but those ruts and
scars of iron-hard ice were hundreds of feet deep. I Harper was still
taking in that spectacular view, reliving old memories, when he heard
Dr. Elwin's voice behind him. 'You seem interested. Have you ever been
there?"

"Yes, Doctor. My folks took me after I graduated from

96 THE V4M FROM TIM SUN

high school. We stayed at the hotel for a week, and thought we'd have to
go home before the weather cleared. But on the last day the, wind
stopped blowing, and about twenty of us made it to the summit. We
were'there for an hour, taking pictures of each other." Dr. Elwin seemed
to digest this information for rather a long time. Then he said, in a
voice that had lost its previous remoteness and now held a definite
undercurrent of excitement: "Sit down, Mr.---ah-Harper. rd like to hear
more." As he walked back to the chair facing the Director's big
uncluttered desk, George Harper found himself somewhat puzzled. What he
had done was not in the least unusual; every year thousands of people
went to the Hotel Everest, and about a quarter of them reached the
mountain's summit. Only last year, in fact, there had been a
much-publicized presentstion to the ton- thousandth tourist to stand on
the top of the world. Some cynics had commented on the extraordinary
coincidence that Number 10,000 had just happened to be a rather
well-known video starlet. There was nothing that Harper could tell Dr.
Elwin that he couldn't discover just as easily from a dozen other
source*--: the tourist brochures, for example. However, no young and
ambitious scientist would nuiss this opportunity to impress a man who
could do so much to help his career. Harper was neither coldly
calculating nor inclined to dabble in office politics, but he knew a
good chance when he saw one. "Well, Doctor," he began, speaking slowly
at first as ho. tried to put his thoughts and, memories in order, "thl
jets land you at a little town called Namchi, about twenty miles from
the mountain. Then the bus takes you along el spectacular road up to the
hotel, which overlooks the Khumbu Glacier. It's at an altitude of
eighteen thousand feet, and there are pressurized rooms for anyone who
finds it hard to breathe. Of course, theres a medical staff in
attendance, and the management won't accept guests who aren't physically
fit. You have to stay at the hotel for at least two days, on a special
diet before you're allowed to go higher. "From the hotel you can't
actually see the summit, because you're too close to the mountain, and
it seems to loom right above you. But the view is fantastic. You can see
Lhotse and half a dozen other peaks. And it can be scary, too-especially
at night. The wind is usually howling somewhere high overhead, and there
are-weird noises from the moving ice. It's

4

 The Cnwl Sky 97

easy to imagine that there are monsters prowling around up in the
mountains ... 'Ilere's not much to do at the hotel, except to relax and
watch the scenery, and to wait until the doctors give you the.

go-ahead. In the old days it used to take weeks to acclimatize to the
thin air; 'now they ran make your blood count shoot up to the right
level in forty-eight hours. Even so, about half the visitors-mostly the
older ones-decide that this is quite high enough for them. ITVhat
happens next depends on how experienced you am and how much you're
willing to pay. A few expert climbers hire guides and make their own way
to the top, using standard nwantaineering equipment.-that isn't too
difficult nowadays,, and there are shelters at various strategic spots.

Most of thew groups I make it. But the weather is always a gamble, and
every year a few people get killed. *The average tourist does it the
easier way. No aircraft are allowed to land on Everest itself, except in
emergencies, but there's a lodge near the crest of Nuptse and a
helicopter service to it 'from the hotel. From the lodge it's only three
'nulas to the summit, via the South Col-an easy climb for mwone in good
condition, with a little mountaineering experience. Some people do it
without oxygen, though that's not recommended. I kept my mask on until I
reached the-top; then I took it off and found I could breathe without
much difficulty.09 "Did you use filters or gas cylinders?"

"Oh, molecular -filters-they're quite reliable now, aad increase the
oxygen concentration over a hundred per ceftl JWve simplified
high-altitude climbing enormously. No one carries compressed gas any
more"

".ow long did the climb taker

"A full day. We left just before dawn and were back'at nightfall. That ,
would have surprised the old-timers. gut of course we were starting
fresh and traveling light.

There are no real problems on the route from the lodge, and steps have
been cut at all the tricky places. As I said, it's easy for anyone m
good condition." The instant he repeated those words, Harper wished that
he had bitten off his tongue. It seemed incredible that he could have
forgotten who he was talking to, but the wonder and excitement of that
climb to the top of the world had come back- so vividly that for a
moment he was once more On that -98 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

lonely, wind-swept peak@. The one spot on Earth where Dr. Elwin could
never stand ... But the scientist did not appear to have noticed-or else
he wa I s so used to such unthinking tactlessness that it no longer
bothered him. Why, wondered Harper, was he so interested in Everest?

Probably because of that very inaccessibility; it stood for all that had
been denied to him by the accident of birth.

Yet now, only three years later, George Harper paused a bare hundred
feet from the summit and drew in the nylon rope as the Doctor caught up
with him. Though nothing had 0 1Ver been said about it, he knew that the
scientist wished to be the first to the top. He deserved the @ honor,
and the younger man Would do nothing to rob him of it.

"Everything MM" he asked as Dr. Elwin drew abreast of bjmr The question
was quite unnecessary, but Harper felt an argent need to challenge the
great loneliness that now surrounded them. They might have been the only
men in A the A nowhere world, amid this white wilderness of peaks was
them any sign that the human race existed. Ehda did not answer, but gave
an absent-minded nod w he shining eyes fixed upon the summit. He wac
curiously stiff-logged gait,.and his feet =&impression in the snow. And
as he walkg4 there came a faint but unmistakable whine from the bulky
backpack he was carrying on his shoulders. That pack, indeed, was
carrying him--or thriwquarters of him. As he forged steadily along the
last few feet to his and all his equipment if that was still too much,
he d weigh no thing at WI. Himalayas was the greatest secret of the
twenty-first century. In all the world

, there were onlyfive of these experimental Elwin Levitators, and two of
them were here on Everest

Even though he had known about them for two a

yeam understood something of their basic theory, the

"Levviw-49 they had soon been christened at the lab-still seemed Mm
magic to Harper. Their power-packs stored enough e ectrica energy to
lift a two- hundred-and-fifty-pound weight through a vertical distance
of ten miles, which gave an ample safety factor for this mission. The
lift- and-descend cycle could -be repeated almost indefinitely as the
units reacted against the gravitational field. On the way up, the
battery &or

 The Cruel Sky 99

charged; on the way down, it was charged again. Since no mechanical
process is completely efficient, there was a slight loss of energy on
each cycle, but it could be repeated at least a hundred times before the
units were exhausted. Climbing the mountain with most of their weight
neutralized had been an exuarating experience. The vertical tug of the
harness made it feel that they were hanging from invisible balloons,
whose buoyancy could be adjusted at will. They needed 6, certain amount
of weight in order to get traction on the ground, and after some
experimenting had settled on twenty-live percent. With this, it was as
easy to ascend a one-in-one slope as to walk normally on the level.

,Several times they had cut their weight almost to zero to rise hand
over hand up vertical rock faces. This had been the strangest experience
of all, demanding complete faith in their equipment. To hang suspended
in mid-air, apparently supported by nothing but a box of gently humming
electronicgear, required a considerable effort of will.

But after a few minubw the sense of power and freedom overcame all fear,
for These indeed was the re-gli-tion of one of marvs oldest dreams. A
few weeks ago one of the library staff had found a line from an early.
twentieth-century poem that described thek adhievenient perfectly: "To
ride _ secure the cruet sky." Not cm birds had ever possessed such
freedom of the third diniinsion; this was the real conquest of space.

The Levitater would open up the mountains and the high places of the
world, as a lifetime ago the aquahmg had opened up the SO a-. Once these
units had passed their tests and were mass-my-i@ duood cheaply, every
aspect of human civilization woula be' charged, Transport would be
revolutionid. Space travd, ' would be no more expensive than ordinary
flying; all mankind would take to the air. What had happened a hundred
years earlier with the invention of the automobile was only@ a mm
foretaste of the staggering social and political changes that .must now
come. But Dr. Elwin, Harper felt mm, was thinking Of none of these in
his lonely moment of triumph. Later, he would receive the world's
applause (and perhaps its curses), yet it would not mean as much to him
as standing here on Earth's highest point. This was truly a victory of
mind over matter, of sheer intelligence over a frail and crippled body.

All the rest would be anticlimax. When Harper joined the scientist on
the flattened snowcovered 'Pyram4 they shook hands with rather formal

100 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

stiffness, because that seemed the right thing to do. But they said
nothing; the wonder of their achievement, and the panorama of peaks that
stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction, had robbed
them of words. Harper relaxed in the buoyant support of his harness and
slowly scanned the circle of the sky. As he recognized them, he mentally
called off the names of the surrounding gianb:Makalu, Lhotse, Baruntse,
Cho Oyu, Kanchenjunga ... Even now scores of these peaks had never been
climbed. Well, the Levvies would soon change that. There were many, of
course.' who would disapprove. But back mi the twentieth century there
had also been mountaineers who thought it was "cheating"

to use oxygen. It was hard to believe that, even after weeks of
acclimatization, men had once attempted to reach these heights with no
artificial aids at all. Harper remembered Mallory and Irvine, whose
bodies still lay undiscovered perhaps within a mile of this very spot.

Behind him, Dr. Elwin cleared his throat. "Let's go, George," he said-
quietly, his voice muffled by the oxygen filter. "We must get back
before they start looking for ULIS With a silent farewell to all those
who had stood bore before them, they turned away from the summit and
started down the gentle slope. The night, which had been brilliantly
clear until now, was becoming darker; some high clouds well ftping
across the face of the Moon so rapidly that its light switched on and
off in a manner that sometimes made it hard to, see the route. Harper
did not like the look of the weather and began. mentally to rearrange
their plans. Perhaps it would' be better to aim for the shelter on the
South Col, rather than attempt to reach the lodge. But he said nothing
to Dr. Elwin, not, wishing to raise any false alarms. Now they were
moving along a knife edge of rock, with utter darkness on one side and a
faintly glimmering snowscape on the other. This would be a terrible
place, Harper could not help thinking, to he caught by a storm. He had
barely shaped the thought when the gale was upoa them. From out of
nowhere, it seemed, came a shrieking blast of air, as if the mountain
had been husbanding its strength, for this moment. There was no time to
do anything; even had they possessed normal weight, they would have been
swept pff their feet. In seconds, the wind had tossed them out over
shadowed, empty blackness.

 The Chiel Sky 101

It was Impossible to judge the depths beneath them; when Harper forced
himself to glance down, he could see nothing. Though the wind seemed -to
be carrying him almost horizon. tally, he knew that, he must be falling.
His residual weight would be taking him downward at a quarter of the
normal speed. But that would be- ample- if they fell four thousand
-feet, it would be poor consolation to know that It would seem only one
thousand. He had not yet had time for fear-that would come later, if he
survived-and his main worry, absurdly enough, was that the expensive
Levitator might be damaged. He had completely forgotten his partner, for
in such a crisis the mind can hold only one idea at a time.

The sudden jerk on the nylon TOM filled him with puzzled alarm. Then he
saw Dr. Ewin sloqj revolving around him at the end of the line, like a
planet Curling a sun. The sight snapped him back to reality, and to a
consciousness of what must be done. His paralysis had probably lasted
only a fraction of a second. He, shouted across the wind: "Doctorl Use
emergency MI" As he spoke, he fumbled for the seal on his control Wd4
tore it open, and pressed the button. At once, the pack began to hum
like a hive of angry bear He felt the harness tugging at his body as it
tried to drag him up into the sky, away from the invisible death below.

M* simple arithmetic of the IS-th's Vimtational held blazed in his mind,
as if written in letters of fire. One kilowatt could lift a hundred
kilograms through a meter every second, and the packs could convert
energy at a maximum rate of ten kilowatts-though they could not keep
this UP for more than a minute. So allowing for his initial weight
reduction, he should lift at well over a hundred feet a second. 1here
was a violent jerk on the rope as the slack between them was taken up.

Dr. Elwin had been slow to punch the emergency button, but at last he,
too, was ascending. It would be a race between the lifting power of
their units and the w1nd that was- sweeping them toward the icy face of
Lhotse, now scarcely a thousand feet away. I That wan Of snow-streaked
rock loomed above them hi the moonfight, a frozen wave of stone. It was
impossible to judge their speed accurately, but they could hardly be
moving at less than fifty miles an hour. Even if they survived the
impact, they could not expect to escape serious injury; and injury here
would be as good as death.

102 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

Then, just when it seemed that a collision was unavoidable, the current
of air suddenly shot skyward, dragging them with it. They cleared the
ridge of rock with a comfortable fifty feet to spare. It seemed like a
miracle, but,_ after a dizzying moment of relief, Harper realized that
what had saved them was only simple aerodynamics. The wind had to rise
in order to clear the mountain; on the other side, it would descen&'
again. But that no longer mattered, for the sky ahead was empty. Now
they were moving quietly beneath the broken clouds.

Though their speed had not slackened, the roar of the wind had suddenly
died away, for they were traveling with it through emptiness. They could
even converse comfortably, across the thirty feet of space that still
separated them.."Dr. Elwin," Harper called, "are you O. K'.?" "Yes,
George," said the scientist, perfectly calmly. "Now what do we do?' must
stop lifting. If we go any higher, we won't be able to breathe-even with
the filters."

"You're right. Let's get back into balance." Tho angry humming of the
packs died to a barely audible elec@ whine as they cut out the emergency
circuits. For a -few minutes they yo-yoed up and down on their nylon
rope-first one uppermost, then the other-until they managed to get mito
trim. When they had finally stabilized, they wpm drifting at a little
below thirty thousand feet.

Unless the Levvies failed-which, after their overload, was quite

PO$-sible- they were out of immediate danger. Their troubles would start
when they tried to return to Eardl

No 'Men in all history had ever greeted a stranger dawil Though they
were tired and stiff and cold, and the dryness 4 the thin air made every
breath rasp in their throats, they forgot all these discomforts as the
first dim glow spread along the jagged eastern horizon. The stars faded
one by one; last to go, only minutes before the moment of daybreak, was
the most brilliant of all the space stations-Pacific Number Three,
hovering twenty-two thousand miles above Hawail Then the sun lifted
above a sea of nameless peaks, and the Himalayan day had dawned. It was
like watching sunrise on the Moon. At first, only the highest mountains
caught the slanting rays, while the surroundfag valleys remained flooded
with inky shadows. But slowly

 The Cruet Sky 103, the line of light marched down the rocky slopes,
and more and more of this harsh, forbidding land climbed into the new
-day. Now, if one looked hard enough, it was possible to see signs of
human life. There were a few narrow roads,, thin col of smoke from
lonely villages, glints of reflected sunlight from monastery roofs. The
world below was waking, wholly unaware of the two spectators poised so
magically fifteen thousand feet above. During the night, the wind must
have changed direction several Cam, and Harper had no idea where they
were' He could not recognize a single landmark. They could have been
anywhere over a fivehundred-mile-long strip of Nepal and Mbet. TW
Immediate problem was to choose a landing place-and that soon, for they
were drifting rapidly toward a jumble of peaks and glaciers where they
could hardly expect to fio help. The wind was carrying them in a
northeasterly direptio%.

toward China. If they Boated over the mountains and land#&@ there, it
might be weeks before they could get in contact with, one of the U.N.
Famine Relief Centers and find their way home. They might even be in
some personal danger, if they descended out of the sky in an area where
there was only an illiterate and superstitious peasant population. 'We'd
better, get down quickly," said Harper. "I dont 08 the look of those
mountains." His words seemed utterly Icais the void around them Although
Dr. Ehvm was only ten feet away, it was easy to imagine that his
companion could not hear anything he said. But at last the Doctor nodded
his hem4 in almost reluctant agreement. "I'm. afraid you're right-but
rin not sure we can make, it, with this wind. Remember-we Can't go down
as quickly as wb can rise." That was low enough; the power-packs could
be charged 4 only a tenth of their discharge rate. If they lost altitude
aa& pumpedgravitational energy back into them too fast, the cells Would
overheat and probably explode. The startled Tibetans (or Nepalese?)
would think that a larger meteorite had, detonated in their sky. And no
one would ever know exactly" what had happened to Dr. Jules Ewin and his
promising young assistant. Five thousand feet above the ground, Harper
began to expect the explosion at any moment. They were falling swftly,
but not swiftly enough; very soon they would have to

104 THE VAM FROM THE SUN

decelerate, lest they hit at too high a speed. To make matters worse,
they had completely miscalculated the air speed at ground level. That
infernal, unpredictable wind was blowing a near-gale once more. They
could see streamers of snow, torn from exposed ridges, waving like
ghostly banners beneath them. While they had been moving with the wind,
they were unaware of its power; now they must once again make the
dangerous transition between stubborn rock and softly yielding sky. The
air current was funneling them into the mouth of a canyon. There was no
chance of lifting above it. They were committed, and would have to
choose the best landing place they could find. The canyon was narrowing
at a fearsome rate. Now it was little more than a vertical cleft, and
the rocky walls were sliding pan at thirty or forty miles an hour.

From tirne to time random eddies would swing them to the right, then the
left often they missed collisions by only a few feet Once, when they
were sweeping scant yards above a ledgethickly covered with snow, Harper
was tempted to pull the quick-relea" that would jettison the Levitator.

But that would be jumping from the frying pan into the fire: they might
get safely back onto firm ground only to find themselves napped unknc4n
miles from all possibility of help., Yet even at this moment of renewed
peril, he felt very little fear. It was all like an exciting dream--a
dream from which he would. presently wake up to, find himself safely in
his own bed. This fantastic adventure could not really be happening to
him., "boost" shouted the Doctor. 'Noves our chance-If we can snag that
boulderl" - I They had -ordy seconds in which to act. At once, -they
both began to play out the nylon rope, until it hung in a great loop
beneath them its lowest portion only a yard above the racing ground. A
large rock, some, twenty feet high, lay exactly in their line.

of flight; beyond it, a wide patch of snow gave promise of a reasonably
soft 14nding. The rope skittered over -the lower curves of the boulder,
seemed about to slip clear, then caught beneath an overhang. Harper felt
the sudden jerk. He was swung around like a stone on the end of a sling.
I never thought that snow could be so hard, he told himself.

After that there was a brief and brilliant explosion of light; dm
vothin& - The Cntel Sky 105

He was back at the university, in the lecture room. One of the
professors was talking, in a voice that was familiar, yet somehow did
not seem to belong here. In a sleepy, halfhearted fashion, he ran
through the names of his college instructors. No, it was certainly none
of them. Yet he knew the voice so well, and it was undoubtedly lecturing
to someone. "... still quite young when I realized that there was
something wrong with Einstein's Theory of Gravitation. In particular,
here seemed to be a fallacy underlying the Principle of Equivalence.
According to this, there is no way of distinguishing between the effects
produced by gravitation and those of acceleration.

"But this is clearly false. One can create a uniform acceleration; but a
uniform gravitational field is impossible, since it obeys an inverse
square law, and therefore must vary even over quite short distances. So
tests can easily be devised to distinguish between the two cases, and
this made, me wonder if ..." The softly spoken words - left no more
impression on Harper's mind than if they were in a foreign language.

He'. realized dimly that he should understand all this, but it was too
much trouble to look for the meaning. Anyway, the first problem was to
decide where he was. Unless there was something wrong with his eyes, he
was in complete darkness. He blinked, and the effort brought on such a
splitting headache that he gave a cry of pain. "George! Are you all
right?" Of course! That had been Dr. Elwin's voice, talking softly there
in the darkness. But talking to whom? "I've got alerrible headache. And
there's a pain in my side when I try to move. What's happened? Why is it
dark?"

"You've had concussion-and I think you've cracked a rib. Don't do any
unnecessary talking. You've been unconscious all day. It's night again,
and we're inside the tent. I'm saving our batteries." The glare from the
flashlight was almost blinding when Dr. Elwin switched it on, and Harper
saw the walls of the tiny tent around them. How lucky that they had
brought full mountaineering equipment, just in case they got trapped on
Everest. But perhaps it would only prolong the agony ... He was
surprised that the crippled scientist had managed, without any
assistance, to unpack all their gear, erect the tent, and drag him
inside. Everything was laid out neatly: the first-aid kit, the
concentrated-food cans, the water containers, 106 THE WM FROM THE SUN

the tiny red gas cylinders for the portable stove. Only the bulky
Levitator units were missing; presumably they had been left outside to
give more room. "You were talking to someone when I woke up," Harper
said. "Or was I dreaming7" Though the indirect light reflected from the
walls of the tent made it hard to read the other's expression, he could
see that Elwin was embarrassed. Instantly, he knew why, and wished that
he had never asked the question. The scientist did not believe that they
would survive. He had been recording his notes, in case their bodies
were ever discovered. Harper wondered bleakly if he had already recorded
his last will and testament. Before Elwin could answer, he quickly
changed the subject. "Have you called Lifeguard?"

"I've been trying every half hour, but I'm afraid were shielded by the
mountains. I can hear them, but they don't receive us." Dr. Elwin picked
up the little recorder-transceiver, which he had unstrapped from its
normal place on his wrist, and switched it on. 'vms is Lifeguard Four,"
said a faint mechanical voice, "listening out now." During the
five-second pause, Elwin pressed the SOS button, then waited, 'M is
Lifeguaid Four, listening out now." They waited for a full minute, but
there was no acknowledgment of their call. Well, Harper told himself
grimly, it's too late to start blaming each other now. Several times
while they had been drifting above the mountains they had debated
whether to call the global rescue service, but had decided against it,
partly because there seemed no point in doing so while they were still
air-borne,'partly because of the unavoidable publicity that would
follow. It was easy to be wise after the event: who would have dreamed
that they would land in one of the few places beyond Lifeguard's reach?
Dr. Elwin switched off -the transceiver, and the only sound in the
little tent was the faint moaning of the wind along the mountain walls
within which they were doubly trappedbeyond escape, beyond
communication. "Don't worry," he said at last. "By morning, well think
of a way out. There's nothing we can do until dawn-except make ourselves
comfortable. So drink some of this hot soup."

 The Cruel Sky 107

Several hours later, the headache no longer bothered Harper. Though he
suspected that a rib was indeed cracked, he had found a position that
was comfortable as long as he did not move, and he felt almost at peace
with the world. He had passed through successive phases of despair,
anger at Dr. Elwin, and self-recrimination at having become involved in
such a crazy enterprise. Now he was calm again, though his mind,
searching for ways of escape, was too active to allow sleep. Outside the
tent, the wind had almost died away, and the night was very still. It
was no longer completely dark, for the Moon had risen. Though its direct
rays would never reach them here, there must be some reflected light
from the snows above. Harper could just make out a dim glow at the very
threshold of vision, seeping through the translucent heat-retaining
walls of the tent. First of all, he told himself, they were in no
immediate danger. he food would last for at least a week; there was
plenty of snow that could be melted to provide water. In a day or two,
if his rib behaved itself, they nuight be able to take off again-this
time, he hoped, with happier results. From not far away there came a
curious, soft thud, which puzzled Harper until he realized that a mass
of snow must have fallen somewhere. The night was now so extraordinarily
quiet that he almost imagined he could hear his own heartbeat; every
breath of his sleeping companion seemed unnaturally loud. Curious, how
the mind was distracted by trivialitiesl Me turned his thoughts back to
the problem of survival. Even if he was not fit enough to move, the
Doctor could attempt the flight by himself. This was a case. where one
man would have just as good a chance of success as two.

There was another of those soft thuds, slightly louder this time. It was
a little odd, Harper thought fleetingly, for snow to move in the cold
stillness of the night. He hoped that there was no risk of a slide;
having had no time for a clear view of their landing place, he could not
assess the danger. He wondered if he should awaken the Doctor, who must
have had a good look around before he erected the tent, Then,
fatalistically, he decided against it; if there was an impending
avalanche, it was not likely that they could do much to escape. Back to
problem number one. Here was an interesting solution well worth
considering. They could attach the trans-108 THE V9" FROM THE SUN

ceiver to one of the Levvies and send the whole thing aloft The signal
would be picked up as soon as the unit left the canyon, and Lifeguard
would find them within a few hoursor, at the very most, a few days. Of
course, it would mean sacrificing one of the Levvies, and if nothing
came of it, they would be in an even worse plight. But all the same ...
What was that? This was no soft thudding of loose snow. It was a faint
but unmistakable "click," as of one pebble knocking against another. And
pebbles did not move themselves. You're imagining things, Harper told
himself. '1The idea of anyone, or anything, moving around one of the
high Himalayan passes in the middle of the night was completely
ridiculous. But his throat became suddenly dry, and he felt the flesh
crawl at the back of his neck. He had heard something, and it was
impossible to argue it away. Damn the Doctor's breathing; it was so
noisy that it was hard to focus on any sounds from outside. Did this
mean that Dr. Elwin, fast asleep though he was, had also been alerted by
his ever- watchful subconscious? He was being fanciful again ... Click.
Perhaps it was a little closer. It certainly came from a different
direction. It was almost as if something-moving with uncanny but not
complete silence-was slowly circling the tent. This was the moment when
George Harper devoutly wished he had never heard of the Abominable
Snowman. It was true that he knew little enough about it, but that
little was far too much. He remembered that the Yeti, as the Nepalese
called it, had been a persistent Himalayan myth for more than a hundred
years. A dangerous monster larger than a man, it had never been
captured, photographed, or even described by reputable witnesses. Most
Westerners were quite certain that it was pure fantasy, and were totally
unconvinced by the scanty evidence of tracks in the snow, or patches of
skin preserved in obscure monasteries. The mountain tribesmen knew
better. And now Harper was afraid that they were right. Then, when
nothing more happened for long seconds, his fears began slowly to
dissolve. Perhaps his overwrought imagination had been playing tricks;
in the circumstances, that would hardly be surprising. With a deliberate
and determined,  The Cruel Sky 109

effort of will, he turned his thoughts once more toward the problem of
rescue. He was making fair progress when something bumped into the tent.
Only the fact that his throat muscles were paralyzed from sheer fright
prevented him from yelling. He was utterly unab to move. Then, in the
darkness beside him, he heard Dr. Elwin begin to stir deeply.

"What is it?" muttered the scientist. "Are you all right?' Harper felt
his companion turn over and knew that he was groping for the flashlight.

He wanted to whisper: "For God's sake, keep quiet!" but no words could
escape his parched lips. There was a click, and the beam of the
flashlight formed a brilliant circle on the wall of the tent. That '
wall was now bowed in toward them as if a heavy weight was resting upon
it. And in the center of the bulge was a completely unmistakable
pattern: the imprint of a distorted hand or claw. It was only about two
feet from the ground; whatever was outside seemed to be kneeling, as it
fumbled at the fabric of the tent. The light must have disturbed it, for
the imprint abruptly vanished, and the tent wall sprang flat once more.

There was a low, snarling growl; then, for a long time, silence. Harper
found that he was breathing again. At any moment he had expected the
tent to tear open, and some unimaginable horror to come rushing in upon
them. Instead, almost anticlimactically, there was only a faint and
far-off wailing from a transient gust of wind in the mountains high
above. He felt himself shivering uncontrollably; it had nothing to do
with the temperature, for it was comfortably warm in their little
insulated world. Then there came a familiar-indeed, almost
friendlysound. It was the metallic ring of an empty can striking on
stone, and it somehow relaxed the tension a little. For the first time,
Harper found himself able to speak, or at least to whisper. "It's found
our food containers. Perhaps it'll go away now.' Almost as if in reply,
there was a low snarl that seemed to convey anger -and disappointment,
then the sound of a blow, and the clatter of cans rolling away into the
darkness. Harper suddenly remembered that all the food was here in the
tent; only the discarded empties were outside. That was not a cheerful
thought. He wished that, like superstitious tribesmen, they had left an
offering for whatever gods or demons the mountains could conjure forth.

110 THEVIMFROMTHESUN

What happened next was so sudden, so utterly unexpected, that it was all
over before he had time to react. There was a scuffling sound, as of
something being banged against rock; then a familiar electric whine;
then a startled grunt. And then, a heart-stopping scream of rage and
frustration that turned swiftly to sheer terror and began to dwindle
away at ever- increasing speed, up, up, into the empty sky. The fading
sound triggered the one appropriate memory in Harper's mind. Once he had
seen an early-twentieth-cefitury movie on the history of flight, and it
had contained a ghastly sequence showing a dirigible launching. Some of
the ground crew had hung on to the mooring lines just a few seconds too
long, and the airship had dragged them up into the sky, dangling
helplessly beneath it. Then, one by one, they had lost their hold and
dropped back to the earth. Harper waited for a distant thud, but it
never came. Then he realized that the Doctor was saying, over an dover
again: 'I left the two units tied together. I left the two units tied
together." He was still in too much of a state of shock for even that
information to worry him. Instead, all he felt was a detached and
admirably scientific sense of disappointment. Now he would never know
what it was that had been prowling around their tent, in the lonely
hours before the Himalayan dawn.

One of the mountain rescue helicopters, flown by a skeptical Sikh who
still wondered if the whole thing was an elaborate joke, came nosing
down the canyon in the late afternoon. By the time the machine had
landed in a flurry of snow, Dr. Elwin was already waving frantically
with one arm and supporting himself on the tent framework with the
other. As he recognized the crippled scientist, the helicopter pilot
felt a sensation of almost superstitious awe. So the report must be
true; there was no other way in which Elwin could possibly have reached
this place. And that meant that everything flying in and above the skies
of Earth was, from this moment, as obsolete as an ox-cart. "Thank God
you found us," said the Doctor, with heartfelt gratitude. "How did you
get here so quickly?"

"You can thank the radar tracking networks, and the telescopes in the
orbital met stations. We'd have been here, earlier, but at first we
thought it was all a hoax."

"I don't understand."

 The Cruel Sky 1 1 1

"What would you have said, Doctor. if someone reported a 'Very dead
Himalayan snow leopard mixed up in a tangle of straps and boxes-and
holding constant altitude at ninety thousand, feett' Inside the tent,
George Harper started to laugh, despite the pain it caused. The Doctor
put his head through the flap and asked anxiously: "What's the matter?"

"Nothing--ouch. But I was wondering how we are going to get the poor
beast down, before it's a menace to navigation."

"Oh, someone will have to go up with another Levvy and press the
buttons. Maybe we should have a radio control on all units ..." Dr.
Elwin's voice faded out in mid-sentence. Already he was far away, lost
in dreams that would change the face of many worlds. In a little while
he would come down from the mountains, a later Moses bearing the laws of
a new civilization. For he would give back to all mankind the freedom
lost so long ago, when the first amphibians left their weightless home
beneath the waves. The billion-year battle against the force of gravity
was over.

November 1966

Neutron Tide

"In deference to the next of kin," Commander Cummerbund explained with
morbid relish,- "the full story of the supercruiser Flatbush's last
mission has never been revealed. You know, of course, that she was lost
during the war against the Mucoids." We all shuddered. Even now, the
very name of the gelatinous monsters who had come slurping Earthward
from the general direction of the Coal Sack aroused vomitive memories.

"I knew her skipper well-Captain Karl van Rinderpest, hero of the final
assault on the unspeakable, but not unshriekable, Ilyeetch."

He paused politely to let us unplug our ears and mop up our spilled
drinks.

"Flatbush had just launched a salvo of probability inverters against the
Mucoid home planet and was heading back toward deep space in formation
with three destroyers-the Russian Viutenant Kizhe, the Israeli Chutzpah,
and Her Majesty's Insugerable. They were still accelerating when a
fantastically unlikely accident occurred. Flatbush ran straight into the
gravity well of a neutron star." When our expressions of horror and
incredulity had subsided, he continued gravely. "Yes-a sphere of
ultimately condensed matter, only ten miles across, yet as massive as a
sun-and hence with a surface gravity one hundred billion times that of
Earth. "The other ships were lucky. They only skirted the outer fringe
of the field and managed to escape, though their orbits were deflected
almost a hundred and eighty degrees. But Flatbush, we calculated later,
must have passed within a few dozen miles of that unthinkable
concentration of mass, and so experienced the full violence of its tidal
forces. "Now in any reasonable gravitational field--even that of a White
Dwarf, which may run up to a million Earth g's-you 112

 Neutron Tide 113

just swing around the center of attraction and head on out into space
again, without feeling a thing. At the closest point you could be
accelerating at hundreds or thousands of g's-but you're still in free
fall, so there are no physical effects. Sorry if I'm laboring the
obvious, but I realize that everyone here isn't technically orientated."

If this was intended as a crack at Fleet Paymaster General

"Sticky Fingers" Geldclutch, he never noticed, being well into his fifth
beaker of Martian Joy Juice. "For a neutron star, however, this is no
longer true. Near the center of mass the gravitational gradient-that is,
the rate at which the field changes with distance-is so enormous that
even across the width of a small body like a spaceship there can be a
difference of a hundred thousand g's. I need hardly tell you what that
sort of field can do to any material object. "Flatbush must have been
tom to pieces almost instantly, and the pieces themselves must have
Rowed like liquid during the few seconds they took to swing around the
star. Then the fragments headed on out into space again. "Months later a
radar sweep by the Salvage Corps located some of the debris. I've seen
it-surrealistically shaped lumps of the toughest metals we possess
twisted together like taffy. And there was only one item that could even
be recognizedit must have come from some unfortunate engineer's tool
kit" The Commander's voice dropped almost to inaudibility, and he dashed
away a manly tear. "I really hate to say this." He sighed. "But the only
identifiable fragment of the pride of the United States Space Navy was
--- one star-mangled spanner."

January 1970

Transit of Earth

Testing, one, two, three, four, five ... Evans speaking. I will continue
to record as long as possible. This is a two-hour capsule, but I doubt
if III fill it.

That photograph has haunted me all my life; now, too late, I know why.
(But would it have made any difference if I had known? That's one of
those meaningless and unanswerable questions the mind keeps returning to
endlessly, like the tongue exploring a broken tooth.) I've not seen it
for years, but I've only to close my eyes and rm back in a landscape
almost as hostile-and as beautifulas this one. Fifty million miles
sunward, and seventy-two years in the past, five men face the camera
amid the antarctic, snows. Not even the bulky furs can hide the
exhaustion and defeat that mark every line of their bodies; and their
faces are already touched by Death. @ There were five of them. There
were five of us, and of course we also took a group photograph. But
everything else was different. We were smiling-cbeerful, confident. And
our picture was on all the screens of Earth within ten minutes. It was
months before their camera was found and brought back to civilization.

And we die in comfort, with all modem conveniences-including many that
Robert Falcon Scott could never have imagined, when he stood at the
South Pole in 1912.

Two hours later. I'll start giving exact times when it becomes
important. AU the facts are in the log, and by now the whole world knows
them. So I guess I'm doing this largely to settle my mind-to talk myself
into facing the inevitable. The trouble is, I'm not sure what subjects
to avoid, and which to tackle head on. Well, there's only one way to
find out. The Ant item: in twenty-four hours, at the very most, all 114

 Transit of Earth 115

the oxygen will be gone. That leaves me with the three Classical
choices. I can let the carbon dioxide build up until I become
unconscious. I can step outside and crack the suit, leaving Mars to do
the job in about two minutes. Or I can use one of the tablets in the med
kit. C02 build-up. Everyone says that's quite easy@just like going to
sleep. I've no doubt that's true; unfortunately, in my case it's
associated with nightmare number one ... I wish I'd never come across
that damn book True Stories of World War Two, or whatever it was called.

There was one chapter about a German submarine, found and salvaged after
the war. The crew was still inside it-two men per bunk. And between each
pair of skeletons, the single respirator set they'd been sharing ...
Well, at least that won't happen here. But I know, with a deadly
certainty, that as soon as I find it hard to breathe, 12 be back in that
doomed U-boat. So what about the quicker way? When you're exposed to
vacuum, you're unconscious in ten or fifteen seconds, and people who've
been through it say it's not painful-just peculiar. But trying to
breathe something that isn't there brings me altogether too neatly to
nightmare number two. This time, it's a personal experience.

As a kid, I used to do a lot of skin diving, when my family went to the
Caribbean for vacations. There was an old freighter that had sunk twenty
years before, out on a reef, with its deck only a couple of yards below
the surface. Most of the hatches were open, so it was easy to get
inside, to look for souvenirs and hunt the big fish that like to shelter
in such places. Of course it was dangerous if you did it without scuba
Sear. So what boy could resist the challenge? My favorite route involved
diving into a hatch on the foredeck, swimming about fifty feet along a
passageway dimly lit by portholes a few yards apart, then angling up a
short fight of stairs and emerging through a door in the battered
superstructure. The whole trip took less than a minute-an easy dive for
anyone in good condition. There was even time to do some sight-seeing,
or to play with a few fish along the route. And sometimes, for a change,
I'd switch directions, going in the door and coming out again through
the hatch. That was the way I did it the last time. I hadn't dived for a
week- there had been a big storm, and the sea was too rough-so I was
impatient to get going. I deep-breathed on the surface for about two
minutes, until

116 THE VAND FROM THE SUN

I felt the tingling in my finger tips that told me it was time to stop.

Then I jackknifed and slid gently down toward the black rectangle of the
open doorway. It always looked ominous and menacing-that was part of the
thrill. And for the first few yards I was almost completely blind; the
contrast between the tropical glare above water and the gloom between
decks was so great that it took quite a while for my eyes to adjust.

Usually, I was halfway along the corridor before I could see anything
clearly. Then the iflumination would steadily increase as I approached
the open hatch, where a shaft of sunlight would paint a dazzling
rectangle on the rusty, barnacled metal floor. I'd almost made it When I
realized that, this time, the light wasn't getting better. There was no
slanting column of sunlight ahead of me, leading up to the world of air
and life. I had a second of baffled confusion, wondering if I'd lost my
way. Then I knew what had happened-and confusion turned into sheer
panic. Sometime during the storm, the hatch must have slammed shut. It
weighed at least a quarter of a ton. I don't remember making a U turn;
the next thing I recall is swimming quite slowly back along the passage
and telling myself: Don't hurry; your air will last longer if you take
it easy. I could see very well now, because my eyes had had plenty of
time to become dark-adapted. There were lots of ,details I'd never
noticed before, like the red squirrelfish lurking in the shadows, the
green fronds and algae growing in the little patches of light around the
portholes, and even a single rubber boot, apparently in excellent
condition, lying where someone must have kicked it off. And once, out of
a side corridor, I noticed a big grouper staring at me with bulbous
eyes, his thick lips half parted, as if he was astonished at my
intrusion. The band around my chest was getting tighter and tighter. It
was impossible to hold my breath any longer. Yet the stairway still
seemed an infinite distance ahead. I let some bubbles of air dribble out
of my mouth. That improved matters for a moment, but, once I had
exhaled, the ache in my lungs became even more unendurable. Now there
was no point in conserving strength by Kippering along. with that
steady, unhurried stroke. I snatched the ultimate few cubic inches of
air from my face mask-feeling it flatten against my nose as I did so-and
swallowed them

 Transit of Earth 117

down into my starving lungs. At the same time, I shifted gear and drove
forward with every last atom of strength ... And that's all I remember
until I found myself spluttering and coughing in the daylight, clinging
to the broken stub of the mast. The water around me was stained with
blood, and I wondered why. Then, to my great surprise, I noticed a deep
gash in my right calf. I must have banged into some sharp obstruction,
but I'd never noticed it and even then felt no pain. That was the end of
my skin diving until I started astronaut training ten years later and
went into the underwater zefo-gee simulator. Then it was different,
because I was using scuba gear. But I had some nasty moments that I was
afraid the psychologists would notice, and I always made sure that I got
nowhere near emptying my tank. Having nearly suffocated once, I'd no
intention of risking it again ... I know exactly what it will feel like
to breathe the freezing wisp of near-vacuum that passes for atmosphere
on Mars. No thank you. So what's wrong with poison? Nothing, I suppose.
The stuff we'vegot takes only fifteen seconds, they told us. But all my
instincts are against it, even when there's no sensible alternative. Did
Scott have poison with him? I doubt it. And if he did, rin sure he never
used it. I'm not going to replay this. I hope it's been of some use, but
I can't be sure.

The radio has just printed out a message from Earth, reminding me that
transit starts in two hours. As if I'm likely to forget-when four men
have already died so that I can be the first human being to see it.

And the only one, for exactly -a hundred years. It isn't often that Sun,
Earth, and Mars line up neatly like this; the last time was in 1905,
when poor old Lowell was still writing his beautiful nonsense about the
canals and the great dying civilization that had built them.

Too bad it was all delusion. I'd better check the telescope and the
timing equipment.

"Me Sun is quiet today-as it should be, anyway, near the middle of the
cycle. Just a few small spots, and some minor areas of disturbance
around them. The solar weather is set calm for months to come. That's
one thing the others won! t have to worry about, on their way home.

118 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

I think that was the worst moment, watching Olympus lift off Phobos and
head back to Earth. Even though we'd known for weeks that nothing could
be done, that was the final closing of the door. It was night, and we
could see everything perfectly. Phobos had come leaping up out of the
west a few hours earlier, and was doing its mad backward rush across the
sky, growing from a tiny crescent to a half-moon; before it reached the
zenith it would disappear as it plunged into the shadow of Mars and
became eclipsed. We'd been listening to the countdown, of course, trying
to go about our normal work. It wasn't easy, accepting at last the fact
that fifteen of us had come to Mars and only ten would return. Even
then, I suppose there were minions back on Earth- who still could not
understand. Tney must have found it impossible to believe that Olympus
couldn't descend a mere four thousand miles to pick us up. The Space
Administration had been bombarded with crazy rescue schemes; heaven
knows, we'd thought of enough ourselves. But when the permafrost under
Landing Pad Three finally gave way and Pegasus toppled, that was that.

It stiff seems a miracle that the ship didn't blow up when the
propellant tank ruptured ... I'm wandering again. Back to Phobos and the
countdown. On the telescope monitor, we could clearly see the fissured
plateau where Olympus had touched down after we'd separated and begun
our own descent. Though our friends would never land on Mars, at least
they'd had a little world of their own to explore; even for a satellite
as small as Phobos, it worked out at thirty square miles per man. A lot
of territory to search for strange minerals and debris from space-or to
carve your name so that future ages would know that you were the first
of all men to come this way. The ship was clearly visible as a stubby,
bright cylinder against the dull-gray rocks; from time to time some flat
surface would catch the light of the swiftly moving sun, and would flash
with mirror brilliance. But about five minutes before lift-off, the
picture became suddenly pink, then crimson-then vanished completely as
Phobos rushed into eclipse. The countdown was still at ten seconds when
we were -startled by a blast of light. For a moment, we wondered if
Olympus had also met with catastrophe. Then we realized that someone was
filming the take-off, and the external floodlights had been switched on.
During those last few seconds, I think we all forgot our

 Tramdt of Earth 119

own predicament; we were up there aboard Olympus, willing the thrust to
build up smoothly and lift the ship out of the tiny gravitational field
of Phobos, and then away from Mars for the long fall sunward. We heard
Commander Richmond say

"Ignition," there was a brief burst of interference, and the patch of
light began to move in the field of the telescope. That was all. There
was no blazing column of fire, because-, of course, there's really no
ignition when a nuclear rocket lights up.

"Lights up" indeed! That's another hangover from the old chemical
technology. But a hot hydrogen blast is completely invisible; it seems a
pity that we'll never again see anything so spectacular as a Saturn or a
Korolov blast-off. Just before the end of the burn, Olympus left the
shadow of Mars and burst out into sunlight again, reappearing almost
instantly as a brilliant, swiftly moving star. The blaze of light must
have startled them aboard the ship, because we heard someone call out:
"Cover that windowl" Then, a few seconds later, Richmond announced:
"Engine cutoff.' Whatever bap. pened, Olympus was now irrevocably headed
back to Earth. A voice I didn't recognize-though it must have been the
Commander's--said

"Good-by, Pegasus," and the radio transmission switched off. There was,
of course, no point in saying '@Good luck."

That had all been settled weeks ago.

I've just played this back. Talking of luck, theres been one
compensation, though not for us. With a crew of only to% Olympus has
been able to dump a third of her expendables and lighten herself by
several tons. So now she'll get -home a month ahead of schedule. Plenty
of things could have gone wrong in that month; we may yet have saved the
expedition. Of course, well never know-but it's a nice thought

I've been playing a lot of music, full blast-now that theres no one else
to be disturbed. Even if there were any Martians, I don't suppose this
ghost of an atmosphere can carry the sound more than a few yards.

We have a fine collection, but I have to choose carefully. Nothing
downbeat and nothing that demands too much concentration. Above all,
nothing with human voices. So I restrict myself to the lighter
orchestral classics; the

"New World" symphony and Grieg's piano concerto fill the bill perfectly.
At the moment I'm listening to Rachmaninoirs

120 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

"Rhapsody on a Theme of -Paganini," but now I must switch off and get
down to work. There, are only five minutes to go. AU the equipment is in
perfect condition. The telescope is tracking the Sun, the video recorder
is standing by, the precision timer is running. These observations will
be as accurate as I can make thenl I owe it to my lost comrades, whom
I'll soon be joining. They gave me their oxygen, so that I can still be
alive at this moment. I hope you remember that, a hundred or a thousand
years from now, whenever you crank these figures into the computers ...
Only a minute to go; getting down to business.

For the record: year 1984; month, May; day, 11, coming up to four hours
thirty minutes Ephemeris Time ... now. Half a minute to contact.

Switching recorder and timer to high speed. Just rechecked position
angle to make sure I'm looking at the right spot on the Sun's limb.

Using power of Irve hundred- image perfectly steady even at this low
elevation. Four thirty-two. Any moment now ... There it is ... there it
isl I can hardly believe itl A tiny black dent in the edge of the Sun
... growing, growin&

grohweilnlog, -i.-@rth. Look up at me, the brightest star in your sky,
straight overhead at midnight ... Recorder back to slow. Four
thirty-five. It's as if a thumb is pushing into the SWs edge, deeper and
deeper ... Fascinating to watch ... Four forty-one. Exactly halfway. The
Earth's a perfect black semicircles clean bite out of the Sun. As if
some disease is eating it away ... Four forty-eight.

Ingress three-quarters complete. Four hours forty-nine minutes thirty
seconds. Recorder on high speed again. The line of contact with the
Sun's edge is shrinking fast. Now it's a barely visible black thread.

In a few seconds, the whole Earth will be superimposed on the Sun. Now I
can see the effects of the atmosphere. There's a thin halo of light
surrounding that black hole in the Sun. Strange to think that I'm seeing
the glow of all the sunsets-and all the sunrises-that are taking place
around the whole Earth at this very moment ... Ingress complete-four
hours fifty minutes five seconds. The whole world has moved onto the
face of the Sun. A

 Trawlt of Earth 121

perfectly circular black disc silhouetted against that inferno ninety
million miles below. It looks bigger than I expected; one could easily
mistake it for a fair-sized sunspot. Nothing more to see now for six
hours, when the Moon appears, trailing Earth by half the Sun's width.

I'll beam the recorder data back to Lunacom, then try to get some sleep.

My very last sleep. Wonder if I'll need drugs. It seems a pity to waste
these last few hours, but I want to conserve my strength-and my oxygen.
I think it was Dr. Johnson who said that nothing settles a man's mind so
wonderfully as the knowledge that he'll be hanged in the morning. How
the hell did he know?

Ten hours thirty minutes Ephemeris Mune. Dr. Johnson was eight. I had
only one pill, and don't remember any dreams. The condemned man also ate
a hearty breakfast. Cut that out ... Back at the telescope. Now the
Earth's halfway across the disc, passing well north of center. In ten
minutes, I should see the Moon. rve just switched to the highest power
of the telescopetwo thousand. The image is slightly fuzzy, but still
fairly good; atmospheric halo very distinct. I'm hoping to see the
cities on the dark side of Earth ... No luck. Probably too many clouds.
A pity; it's theoretically possible, but we never succeeded. I wish ...
never mind.

Ten hours forty minutes. Recorder on slow speed. Hope Im looking at the
right spot. Fifteen seconds to go. Recorder fast. Damn-missed it.
Doesn't matter-the recorder will have caught the exact moment.

"Mere's a little black notch already in the side of the Sun. First
contact must have been about ten hours forty-one minutes twenty seconds
ET. What a long way it is between Earth and Moon; there's half the width
of the Sun between them. You wouldn't think the two bodies had anything
to do with each other. Makes you realize just how big the Sun really is
... Ten hours forty-four minutes. The Moon's exactly half-way over the
edge. A very small, very clear-cut semicircular bite out of the edge of
the Sun. Ten hours forty-seven minutes five seconds. Internal contact.
The Moon's clear of the edge, entirely inside the Sun.

122 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

Don't suppose I can see anything on the night side, but IT increase the
power. That's funny. Well, well. Someone must be trying to talk to me;
there's a tiny light pulsing away there on the darkened face of the
moon. Probably the laser at Imbrium Base. Sorry, everyone. I've said all
my good-byes, and don't want to go through that again. Nothing can be
important now. Stiff, ivs almost hypnotic-that flickering point of
light, coming out of the face of the Sun itself. Hard to believe that,
even after it's traveled all this distance, the beam is only a hundred
miles wide. Limacom's going to all this trouble to aim it exactly at me,
and I suppose I should feel guilty at ignoring it, But I don't. I've
nearly finished my work, and the things of Earth are no longer any
concern of mine. Ten hours fifty minutes. Recorder off.1hat's it-until
the end of Earth transit, two hours from now.

I've had a snack and am taking my last look at the view from the
observation bubble. The Sun's stiff high, so there's not much contrast,
but the light brings out all the colors vividly-the countless varieties
of red and pink and crimson, so startling against the deep blue of the
sky. How different from the Moon-though that, too, has its own beauty.

It's strange how surprising the obvious can be. Everyone knew that Mars
was red. But we didn't really expect the red of rust, the red of blood.

Like the Painted Desert of Arizona; after a while, the eye longs
forgreen. To the north, there is one welcome change of color; the cap of
carbon-dioxide snow on Mount Burroughs is a dazzling white pyramid.

That's another surprise. Burroughs is twenty-five thousand feet above
Mean Datum; when I was a boy, there weren't supposed to be any mountains
on Mars ... The nearest sand dune is a quarter of a mile away, and it,
too, has patches of frost on its shaded slope. During the last storm, we
thought it moved a few feet, but we couldn't be sure. Certainly the
dunes are moving, like those on Earth. One day, I suppose, this base
will be covered--only to reappear again in a thousand years. Or ten
thousand. That strange group of rocks-the Elephant, the Capitol, the
Bishop--still holds its secrets, and teases me with the memory of our
first big disappointment. We could have sworn that they were
sedimentary; how eagerly we rushed out to look for fou-silsileven now,
we don't know what formed that outcrop-Trandt of Earth 123

ping. The geology of Mars is still a mass of contradictions and enigmas
... We have passed on enough problems to the future, and those who come
after us will find many more. But there's one mystery we never reported
to Earth, or even entered in the log ... The first night after we
landed, we took turns keeping watch. Brennan was on duty, and woke me up
soon after midnight. I was annoyed-it was ahead of time-and then he told
me that he'd seen a light moving around the base of the Capitol. We
watched for at least an hour, until it was my turn to take over. But we
saw nothing; whatever that light was, it never reappeared. Now Brennan
was as levelheaded and unimaginative as they come; if he said he saw a
light, then he saw one. Maybe it was some kind of electric discharge, or
the reflection of Phobos on a piece of sand-polished rock. Anyway, we
decided not to mention it to Lunacom, unless we saw it again. Since I've
been alone, I've often awakened in the night and looked out toward the
rocks. In the feeble illumination of Phobos and Deimos, they remind me
of the skyline of a darkened city. And it has always remained darkened.

No lights have ever appeared for me ... Twelve hours forty-nine minutes
Ephemeris Time. The lastact's about to begin. Earth has nearly reached
the edge of the Sun. The two narrow horns of light that stiff embrace it
are barely touching ... Recorder on fast. Contactl Twelve hours fifty
minutes sixteen seconds.

The crescents of light no longer meet. A tiny black spot has appeared at
the edge of the Sun, as the Earth begins to cross it It's growing
longer, longer ... Recorder on slow. Eighteen minutes to wait before
Earth finally clears the face of the Sun. 71e Moon still has more than
halfway to go; it's not yet reached the mid-point of its transit. It
looks like a little round blob of ink, only a quarter the size of Earth.

And there's no light flickering there any more. Lunacom must have given
up. Well, I have just a quarter of an hour left, here in my last home.

Time seems to be accelerating the way it does in the final minutes
before a lift-off. No matter; I have everything worked out now. I can
even relax.

124 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

Already, I feel part of history. I am one with Captain Cook, back in
Tahiti in 1769, watching the transit of Venus. Except'for that image of
the Moon trailing along behind, it must have looked just like this ...
What would Cook have thought, over two hundred years ago, if he'd known
that one day a man would observe the whole Earth in transit from an
outer world? I'm sure he would have been astonished-and then delighted
... But I feel a closer identity with a man not yet born. I hope you
hear these words, whoever you may be. Perhaps you will be standing on
this very spot, a hundred years from now, when the next transit occurs.
Greetings to 2084, November 101 I wish you better luck than we had. I
suppose you will have come here on a luxury liner. Or you may have been
born on Mars, and be a stranger to Earth. You will know things that I
cannot imagine. Yet somehow I don't envy you. I would not even change
places with you if I could. For you will remember my name, and know that
I was the first of all mankind ever to see a transit of Earth. And no
one will seeanother for a hundred years. - Twelve hours fifty-nine
minutes. ixactly halfway through egress. The Earth is a perfect
semicircles black shadow on the face of the Sun. I still can't escape
from the impression that something has taken a big bite out of that
golden disc. la nine minutes it will be gone, and the Sun will be whole
again. Thirteen hours seven minutes. Recorder on fast. Earth has almost
'gone. There's just a shallow black dimple at the edge of the Sun. You
could easily mistake it for a small spot, going over the limb. Thirteen
hours eight. Good-by, beautiful Earth.

Going, going, going, Good-by, good- I'm O.K. again now. The timings have
all been sent home on the beam. In five minutes, they'll join the
accumulated wisdom of mankind. And Lunacom will know that I stuck to my
post. But I'm not sending this. I'm going to leave it here, for the next
expedition-whenever that may be. It could be ten or twenty years before
anyone comes here again. No point in going back to an old site when
there's a whole world waiting to be explored ...  Transit of Earth 125

So this capsule will stay here, as Scott's diary remained in his tent,
until the next visitors find it. But they won't find me. Strange how
hard it is to get away from Scott I think he gave me the idea. For his
body will not lie frozen forever in the Antarctic, isolated from the
great cycle of life and death. Long ago, that lonely tent began its
march to the sea. Within a few years, it was buried by the falling snow
and had become part of the glacier that crawls eternally away from the
Pole. In a few brief centuries, the sailor will have returned to the
sea. He will merge once more into the pattern of living things-the
plankton, the seals, the penguins, the whales, all the multitudinous
fauna of the Artarctic Ocean. There are no oceans here on Mars, nor have
there been for at least five billion years. But there is life of some
kind, down there in the badlands of Chaos 11, which we never had time to
explore. Those moving patches on the orbital photographs. The evidence
that whole areas of Mars have been swept clear of craters, by forces
other -than erosion. The long-chain, optically active carbon molecules
picked up by the atmospheric samplers. I And, of course, the mystery of
Viking 6. Even now, no one has been able to make any sense of those last
instrument readings, before something large and heavy crushed the probe
in the stiff, cold depths of the Martian night ... And don't talk to me
about primitive life forms in a place like this! Anything that's
survived here will be so sophisticated that we may look as clumsy ns
dinosaurs. There's still enough propellant in the ship's tanks to drive
the Mars car clear around the planet. I have three hours of
daylightleft- plenty of time to get down into the valleys and well out
into Chaos. After sunset, I'll still be able to make good speed with the
headlights. It will be romantic, driving at night under the moons of
Mars ... One thing I must fix before I leave. I don't like the way Sam's
lying out there. He was always so poised, so graceful. It doesn't seem
right that he should look so awkward now. I must do something about it.
I wonder if I could have covered three hundred feet without a suit,
walking slowly, steadily-the way he did, to the very end. I must try not
to look at his face.

126 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

That's it. Everything shipshape and ready to go. The therapy has worked.
I feel perfectly at ease-even contented, now that I know exactly what
I'm going to do. The old nightmares have lost their power.

It is true: we all die alone. It makes no difference at the end, being
fifty million miles from home. rm going to enjoy the drive through that
lovely painted landscape. I'll be thinking of all those who dreamed
about Mars- Wells and Lowell and Burroughs and Weinbaurn and Bradbury.

They all guessed wrong-but the reality is just as strange, just as
beautiful, as they imagined. I don't know what's waiting for me out
there, and IT probably never see it. But on this starveling world, it
must be desperate for carbon, phosphorus, oxygen, calcium. It can use
me. And when my oxygen alarm gives its final "ping," somewhere down
there in that haunted wilderness, I'm going to finish in style. As soon
as I have difficulty in breathing, rll get off the Mars car and start
walking-with a playback unit plugged into my helmet and going full
blast. For sheer, triumphant power and glory there's nothing in the
whole of music to match the Toccata and Fugue in D. I won't have time to
hear all of it; that doesn*t matter. Johann Sebastian, here I come.

February 1970

A Meeting with Medusa

1. A DAY TO ]REMEMBER

The Queen Elizabeth was over three miles above the Grand Canyon,
dawdling along at a comfortable hundred and eighty, when Howard Falcon
spotted the camera platform closing in from the right. He had been
expecting it-nothing else was cleared to By at this altitude-but he was
not too happy to have company. Although he welcomed any signs of public
interest, he also wanted as much empty sky as he could get. After all,
he was the first man in history to navigate a ship three-tenths of a
mile long ... So far, this first test flight had gone perfectly;
ironically enough, the only problem had been the century-old aircraft
carrier Chairman Mao, borrowed from the San Diego Naval Museum for
support operations. Only one of Mao's four nuclear reactors was still
operating, and the old battlewagon's top speed was barely thirty knots.

Luckily, wind speed at sea level had been less than half this, so it had
not been too difficult to maintain still air on the flight deck. Though
there had been a few anxious moments during gusts, when the mooring
fines had been dropped, the great dirigible had risen smoothly, straight
up into the sky, as if on an invisible elevator. If all went well, Queen
Elizabeth IV would not meet Chairman Mao again for another week.

Everything was under control; all test instruments gave normal readings.

Commander Falcon decided to go upstairs and watch the rendezvous. He
handed over to his second officer, and walked out into the transparent
tubeway that led through the heart of the ship. There, as always, he was
overwhelmed by the spectacle of the largest single space ever enclosed
by man. The ten spherical gas cells, each more than a hundred feet
across, were ranged one behind the other like a line of Sigimfic soap
bubbles. he tough plastic was so clear that he 127

128 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

could see through the whole length of the array, and make out details of
the elevator mechanism, more than a third of a mile from his vantage
point. All around him, like a three-dimensional maze, was the structural
framework of the ship-the great longitudinal girders running from nose
to tail, the fifteen hoops that were the circular ribs of this sky-borne
colossus, and whose varying sizes defined its graceful, streamlined
profile. At this low speed, there was little sound-merely the soft rush
of wind over the envelope and an occasional creak of metal as the
pattern of stresses changed. The shadowless light from the rows of lamps
far overhead gave the whole scene a curiously submarine quality, and to
Falcon this was enhanced by the spectacle of the translucent gasbags. He
had once encountered a squadron of large but harmless jellyfish, pul i
their mindless way above a shallow tropical reef, and, the plastic
bubbles that gave Queen Elizabeth her lift often reminded him of
these-especially when changing pressures made them crinkle and scatter
new patterns of reflected light. He walked down the axis of the ship
until he came to the forward elevator, between gas cells one and two.
Riding up to the Observation Deck, he noticed that it was uncomfortably
hot, and dictated a brief memo to himself on his pocket recorder. The
Queen obtained almost a quarter of her buoyancy from the unlimited
amounts of waste heat produced by her fusion power plant. On this
lightly loaded flight, indeed, only six of the ten gas cells contained
helium; the remaining four were full of air. Yet she still carried two
hundred tons of water as ballast. However, running the cells at high
temperatures did produce problems in refrigerating the access ways; it
was obvious that a little more work would have to be done there. A
refreshing blast of cooler air hit him in the face when he stepped out
onto the Observation Deck and into the dazzling sunlight streaming
through the plexiglass roof. Half a dozen workmen, with an equal number
of superchimp assistants, were busily laying the partly completed dance
floor, while others were installing electric wiring and fixing
furniture. R was a scene of controlled chaos, and Falcon found it hard
to believe that everything would be ready for the maiden voyage, only
four weeks ahead. Well, that was not his problem, thank goodness.

He was merely the Captain, not the Cruise Director.

 A Meeting with Medusa 129

The human workers waved to him, and the "simps" flashed toothy smiles,
as he walked through the confusion, into the already completed
Skylounge. This was his favorite place in the whole ship, and he knew
that once she was operating he would never again have it all to himself.

He would allow himself just five minutes of private enjoyment. He called
the bridge, checked that everything was still in order, and relaxed into
one of the comfortable swivel chairs. Below, in a curve that delighted
the eye, was the unbroken silver sweep of the ship's envelope. He was
perched at the highest point, surveying the whole immensity of the
largest vehicle ever built. And when he had tired of that-all the way
out to the horizon was the fantastic wilderness carved by the Colorado
River in half a billion years of time. Apart from the camera platform
(it had now fallen back and was filming from amidships) he had the sky
to himself. It was blue and empty, clear down to the horizon. In his
grandfather's day, Falcon knew, it would have been streaked with vapor
trails and stained with smoke. Both had gone: the aerial garbage had
vanished with the primitive technologies that spawned it, and the
long-distance transportation of this age arced too far beyond the
stratosphere for any sight or sound of it to reach Earth. Once again,
the lower atmosphere belonged to the birds and the clouds-and now to
Queen Elizabeth V. It was true, as the old pioneers had said at the
beginning of the twentieth century: this was the only way to travel-in
silence and luxury, breathing the air around you and not cut off from
it, near enough to the surface to watch the everchanging beauty of land
and sea.' The subsonic jets of the 1980's, packed with hundreds of
passengers seated ten abreast, could not even begin to match such
comfort and spaciousness. Of course, the Queen would never be an
economic proposition, and even if her projected sister ships were built,
only, a few of the world's quarter of a billion inhabitants would ever
enjoy this silent gliding through the sky. But a secure and prosperous
global society could afford such follies and indeed needed them for
their novelty and entertainment. There were at least a million men on
Earth whose discretionary income exceeded a thousand new dollars a year,
so the Queen would not lack for passengers. Falcon's pocket communicator
beeped. The copilot was calling from the bridge.

130 THE VVIND FROM THE SUN

"O. K. for rendezvous, Captain? We've got all the data we need from this
run, and the TV people are getting impatient." Falcon glanced at the
camera platform, now matching his speed a tenth of a mile away.

"O. K.," he replied. "Proceed as arranged. I'll watch from here." He
walked back through the busy chaos of the Observation Deck so that he
could have a better view amidships. As he did so, he could feel the
change of vibration underfoot; by the time he had reached the rear of
the lounge, the ship had come to rest. Using his master key, he
lethimself out onto the small external platform flaring from the end of
the deck; half a dozen people could stand here, with only low guardrails
separating them from the vast sweep of the envelope-and from the ground,
thousands of feet below. It was an exciting place to be, and perfectly
safe even when the ship was traveling at speed, for it was in the dead
air behind the huge dorsal blister of the Observation Deck.

Nevertheless, it was not intended that the passengers would have access
to it, the view was a little too vertiginous. The covers of the forward
cargo hatch had already opened like giant trap doors, and the camera
platform was hovering above them, preparing to descend. Along this
route, mi the years to come, would travel thousands of passengers and
tons of supplies. Only on rare occasions would the Queen drop down to
sea level and dock with her floating base. A sudden gust of cross wind
slapped Falcon's check,. and he tightened his grip on the guardrail. The
Grand Canyon was a bad place for turbulence, though he did not expect
much at this altitude. Without any real anxiety, he focused his
attention on the descending platform, now about a hundred and fifty feet
above the ship. He knew, that the highly skilled operator who was flying
the remotely controlled vehicle had performed this simple maneuver a
dozen times already; it was inconceivable that he would have any
difficulties. Yet he seemed to be reacting rather sluggishly. That last
gust had drifted the platform almost to the edge of the open hatchway.
Surely the pilot could have corrected before this ... Did he have a
control problem? It was very unlikely; these remotes had multiple-
redundancy, fail-safe takeovers, and any number of backup systems.
Accidents were almost unheard of. But there he went again, off to the
left. Could the pilot be dnmk? Improbable though that seemed, Falcon
considered it

 A Meeting with Medusa 131

seriously for a moment. Then he reached for his microphone switch. ,
Once again, without warning, he was slapped violently in the face. He
hardly felt it, for he was staring in horror at the camera platform. The
distant operator was fighting for control, trying to balance the craft
on its jets-but he was only making matters worse. The oscillations
increased-twenty degrees, forty, sixty, ninety ..."Switch to automatic,
you fooll" Falcon shouted uselessly into his microphone. "Your manual
control's not working!" The platform flipped over on its back. The jets
no longer supported it, but drove it swiftly downward. They had suddenly
become allies of the gravity they had fought until this moment.

@Falcon never heard the crash, though he felt it; he was already inside
the Observation Deck, racing for the elevator that would take him down
to the bridge. Workmen shouted at him anxiously, asking what had
happened. It would be many months before he knew the answer to that
question. Just as he was stepping into the elevator cage, he changed his
mind. What if there was a power failure? Better be on the safe side,
even if it took longer and time was the essence. He began to run down
the spiral stairway enclosing the shaft. Halfway down he paused for a
second -to inspect the damage. That damned platform had gone clear
through the ship, rupturing two of the gas @ells as it did so. They were
still collapsing slowly, in great falling veils of plastic. He was not
worried about the loss of lift-the ballast could easily take care of
that, as long as eight cells remained intact. Far more serious was the
possibility of structural damage. Already he could hear the great
latticework around him groaning and protesting under its abnormal loads.

It was not enough to have sufficient lift; unless it was properly
distributed, the ship would break her back. He was just resuming his
descent when a superchimp, shrieking with fright, came racing down the
elevator shaft, moving with incredible speed, hand over hand, along the
outside of the latticework. In its terror, the poor beast had torn off
its company uniform, perhaps- in an unconscious attempt to regain the
freedom of its ancestors. Falcon, still descending as swiftly as he
could, watched its approach with some alarm. A distraught simp was a
powerful and potentially dangerous animal, especially if fear over-came
its conditioning. As it overtook him, it started to call out a

132 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

string of words, but they were all jumbled together, and the only one he
could recognize was a plaintive, frequently repeated 'boss." Even now,
Falcon realized, it looked toward humans for guidance. He felt sorry for
the creature, involved in a man-made disaster beyond its comprehension,
and for which it bore no responsibility. It stopped opposite him, on the
other side of the lattice; there was nothing to prevent it from coming
through the open framework if it wished. Now its face was only inches
from his, and he was looking straight into the terrified eyes. Never
before had he been so close to a simp, and able to study its features in
such detail. He felt that strange mingling of kinship and discomfort
that all men experience when they gaze thus into the mirror of time. His
presence seemed to have calmed the creature. Falcon pointed up the
shaft, back toward the Observation Deck, and said very clearly and
precisely: "Boss-boss-go." To hit relief, the simp understood; itgave
him a grimace that might have been a smile, and at once started to race
back the way, it had come. Falcon had given it the best advice he could.
If any safety remained aboard the Queen, it was in that direction. But
his duty lay in the other. He had almost completed his descent when,
with a sound of rending metal, the vessel pitched nose down, and the
lights went out. But he could still see quite well, for a shaft of
sunlight streamed through the open hatch and the huge tear in the
envelope. Many years ago he had stood in a great ,cathedral nave
watching the light pouring through the stained-glass windows and forming
pools of multicolored radiance on the ancient flagstones. The dazzling
shaft of sunlight through the ruined fabric high above reminded him of
that moment. He was in a cathedral of metal, falling down the sky. When
he reached the bridge, and was able for the first time to look outside,
he was horrified to see how close the ship was to the ground. Only three
thousand feet below were the beautiful and deadly pinnacles of rock and
the red rivers of mud that were still carving their way down into the
past. There was no level area anywhere in sight where a ship as large as
the Queen could come to rest on an even keel. A glance at the display
board told him that all the ballast had - gone. However, rate of descent
had been reduced to a few yards a second; they still had a fighting
chance. Without a word, Falcon eased himself into the pilot's seat

 A Meeting with Medusa 133

and took over such control as still remained. The instrument board
showed him everything he wished to know; speech was superfluous. In the
background, he could hear the Communications Officer giving a running
report over the radio. By this time, all the news channels of Earth
would have been preempted, and he could imagine the utter frustration of
the program controllers. One of the most spectacular wrecks in history
was occurring-without a single camera to record it. The last moments of
the Queen would never fill millions with awe and terror, as had those of
the Hindenburg, a century a4d a half before. Now the ground was only
about seventeen hundred feet -away, still coming up slowly. Though he
had full thrust, he had not dared to use it, lest the weakened structure
collapse; but now he realized that he had no choice. The wind was taking
them toward a fork in the canyon, where the river was split by a wedge
of rock like the prow of some gigantic@ fossilized ship of stone.

If she continued on her present course, the Queen would straddle that
triangular plateau and come to rest with at least a third of her length
jutting out over nodlinpess; she would snap like a rotten stick. Far
away, above the sound of straining metal and escaping gas, came the
familiar whistle of the jets as Falcon opened up the lateral thrusters.

The ship staggered, and began to slew to port. The shriek of tearing
metal was now almost continuous--and the rate of descent had started to
increase ominously. A glance at the damage-control board showed that
cell number five had just gone. The ground was only yards away. Even
now, he could not tell whether his maneuver would succeed or fail. He
switched the thrust vectors over to vertical, giving maximum lift to
reduce the force of impact. The crash seemed to last forever. It was not
violentmerely prolonged, and irresistible. It seemed that the whole
universe was falling about them. The sound of crunching metal came
nearer, as if some great beast were eating its way through the dying
ship. Then floor and ceiling closed upon him like a vise.

2. "BECAUSE IT'S THERE"

"Why do you want to go to Jupiterti "As Springer said when he lifted for
Pluto-because it's there.9

134 THE Va" FROM THE SLIN

"Thanks. Now we've got that out of the way-the real reason."

Howard Falcon smiled, though only those who knew him well could have
interpreted the slight, leathery grimace. Webster was one of them; for
more than twenty years they had shared triumphs and disasters-including
the greatest disaster of all. "Well, Springer's cliche is still valid.

We've landed on an the terrestrial planets, but none of the gas giants.

They are the only real challenge left in the solar system."

"An expensive one. Have you worked out the cost?"

"As well as I can; here are the estimates. Remember, though- this isn't
a one-shot mission, but a transportation system. Once it's proved out,
it can be used over and over again. And it will open up not merely
Juipter, but all thegiants."

Webster looked at the figures, and whistled. "Why not start with an
easier planet-Uranus, for example? Half the gravity, and less than half
the escape velocity. Quieter weather, too-if that's the right word for
it." Webster had certainly done his homework. But that, of course, was
why he was head of Long-Range Planning. "There's very little saving-when
you allow for the extra distance and the logistics problems. For
Jupiter, we can use the facilities of Ganymede. Beyond Saturn, we'd have
to establish a new supply base." Logical, thought Webster; but he was
sure that it was not the important reason. Jupiter was lord of the solar
system; Falcon would be interested in no lesser challenge.

"Besides," Falcon continued, "Jupiter is a major scientific scandal.

It's more than a hundred years since its radio storms were discovered,
but we i still don't know what causes them--and the Great Red Spot is as
big a mystery as ever. 'Mat's why I can get matching funds from the
Bureau of Astronautics. Do you know how many probes they have dropped
into that atmosphere?"

"A couple of hundred, I believe."

"Three hundred and twenty-six, over the last fifty yearsabout a quarter
of them total failures. Of course, they've learned a hell of a lot, but
they've barely scratched the planet. Do you realize how big it is?"

"More than ten times the size of Earth."

"Yes, yes-but do you know what that really means?"

 A Meeting with Medusa 135

Falcon pointed to the large globe in the comer of Webstees office.

"Look at rndia-how small it seems. Well, if you skinned Earh and spread
it out on the surface of Jupiter, it would look about as big as India
does here." There was a long silence while Webster contemplated the
equation: Jupiter is to Earth as Earth is to India. Falcon had-
deliberately, of course-chosen the best possible example ... Was it
already ten years ago? Yes, it must have been. The crash lay seven years
in the past (that date was engraved on his heart)., and those initial
tests had taken place th ' ree years before the first and last flight of
the Queen Elizabeth. Ten years ago, then, Commander (no, Lieutenant)
Falcon had invited him to a preview-a three-day drift across the
northern plains of India, within sight of the Himalayas. "Perfectly
ode," he had promised. "It will get you away from the office-and will
teach you what this whole thing is about.' Webster had not been
disappointed. Next to his first journey to the Moon, it had been the
mosf memorable experience of his life. -And yet, as Falcon had assured
him, it had been perfectly safe, and quite uneventful. They had taken
off from Srinagar just before dawn, with the huge silver bubble of the
balloon already catching the first light of the Sun. The ascent had been
made in total silence; -there were none of the roaring propane burners
that had lifted the hot-air balloons of an earlier age. AD the beat they
needed came from the little pulsed-fusion reactor, weighing only about
two hundred and twenty pounds, hanging in the open mouth of the
envelope. While they were climbing, its laser was zapping ten times a
second, igniting the merest whiff of deuterium fuel. Once they had
reached altitude, it would fire only a few times a minute, making up for
the heat lost through the great gasbag overhead. And so, even while they
were almost a mile above the ground, they could hear dogs barking,
people shouting, bells ringing. Slowly the vast, Sun-smitten landscape
expanded around them. Two hours later, they had leveled out at three
miles and were taking frequent draughts of oxygen. They could relax and
admire the scenery; the on-board instrumentation was doing all the work-
gathering the information that would be required by the designers of the
still-unnamed liner of the skies. It was a perfect day. The southwest
monsoon would not

136 THE Vand FROM THE SUN

break for another month, and there was hardly a cloud in the sky. Time
seemed to have come to a stop; they resented the hourly radio reports
which interrupted their reverie. And an around, to the horizon and far
beyond, was that infinite. ancient landscape, drenched with history-a
patchwork of villages, fields, temples, lakes, irrigation canals ...
With a real effort, Webster broke the hypnotic spell of that ten-
year-old memory. It had converted him to lighter-than-air flight-and it
had made him realize the enormous size of India, even in a world that
could be circled within ninety minutes. And yet, he repeated to himself,
Jupiter is to Earth as Earth is to India ..."Granted your argument," he
said, "and supposing the funds are available, there's another question
you have, to answer. Why should you do better than the-what is it-three
hundred and twenty- six robot probes that have already made the trip?"

"I am better qualified than they were-as an observer, and as a pilot.
Especially as a pilot. Don't forget-I've more experience of
lighter-than-air flight than anyone in the world."

"You could still serve as controller, and sit safely on Ganymede."

"But thaes just the point! They've already done that Don! t you remember
what killed the Queen?"

Webster knew perfectly Well; but he merely answered: "Go on."

"Time lag-time lagi That idiot of a platform controller thought he was
using a local radio circuit. But he'd been accidentally switched through
a satellite-oh, maybe it wasn't his fault, but he should have noticed.
That's a half-second time lag for the round trip. Even then it wouldn't
have mattered flying in calm air. It was the turbulence over the Grand
Canyon that did it. When the platform tipped, and he corrected for
that-it had already tipped the other way. Ever tried to drive a car over
a bumpy road with a half-second delay in the steering?"

"No, and I don't intend to try. But I can imagine it.99 "Well, Ganymede
is a million kilometers from Jupiter. That means a round-trip delay of
six seconds. No, you need a controller on the spot-to handle emergencies
in real time. Let me show you something- Mind if I use thist"

"Go ahead." Falcon picked up a postcard that was lying on Webster's
desk; they were almost obsolete on Earth, but this one showed

 A Meeting with Medum 137

a 3-D view of a Martian landscape, and was decorated with exotic and
expensive stamps. He held it so that it dangled vertically. "Ms. is an
old trick, but helps to make my point. Place your thumb and finger on
either side, not quite touching. That's right." Webster put out his
hand, almost but not quite gripping the card. "Now catch it." Falcon
waited for a few seconds; then, without warning, he let go of the card.

Webster's thumb and finger closed on empty air. "I'll @ do it again,
just to show there's no deception. You see?" Once again, the falling
card had slipped through Webster's fingers. "Now you try it on me.' This
time, Webster 'grasped the card and dropped it without warning. It had
scarcely moved before Falcon had caught il Webster almost imagined he
could bear a click, so swift was the other's reaction. "When they put me
together again i n," Falcon remarked in an expressionless voice, "the
surgeons made some improvements. This is one of them-and there are
others. I want to make the most of them. Jupiter is the place where I
can do it." Webster stared for long seconds at the fallen card,
absorbing the improbable colors of the Trivium Charontis Escarpment.

Then he said quietly: "I understand. How long do you think it will
take?"

"With your help, plus the Bureau, plus all the science foundation we can
drag in---oh, three years. Then a year for trials-we'll have to send in
at least two test models. So, with luck-five years."

"That's about what I thought. I hope you get your luck; you've earned
it. But there's one thing I won't do."

"What's thatt"

"Next time you go ballooning, don't expect me as passenger."

3. THE world or Tm oods

The fall from Jupiter V to Jupiter itself takes only three and a half
hours. Few men could have slept on so awesome a

138 THE VA" FROM THE SUN

journey. Sleep was a weakness that Howard Falcon hated, and the little
he still required brought dreams that time had not yet been able to
exorcise. But he could expect no rest in the three days that lay ahead,
and must seize what he could during the long fall down into that ocean,
of clouds, some sixty thousand miles below. As soon as Kon-Tik! had
entered her transfer orbit and all the computer checks were
satisfactory, he prepared for the last sleep he might ever know. It
seemed appropriate that at almost the same moment Jupiter eclipsed the
bright and tiny Sun as he swept into the monstrous shadow of the planet.

For a few minutes a strange golden twilight enveloped the ship; then a
quarter of the sky became an utterly black hole in space, while the rest
was a blaze of stars. No matter how far one traveled across -the solar
system, they never changed; -the-se same constellations now shone on
Earth, millions of miles away. The only novelties here were the small,
pale crescents of Callisto and Ganymede; doubtless there were, a dozen
other moons up there in the sky, but they were all much too tiny, and
too distant, for the unaided eye to pick them out. "Closing down for two
hours," he reported to the mother ship, hanging almost a thousand miles
above the desolate rocks of Jupiter V, in the radiation shadow of the
tiny satellite. If it never served any other useful purpose, Jupiter V
was cosmic bulldozer perpetually sweeping up the charged a (

particles that made it unhealthy to linger close to Jupiter. Its wake
was almost free of radiation, and there a ship could park in perfect
safety, while death sleeted invisibly all around. Falcon switched on the
sleep inducer, and consciousness faded swiftly out as the electric
pulses surged gently through his brain. While Kon-Tiki fell toward
Jupiter, gaining speed second by second in that enormous gravitational
field, he slept without dreams. They always came when he awoke; and he
had brought his nightmares with him from Earth. Yet he never dreamed of
the crash itself, though he often found himself again face to face with
that terrified superchimp, as he descended the spiral stairway between
the collapsing gasbags. None of the simps had survived; those that were
not killed outright were so badly injured that they had been painlessly
"euthed." He sometimes wondered why he dreamed only of this doomed
creature-which he had never met before the last minutes of its life- and
not of the friends and colleagues he had lost aboard the dying Queen.

 A Meeting with Medusa 139

The dreams he feared most always began with his first return to
consciousness. 'Mere had been little physical pain; in fact, there had
been no sensation of any kind. He was in darkness and silence, and did
not even seem to be breathing. And-strangest of all-he could not locate
his limbs. He could move neither his hands nor his feet, because he did
not know where they were. The silence had been the first to yield. After
hours, or days, he had become aware of a faint throbbing, and
eventually, after long thought, he deduced that this was the beating of
his own heart. That was the first of his many mistakes. Then there had
been faint pinpricks, sparkles of light, ghosts of pressures upon
still-unresponsive limbs. One by one his senses had returned, and pain
had come with them. He had had to learn everything anew, recapitulating
infancy and babyhood. Though his memory was unaffected, and he could
understand words that were spoken to him, it was months before he was
able to answer except by the Ricker of an eyelid. He could remember the
moments of triumph when he had spoken the first word, turned the page of
a book-and, finally, learned to move under his own power. That was a
victory indeed, and it had taken him almost two yeari to prepare for it.

A hundred Aimes he had envied that dead superchimp, but he had been
given no choice. The doctors had made their decision- and now, twelve
years later, he was where no human being had ever traveled before, and
moving faster than any man in history. Kon-Tiki was just emerging from
shadow, and the Jovian dawn bridged the sky ahead in a titanic bow of
light, when the persistent buzz of the alarm dragged Falcon up from
sleep. The inevitable nightmares (he had been trying to summon a nurse,
but did not even have the strength to push the button) swiftly faded
from consciousness. The greatest-and perhaps last-adventure of his life
was before him. He called Mission Control, now almost sixty thousand
miles away and falling swiftly below the curve of Jupiter, to report
that everything was in order. His velocity had just passed thirty-one
miles a second (that was one for the books) and in half an hour Kon-Tiki
would hit the outer fringes of the atmosphere, as he started on the most
difficult re-entry in the entire solar system. Although scores of probes
had survived this flaming ordeal, they had been tough, solidly
packedmmes of instrumentation, able to withstand several hundred

140 THE VMID FROM THE SUN

gravities of drag. Kon-Tiki would hit peaks of thirty g's, and would
average more than ten, before she came to rest in the upper reaches of
the Jovian atmosphere. Very carefully and thoroughly, Falcon began to
attach the elaborate system of restraints that would anchor him to the
walls of the cabin. When he had finished, he was virtually a part of the
ship's structure. The clock was counting backward; one hundred- seconds
to re- entry. For better or worse, he was committed. In a minute and a
half, he would graze the Jovian atmosphere, and would be caught
irrevocably in the grip of the giant. The countdown was three seconds
late-not at all bad, considering the unknowns involved. From beyond the
walls of the capsule came a ghostly sighing, which rose steadily to a
high- pitched, screaming roar. The noise was quite different from that
of a re-entry on Earth or Mars; in this thin atmosphere of hydrogen and
helium, all sounds were transformed a couple of octaves upward. On
Jupiter, even thunder would have falsetto overtones. With the rising
scream came mounting weight; within seconds he was completely
immobilized. His field of vision ;Wnt;Z;e@ until it embraced only the
clock and the accelerometer; fifteen g, and four hundred and eighty
seconds to 90... He never lost consciousness; but then, he had not
expected to. Kon-Tiki's trail through the Jovian atmosphere must be
really spectacular-by this time, thousands of miles long. Five hundred
seconds after entry, the drag began to taper off: ten g, five g, two ...
Then weight vanished almost completely. He was falling free, all his
enormous orbital velocity destroyed. @ There was a sudden jolt as the
incandescent remnants of the heat shield were jettisoned. It had done
its work and would not be needed again; Jupiter could have it now. He
released all but two of the restraining buckles, and waited for the
automatic sequencer to start the next, and most critical, series of
events. He did not see the first drogue parachute pop out, but he could
feel the slight jerk, and the rate of fall diminished immediately. Kon-
Tiki had lost all her horizontal speed and was going straight down at
almost a thousand miles an hour. Everything depended on what happened in
the next sixty seconds.

 A Meeting with Medusa 141

There went the second drogue. He looked up through the overhead window
and saw, to his immense relief, that clouds of glittering foil were
billowing out behind the falling ship. ILike a great flower unfurling,
the thousands of cubic yards of the balloon spread out across the sky,
scooping up the thin gas until it was fully inflated.

Kon-Tiki's rate of fall dropped to a few miles an hour and remained
constant. Now there was plenty of time; it would take him days to fall
all the way down to the surface of Jupiter. But he would get there
eventually, even if he did nothing about it. The balloon overhead was
merely acting as an efficient parachute. It was providing no lift; nor
could it do so, while the gas inside and out was the same. With its
characteristic and rather disconcerting crack the fusion reactor started
up, pouring torrents of heat into the envelope overhead. Within five
minutes, the rate of fall had become zero; within six, the ship had
started to rise. According to the radar altimeter, it had leveled out at
about two hundred and sixty-seven miles above the surface--or whatever'
passed for a surface on Jupiter. Only one kind of balloon will work in
an atmosphere of hydrogen, which is the lightest of all gases-and that
is a hot- hydrogen balloon. As long as the fuser kept ticking over,
Falcon could remain aloft, drifting across a world that could hold a
hundred Pacifics'. After traveling over three hundred million miles,
Kon-TLki had at last begun to justify her name. She was an aerial raft,
adrift upon the currents of the Jovian atmosphere.

Though a whole new world was lying around him, it'was more than an hour
before Falcon could exan-dne the view. First he had to check all the
capsule's systems and test its response to the controls. He had to learn
how much extra heat was necessary to produce a desired rate of ascent,
and how much gas he must vent in order to descend. Above all there was
the question of stability. He must adjust the len;@ of the cables
attaching his capsule to the huge, pear-shaped balloon, to damp out
vibrations and get the smoothest possible ride. Thus far, he was lucky;
at this level, the wind was steady, and the Doppler reading on the
invisible surface gave him a ground speed of two hundred seventeen and a
half miles an hour. For Jupiter, that was modest; winds of up to a
thousand had been observed. But mere speed was, of course, 142 THE VAM
FROM THE SUN

unimportant; the real danger was turbulence. If he ran into that, only
skill and experience and swift reaction could save him-and these were
not matters that could yet be programed into a computer. Not until he
was satisfied that he had got the feel of his strange craft did Falcon
pay any attention to Mission Control's pleadings. Then he deployed the
booms carrying the instnunentation and the atmospheric samplers. The
capsule now resembled a rather untidy Christmas tree, but still rode
smoothly down the Jovian winds while it radioed its torrents of
information to the recorders on the ship miles above. And now, at last,
he could look around ... His first impression was unexpected, and even a
little disappointing. As far as the scale of things was concerned, he
might have been ballooning over an ordinary cloudscape on Earth. 'The
horizon seemed at a normal distance; there was no feeling at all that he
was on a world eleven times the diameter of his own. Then he looked at
the infrared radar, sounding the layers of atmosphere beneath him-and
knew how badly his eyes had been deceived. That layer of clouds
apparently about three miles away was really more than thirty-seven
miles below. And the horizon, whose distance he would have guessed at
about one hundred and twenty- five, was actually eighteen hundred miles
from the ship. The crystalline clarity of the hydiohelium. atmosphere
and the enormous curvature of the planet had fooled him completely. It
was even harder to judge distances here than on the Moon; everything he
saw must be multiplied by at least ten. It was a simple matter, and he
should have been prepared for it. Yet somehow, it disturbed him
profoundly. He did not feel that Jupiter was huge, but that he had
shrunk-to a tenth of his normal size. Perhaps, with time, he would grow
accustomed to the inhuman scale of this world; yet as he stared toward
that unbelievably distant horizon, he felt as if a wind colder than the
atmosphere around him was blowing through his soul. Despite all his
arguments, this might never be a place for man. He could well be both
the first and the last to descend through the clouds of Jupiter. The sky
above was almost black, except for a few wisps of ammonia cirrus perhaps
twelve miles overhead. It was cold up there, on the fringes of space,
but both pressure and temperature increased rapidly with depth. At the
level where Kon-Tild

 A Meeting with Medusa 143

was drifting now, it was fifty below zero, and the pressure was five
atmospheres. Sixty-five miles farther down, it would be as warm as
equatorial Earth, and the pressure about the same as at the bottom of
one of the shallower seas. Ideal conditions for life ... A quarter of
the brief Jovian day had already gone; the stm was halfway up the sky,
but the light on the unbroken doudscape below had a curious mellow
quality. That extra three hundred million miles had robbed the Sun of
all its power. Though the sky was clear, Falcon found himself
continually thinking that it was a heavily overcast day. When night
fell, the onset of darkness would be swift indeed; though it was still
morning, there was a sense of autumnal twilight in the air. But autumn,
of course, was something that never came to Jupiter. There were no
seasons here. Kon-Tiki had come down in the exact center of the
equatorial zone-the least colorful part of the planet. The 9" of clouds
that stretched out to the horizon was tinted a pale salmon; there were
none of the yellows and pinks and even reds that banded Jupiter at
higher altitudes. The Great Red Spot itself-most spectacular of all of
the planet's features -lay thousands of miles to the south. It had been
a temptation to descend there, but the south tropical disturbance was
unusually active, with currents reaching over nine hundred miles an
hour. It would have been asking for trouble to head into that maelstrom
of unknown forces. The Great Red Spot and its mysteries would have to
wait for future expeditions. The Sun, moving across the sky twice as
swiftly as it did on Earth, was now nearing the zenith and had become
eclipsed by the great silver canopy of the balloon. Kon-Tiki was still
drifting swiftly and smoothly westward at a steady two hundred and
seventeen and a half, but only the radar gave any indication of this.

Was it always as calm here? Falcon asked himself. The scientists who had
talked learnedly of the Jovian doldrums, and bad predicted that the
equator would be the quietest place, seemed to know what they were
talking about, after all. He had been profoundly skeptical of all such
forecasts, and had agreed with one unusually modest researcher who had
told him bluntly: "There are no experts on Jupiter." Well, there would
be at least one by the end of this day. If he managed to survive until
then.

144 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

4. nm VOICES OF TM DEEP

That first day, the Father of the Gods smiled upon him. It was as calm
and peaceful here on Jupiter as it had been, years ago, when he was
drifting with Webster across the plains of northern India. Falcon had
time to master his new skiffs, until Kon-Tiki seemed an extension of his
own body. Such luck was more than he had dared to hope for, and he began
to wonder what price he might have to pay for it. The five hours of
daylight were almost over; the clouds -below were full of shadows, which
gave them a massive solidity they had not possessed when the Sun was
higher. Color was swiftly draining from the sky, except in the West
itself, where a band of deepening purple lay along the horizon. Above
this band was the thin crescent of a closer moon, pate and bleached
against the utter blackness beyond. With a speed perceptible to the eye,
the Sun went straight down over the edge of Jupiter, over eighteen
hundred miles away. The stars came out in their legions-and there was
the beautiful evening star of Earth, on the very frontier of twilight,
reminding him how far he was from home. It followed the Sun down into
the west. Man's first night on Jupiter had begun. With the onset of
darkness, Kon-Tiki started to sink. the balloon was no longer heated by
the feeble sunlight and was losing a small part of its buoyancy. Falcon
did nothing to increase lift; he had expected this and was planning to
descend. The invisible cloud deck was still over thirty miles below, and
he would reach it about midnight. It showed up clearly on the infrared
radar, which also reported that it contained a vast array of complex
carbon compounds, as well as the usual hydrogen, helium, and ammonia.

he chemists were dying for samples of that fluffy, pinkish stuff; though
some atmospheric probes had already gathered a few grams, that had only
whetted their appetites. Half the basic molecules of life were here,
floating high above the surface of Jupiter. And where there was food,
could life be far away? That was the question that, after more than a
hundred years, no one had been able to answer. The infrared was blocked
by the clouds, but the microwave radar sliced right through and showed
layer after layer, all the

 A Meeting with Medusa 145

way down to the hidden surface almost two hundred and fifty miles below.

That was barred to him by enormous pressures and temperatures; not even
robot probes had ever reached it intact. It lay in tantalizing
inaccessibility at the bottom of the radar screen, slightly fuzzy, and
showing a curious granular structure that his equipment could not
resolve. An hour after sunset, he dropped his first probe. It fell
swiftly for about sixty miles, then began to float in the denser
atmosphere, sending back torrents of radio signals, which he relayed to
Mission Control. Then there was nothing else to do until sunrise, except
to keep an eye on the rate of descent, monitor the instruments, and
answer occasional queries. While she was drifting in this steady
current, Kon- i could after herself. Yust before midnight, a woman
controller came on watch and introduced herself with the usual
pleasantries. Ten minutes later she called again, her voice at once
serious and excited. "Howardl Usten in on channel forty-six-high pin."

Channel forty-six? There were so many telemetering circuits that he knew
the numbers of only those that were critical; but as soon as he threw
the switch, he recognized this one. He was plugged in to the microphone
on the probe, floating more than eighty miles below him in an atmosphere
now almost as dense as water. At first, there was only a soft hiss of
whatever strange winds stirred down in the darkness of that unimaginable
world. And then, out of the background noise, there slowly emerged a
booming vibration that grew louder and louder, like the beating of a
gigantic drum. It was so low that it was felt as much as heard, and the
beats steadily increased their tempo, though the pitch never changed.
Now it was a swift, almost infrasonic throbbing. Then, suddenly, in
mid-vibration, it stopped--so abruptly that the mind could not accept
the silence, but memory continued to manufacture a ghostly echo in the
deepest caverns of the brain. It was the most extraordinary sound- that
Falcon had ever heard, even among the multitudinous noises of Earth. He
co ' uld think of no natural phenomenon that could have caused it; nor
was it like the cry of any animal, not even one of the great whales ...
It came again, following exactly the same pattern. Now that he wad
prepared for it, he estimated the length of the

146 THE WIND FROM nm SUN

sequence; from first faint throb to final crescendo, it lasted just over
ten seconds. And this time there was a real echo, very faint and far
away. Perhaps it came from one of the many reflecting layers, deeper in
this stratified atmosphere; perhaps it was another, more distant source.

Falcon waited for a second echo, but it never came. Mission Control
reacted quickly and asked him to drop another probe at once. With two
microphones operating, it would be possible to find the approximate
location of the sources. Oddly enough, none of Kon-Tiki's own external
mikes could detect anything except wind noises. The boomings, whatever
they were, must have been trapped and channeled beneath an atmospheric
reflecting layer far below. They were coming, it was soon discovered,
from a cluster of sources about twelve hundred miles away. The distance
gave no- indication of their power; in Earth's oceans, quite feeble
sounds could travel equally far. And as for the obvious assumption that
living creatures were responsible, the Chief Exobiologist quickly ruled
that out. "I'll be very disappointed," said Dr. Brenner, "if there are
no microorganisms or plants here. But nothing like animals, because '
there's no free oxygen. All biochemical reactions o ' n Jupiter must be
low-energy ones-there's just no way an active creature could generate
enough power to function." Falcon wondered if this was true; he had
heard the argument before, and reserved judgment. 'In any case,"
continued Brenner, "some of those sound waves are a hundred yards long!

Even an animal as big as a whale couldn't produce them. They must have a
natural Origin." Yes, that seemed, plausible, and probably the
physicists would be able to come up with an explanation. What would a
blind alien make, Falcon wondered, of the sounds he might hear when
standing beside a stormy sea, or a geyser, or a volcano, or a waterfall?

He might well attribute them to some huge beast. About an hour before
sunrise the voices of the deep died away, and Falcon began to busy
himself with preparation for the dawn of his second day. Kon-TW was now
only three miles above the nearest cloud layer; the external pressure
had risen to ten atmospheres, and the temperature was a tropical thirty
degrees. A man could be comfortable here with no

 A Meeting with Medusa 147

more equipment than a breathing mask and the right grade of heliox
mixture. "We've some good news for you,' Mission Control reported, soon
after dawn. "The cloud layer's breaking up, Youll have partial clearing
in an hour-but watch out for turbulence.91 "I've already noticed some,"
Falcon answered. "How far down will I be able to see?"

"At least twelve miles, down to the second thermocline. That cloud deck
is solid-it never breaks." And it's out of my reach, Falcon told
himself; the temperature down there must be over a hundred degrees. This
was the first time that any balloonist had ever had to worry, not about
his ceiling, but about his basements Ten minutes later he could see what
Mission Control had already observed from its superior vantage point.

There was a ,change in color near the horizon, and the cloud layer had
become ragged and humpy, as if something had tom it open. He turned up
his little nuclear furnace and gave Kon-Tiki another three miles of
altitude, so that he-could get a better view. The sky below was clearing
rapidly, completely, as if something was dissolving the solid overcast.

An abyss was opening before his eyes. A moment later he sailed out over
the edge of a cloud canyon about twelve miles deep and six hundred miles
wide. A new world lay spread beneath him; Jupiter had stripped away one
of its many veils. The second layer of clouds, unattainably far below,
was much darker in color than the first. It was almost salmon pink, and
curiously mottled with little islands of brick red. They were all
oval-shaped, with their long axes pointing east-west, in the direction
of the prevailing wind. There were hundreds of them, all about the same
size, and they reminded Falcon of puffy little cumulus clouds in the
terrestrial sky. He reduced buoyancy, and Kon-Tiki began to drop down
the face of the dissolving cliff. It was then that he noticed the snow.

White flakes were forming i@ the air and drifting slowly downward. Yet
it was much too warm for snow-and, in any event, there was scarcely a
trace of water at this altitude. Moreover, there was noglitter or
sparkle about these flakes as they went cascading down into the depths.

When, presently, a few landed on an instrument boom outside the main
viewing

148 THE WIND FROM THE SUN port, he saw that they were a duu, opaque
white--not crystalline at all-and quite large-several inches across.

They looked like wax, and Falcon guessed that this was precisely what
they were. Some chemical reaction was taking place in the atmosphere
around him, condensing out the hydrocarbons floating in the Jovian air.

About sixty miles ahead, a disturbance was taking place in the cloud
layer. The little red ovals were being jostled around, and were
beginning to form a spiral-the familiar cyclonic pattern so common in
the meteorology of Earth. The vortex was emerging with astonishing
speed; if that was a storm ahead, Falcon told himself, he was in big
trouble. And then his concern changed to wonder-and to fear. What was
developing in his line of flight was not a storm at O. Something
enormous-something scores of miles across =was rising through the
clouds. The reassuring thought that it, too, might be a clouds
thunderhead boiling up from the lower levels of the atmosphere- lasted
only a few seconds. No; this was solid. R shouldered its way through the
pink-and-salmon overcast like an iceberg rising from the deeps. An
iceberg floating on hydrogen? That was impossible, of course; but
perhaps it was not too remote an analogy. As soon as he focused the
telescope upon the enigma, Falcon saw that it was a whitish, crystalline
mass, threaded with streaks of red and brown. It must be, he decided,
the same stuff as the 61 snowflakes" falling around him-a mountain range
of Wax. And it was not, he soon realized, as solid as he had thought;
around the edges it was continually crumbling and reforming ..."I know
what it is," he radioed Mission Control, which for the last few minutes
had been asking anxious questions. "It's a mass of bubbles--some kind of
foam. Hydrocarbon froth. Get the chemists working on ... Just a minutel"

"What is it?" called Mission Control. "What is it?" He ignored the
frantic pleas from space and concentrated all his mind upon the image in
the telescope field. He had to be sure; if he made a mistake, he would
be the laughingstock of the solar system. Then he relaxed, glanced at
the clock, and switched off the nagging voice from Jupiter V.

"Hello, Mission Control," he said, very formally. "This is Howard Falcon
aboard Kon-Tiki. Ephemeris Time nineteen hours twenty-one minutes
fifteen seconds. Latitude zero de.  A Meeting with Medusa 149

grees five minutes North. Longitude one hundred five degrees forty-two
minutes, System One. 'Tell Dr. Brenner that there is -life on Jupiter.

And ies big ... S. THE WHEELS OF POSEMON

"I! m very happy to be proved wrong," Dr. Brenner radioed back
cheerfully. "Nature always. has something up her sleev Keep the
long-focus camera on target and give us steadiest pictures you can." The
things moving up and down those waxen slopes were still too far away for
Falcon to make out many details, and they must have been very. large to
be visible at all at such a distance. Almost black, and shaped like
arrowheads, they maneuvered by slow undulations of their entire bodies,
so that they looked rather like giant manta rays, swimming above some
tropical reef. Perhaps they were sky-borne cattle, browsing on the cloud
pastures of Jupiter, for they seemed to be feeding along the dark,
red-brown streaks that ran like dried-u river beds down . p the flanlre
of the floating cliffs. Occasionally, one of them would dive headlong
into the mountain of foam and disappear completely from sight. Kon-Tiki
was moving only slowly with respect to the cloud layer below; it would
be at least three hours before she was above those ephemeral hills. She
was in a race with the Sun. Falcon hoped that darkness would not fall
before he could get a good view of the mantas, as he had christened
them, as well as the fragile landscape over which they flapped their
way. It was a long three hours. During the whole time, he kept the
external microphones on full gain, wondering if here was the source of
that booming in the night. The mantas were certainly large enough to
have produced it; when he could get an@ accurate measurement, he
discovered that they were almost a hundred yards across the wings. That
was three times the length of the largest whale-though he doubted if
they could weigh more, than a few tons. Half an hour before sunset,
Kon-Tiki was almost above the 'mountains." "No," said Falcon, answering
Mission Control's repeated questions about the mantas, "they're still
showing no reaction to me. I don't think they're intelligent-they look
like harm-150 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

less vegetarians. And even if they try to chase me, I'm sure they can't
reach my altitude." Yet he was a little disappointed when the mantas
showed not the slightest interest in him as he sailed high above their
feeding ground. Perhaps they had no way of detecting his presence. When
he examined and photographed them through the telescope, he could see no
signs of any sense organs. The creatures were simply huge black deltas,
rippling over hills and valleys that, in reality, were little more
substantial than the clouds of Earth. Though they looked solid, Falcon
knew that anyone who stepped on those white mountains would go crashing
through them as if they were made of tissue paper. , At close quarters
he could see the myriads of cellules -or bubbles from which they were
formed. Some of these were quite large-a yard or so in diameter-and
Falcon wondered in what witches' cauldron of hydrocarbons they had been
brewed. There must be enough petrochemicals deep down in the atmosphere
of Jupiter to supply all Earth's needs for a million years. The short
day had almost gone when he passed over the crest of the waxen hills,
and the light was fading rapidly along their lower slopes. There were no
mantas on this western side, and for some reason the topography was very
different. The foam was sculptured into long, level terraces, like the
interior of a lunar crater. He could almost imagine that they were
giganic steps leading down to the hidden surface of the planet. And on
the lowest of those steps, just clear of the swirling clouds that the
mountain had displaced when it came surging skyward, was a roughly oval
mass, one or two miles across. It was difficult to see, since it was
only a little darker than the gray-white foam on which it rested.

Falcon's first thought was that he was looking at a forest of pallid
trees, like giant mushrooms that had never seen the Sun, Yes, it must be
a forest-he could see hundreds of thin trunks, springing from the white
waxy froth in which they were rooted. But the trees were packed
astonishingly close together; there was scarcely any space between them.

Perhaps it was not a forest, after all, but a single enormous tree-like
one of the giant multi-trunked banyans of the East. Once he had seen a
banyan tree in Java that was over six hundred and fifty yards across;
this monster was, at least ten times that size. The, light had almost
gone. The cloudscape had turned purple with refracted sunlight, and in a
few seconds that, too,  A Meeting with Medusa 151

would have vanished. In the last light of his second day on Jupiter,
Howard Falcon saw-or thought he saw-something that cast the gravest
doubts on his interpretation of the white oval. Unless the dim light had
totally deceived him, those hundreds of thin trunks were beating back
and forth, in perfect synchronism, like fronds of kelp rocking in the
surge. And the tree was no longer in the place where he had first seen
it

"Sorry about this," said Mission Control, soon after sunset, "but we
think Source Beta is going to blow within the next hour. Probability
seventy percent." Falcon glanced quickly at the chart. Beta-Jupiter
latitude one hundred and forty degrees-was over eighteen thousand six
hundred miles away and well below his horizon. Even though major
eruptions ran as high as ten megatons, he was much too far away for the
shock wave to be a serious danger. The radio storm that it would trigger
was, however, quite a different matter. The decameter outbursts that
sometimes made Jupiter the most powerful radio source in the whole sky
had been discovered back in the 1950's, to the utter astonishment of the
astronomers. Now, more than a century later, their real cause was still
a mystery. Only the symptoms were understood; the explanation was
completely unknown. IMe "volcano" theory had best stood the test of
time, although no one imagined that this word had the same meaning on
Jupiter as on Earth. At frequent intervals-often several find a
day-titanic eruptions occurred in the lower depths of the atmosphere,
probably on the hidden surface of the planet itself. A great column of
gas, more than six hundred miles high, would start boiling upward as if
determined to escape into space. Against the most powerful gravitational
field of all the planets, it had no chance. Yet some traces-a mere few
million tons-usually managed to reach the Jovian ionosphere; and when
they did, all hell broke loose. , The radiation belts surrounding
Jupiter completely dwarf the feeble Van Allen belts of Earth. When they
are short-circuited by an ascending column of gas, the result is an
electrical discharge millions of times more powerful than any
terrestrial Ruh of lightning; it sends a colossal thunderclap of

152 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

radio noise flooding across the entire solar system and on out to the
stars. It had been discovered that these radio outbursts came from four
main areas of the planet. Perhaps there were weaknesses there that
allowed the fires of the interior to break out from time to time. The
scientists on Ganymede, largest of Jupiter's many moons, now thought
that they could -predict the onset of a decameter storm; their accuracy
was about as good as a weather forecaster's of the early 1900's. Falcon
did not know whether to welcome or to fear a radio storm; it would
certainly add to the value of the mission-if he survived it. His course
had been planned to keep as far as possible from the main centers of
disturbance, especially the most active one, Source Alpha. As luck would
have it, the threatening Beta was the closest to him. He hoped that the
distance, almost three-fourths the circumference of Earth, was safe
enough. "Probability ninety percent," said Mission Control with a
distinct note of urgency. "And forget that hour. Ganymede says it may be
any moment." The radio had scarcely fallen silent when the reading on
the magnetic field-strength meter started to shoot upward. Before it
could go off scale, it reversed and began to drop as rapidly as it had
risen. Far away and thousands of miles below, something had given the
planet's molten core a titanic jolt. "There she blowsl" called Mission
Control. "Thanks, I already know. When will the storm hit mer, "You can
expect onset in five minutes. Peak in ten." Far around the curve of
Jupiter, a funnel of gas as wide as the Pacific Ocean was climbing
spaceward at thousands of miles an hour. Already, the thunderstorms of
the lower atmosphere would be raging around it-but they were nothing
compared with the fury that would explode when the radiation belt was
reached and began dumping its surplus electrons onto the planet. Falcon
began to retract all the instrument booms that were extended out from
the capsule. There were no other precautions he could take. It would be
four hours before the atmospheric shock wave reached him-but the radio
blast, traveling at the speed of light, would be here in a tenth of a
second, once the discharge had been triggered. The radio monitor,
scanning back and forth across the spectrum, still showed nothing
unusual, just the normal mush of background static. Then Falcon noticed
that the noise level

 A Meeting with Medum 153

was slowly creeping upward. he explosion was gathering its strength..

At such a distance he had never expected to see anything. But suddenly a
flicker as of far-off heat lightning danced along the eastern horizon.

Simultaneously, half the circuit breakers jumped out of the main
switchboard, the lights failed, and all communications channels went
dead. He tried to move, but was completely unable to do so. The
paralysis that gripped him was not merely psychological; he seemed to
have lost all control of his limbs and could feel a painful tingling
sensation over his entire body. It was impossible that the electric
field-could have penetrated this shielded cabin. Yet there was a
flickering glow over the instrument board, and he could hear the
unmistakable crackle of a brush discharge. With a series of sharp bangs,
the emergency systems went into operation, and the overloads reset
themselves. The lights flickered on again. And Falcon's paralysis
disappeared as swiftly as it had come. After glancing at the board to
make sure that all circuits were back to normal, he moved quickly to the
viewing ports. There was no need to switch on the inspection lamps-the
cables supporting the capsule seemed to be on fire. Lines of light
glowing an electric blue against the darkness stretched upward from the
main lift ring to the equator of the gaint balloon; and rolling slowly
along several of them were dazzling balls -of fire. The sight was so
strange and so beautiful that it was hard to read any. menace in it. Few
people, Falcon knew, had ever seen ball lightning from such close
quarters-and ce none had survived if they were riding a hydrogen-filled
balloon back in the atmosphere of Earth. He remembered the flaming death
of the Hindenburg, destroyed by a stray spark when she docked at
Lakehurst in 1937; as it had done so often in the past, the horrifying
old newsreel film flashed through his mind. But at least that could not
happen here, though there was more hydrogen above his head than had ever
filled the last of the Zeppelins. It would be a few billion years yet,
before anyone could light a fire in the atmosphere of Jupiter. With a
sound like briskly frying bacon, the speech circuit came back to life.

'@Hvllo, Kon-like-are you receiving? Are you, receiving?"

154 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

he words were chopped and badly distorted, but intet. ligible.

Falcon's spirits lifted; he had resumed contact with the world of men.

"I receive you," he said. "Quite an electrical display, but no
damage--so far." '11anks-thought we'd lost you. Please check telemetry
channels three, seven, twenty-six. Also gain on camera two. And we don't
quite believe the readings on the external ionization probes ... ."
Reluctantly Falcon tore his gaze away from the fascinating pyrotechnic
display around Kon-Tiki, though from time to time he kept glancing out
of the windows. The ball lightning disappeared first, the fiery globes
slowly expanding until they reached a critical size, at which they
vanished in a gentle explosion. But even an hour later, there were still
faint glows around all the exposed metal on the outside of the capsule;
and the radio circuits remained noisy until well after mid. night. 'Me
remaining hours of darkness were completely uneventful- until just
before dawn. Because it came from the east, Falcon assumed that he was
seeing the first faint hint of sunrise. Then he realized that it was
twenty minutes too wly for this-and the glow that had appeared along the
horizon was moving toward him even as he watched. It swiftly detached
itself from the arch of stars that marked the invisible edge of the
planet, and he saw that it was a relatively narrow band, quite sharply
defined. The beam of an enormous searchlight appeared to be swinging
beneath the clouds. Perhaps sixty miles behind the first racing bar of
light came another, parallel to it and moving at the same speed. And
beyond that another, and another-until all the sky ffickemd with
alternating sheets of light and darkness. By this time, Falcon thought,
he had been inured to wonders, and it seemed impossible that this
display of pure, soundless luminosity could present the slightest
danger. But it was so astonishing, and so inexplicable, that he felt
cold, naked fear gnawing at his self-control. No man could look upon
such a sight without feeling like a helpless pygmy in the presence of
forces beyond his comprehension. Was it possible that, after all,
Jupiter carried not only life but also intelligence? And, perhaps, an
intelligence that only now was beginning to react to his alien presence?

"Yes, we see it," said Mission Control, in a voice that

 A Meeting with Medusa 155

echoed his own awe. "We've no idea what it is. Stand by, we're calling
Ganymede." The display was slowly fading; the bands racing in from the
far horizon were much fainter, as if the energies that powered them were
becoming exhausted. In five minutes it was all over; the last faint
pulse of light flickered along the western sky and then was gone. Its
passing, left Falcon with an overwhelming sense of relief. The sight was
so hypnotic, and so disturbing, that it was not good for any man's peace
of mind to contemplate it too long. He was more shaken than he cared to
adn-dt. The electrical storm was something that he could understand; but
this was totally incomprehensible. Mission Control was still silent.

He knew that the information banks up on Ganymede were now being
searched as men and computers turned their minds to@ the problem. If no
answer could be found there, it would be necessary to call Earth; that
would mean a delay of almost an hour. The possibility that even Earth
might be unable to help was one that Falcon did not care to contemplate.

. He had never before been so glad to hear the voice of Mission Control
as when Dr. Brenner finally came on the circuit. The biologist sounded
relieved, yet subdued-like a man who has just come through some great
intellectual crisis. "Hello, Kon-Tiki. We've solved your problem, but we
can stiff hardly believe it. "What you've been seeing is
bioluminescence, very similar to that produced by microorganisms in the
tropical seas of Earth. Here they're in the atmosphere, not the ocean,
but the principle is the same."

"But the pattern," protested Falcon, "was so regular-so artificial And
it was hundreds of miles across!' "It was even larger than you imagine;
you observed only a small part of it.

The whole pattern was over three thousand miles wide and looked like a
revolving wheel. You merely saw the spokes, sweeping past you at about
six-tenths of a mile a second ..."

"A secondl" Falcon could not help interjecting. "No animals could move
that fast!"

"Of course not. Let me explain. What you saw was triggered by the shock
wave from Source Beta, moving at the speed of sound."

"But what about the pattern?"

Falcon insisted.

156 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

"that's the surprising part. It's a very rare phenomenon, but identical
wheels of light-except that they're a thousand times smaller-have been
observed in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.

Listen to this: British India Company's Patna, Persian Gulf, May 1880,
11:30 P. M.-an enormous luminous wheel, whirling round, the spokes of
which appeared to brush the ship along. The spokes were 200 or 300 yards
long ... each wheel contained about sixteen spokes ...' And here's one
from the Gulf of Omar, dated May 23, 1906: qbe intensely bright
luminescence approached us rapidly, shooting sharply defined light rays
to the west in rapid succession, like the beam from the searchlight of a
warship ... To the left of us, a gigantic fiery wheel formed itself,
with spokes that reached as far as one could see.

The whole wheel whirled around for two or three minutes ...' The archive
computer on Ganymede'dug up about five hundred cases. It would have
printed out the lot if we hadn't stopped it in time."

"I'm convinced-but still baffled."

"I don't blame you. The full explanation wasn't worked out until late in
the twentieth century. It seems that these luminous wheels are the
results of submarine earthquakes, and always occur in shallow watem
where the shock waves can be reflected and cause standing wave patterns.
Sometimes bars, sometimes rotating wheels-the 'Wheels of Poseidon,'
they've been called. The theory was finally proved by making underwater
explosions and photographing the results'from a satellite. No wonder
sailors used to be superstitious.

Who would have believed a thing like this?" So that was it, Falcon told
himself. When Source Beta blew its top, it must have sent shock waves in
all directionsthrough the compressed gas of the lower atmosphere,
through the solid body of Jupiter itself. Meeting and crisscrossing,
those waves must have canceled here, reinforced there; the whole planet
must have rung like a bell. Yet the explanation did not destroy the
sense of wonder and awe; he would never be able to forget those
flickering bands of light, racing through the unattainable depths of the
Jovian atmosphere. He felt that he was not merely on a strange planet,
but in some magical realm between myth and reality. This was a world
where absolutely anything could happen., and no man could possibly guess
what the future would bring. And he still had a whole day to go.

 A Meeting with Medusa 157

6. medusa

When the true dawn finally arrived, it brought a sudden change of
weather. Kon-Tiki was moving through a blizzard; waxen snowflakes were
falling so thickly that visibility was reduced to zero. Falcon began to
worry about the wel that might be accumulating on the envelope.

Then he noticed that any Bakes settling outside the windows quickly
disappeared; Kon-Tiki's continual outpouring of heat was evaporating
them as swiftly as they arrived. - If he had been ballooning on Earth,
he would also have worried about the possibility of collision. At least
that was no danger here; any Jovian mountains were several hundred miles
below him. And as for the floating islands of foam, hitting them would
probably be like plowing into slightly hardened soapbubbles. I
Nevertheless, he switched on the horizontal radar, which until now had
been completely useless; only the vertical beam, giving his distance
from the invisible surface, had thus far been of any value. Then he had
another surprise. Scattered across a huge sector of the sky ahead were
dozens of large and brilliant echoes. They were completely isolated from
one another and apparently hung unsupported in space. Falcon remembered
a phrase the earliest aviators had used to describe one of the hazards
of their profession: "clouds stuffed with rocks." 1bat was a perfect
description of what seemed to lie in the track of Kon-Tiki. It was a
disconcerting sight; then Falcon again reminded himself that nothing
really solid could possibly hover in this atmosphere. Perhaps it was
some strange meteorological phenomenon. In any case, the nearest echo
was about a hundred and twenty-five miles. He reported to Mission
Control, which could provide no explanation. But it gave the welcome
news that he would be clear of the blizzard in another thirty minutes.

It did not warn him, however, of the violent cross wind that abruptly
grabbed Kon-Tiki and swept it almost at right angles to its previous
track. Falcon needed all his skill and the maximum use of what little
control he had over his ungainly vehicle to prevent it from being
capsized. Within minutes he was racing northward at over three hundred
miles an hour. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the turbulence
ceased; he was still moving at high speed, but in smooth air. He

158 THE WM FROM THE SUN

wondered if he had been caught in the Jovian equivalent of a jet stream.

The snow storm dissolved; and he saw what Jupiter had been preparing for
him. Kon-Tiki had entered the funnel of a gigantic whirlpools some six
hundred miles across. The balloon was being swept along a curving wall
of cloud. Overhead, the sun was shining, in a clear sky; but far
beneath, this great hole in the atmosphere drilled down to unknown
depths until it reached a misty floor where lightning flickered almost
continuously. Though the vessel was being dragged downward so slowly
that it was in no immediate danger, Falcon increased the now of heat
into the envelope until Kon-Tiki hovered at a constant altitude. Not
until then did he abandon the fantastic spectacle outside and consider
again the problem of the radar. The nearest echo was now only about
twenty-five miles away. AD of them, he quickly realized, were
distributed along the wall of the vortex, and were moving with it,
apparently caught in the whirlpool like Kon-Tiki itself. He aimed, the
telescope along the radar bearing and found himself looking at a curious
mottled cloud that almost filled the field of view. It was not easy to
see, being only a little darker than the whirling wall of mist that
formed its background. Not until he had been staring for several minutes
did Falcon realize that he had met it once before. The first time it had
been crawling across the drifting mountains of foam, and he had mistaken
it for a giant, many-trunked tree. Now at last he could appreciate its
real size and complexity and could give it a better name to fix its
image in his mind. It did not resemble a tree at all, but a jellyfish-a
medusa, such as might be met trailing its tentacles as it drifted along
the warm eddies of the Gulf Stream. This medusa was more than a mile
across and its scores of dangling tentacles were hundreds of feet long.
They swayed slowly back and forth in perfect unison, taking more than a
minute for each complete undulation-almost as if the creature was
clumsily rowing itself through the sky. The other echoes were more
distant medusae. Falcon focused the telescope on half a dozen and could
see no variations in shape or size. They all seemed to be of the same
species, and he wondered just why they were drifting lazily, around in
this six- hundred-mile orbit. Perhaps they were feeding upon the aerial
plankton sucked in by the whirlpool, as Kon-Tik! itself had been.

 A Meeting with Medusa 159

"Do you realize, Howard," said Dr. Brenner, when he had recovered from
his initial astonishment, "that this thing is about a hundred thousand
times as large as the biggest whale? And even if it's only a gasbag, it
must still weigh a million tonsl I can't even guess at its metabolism.
It must generate megawatts of heat to maintain its buoyancy."

"But if it's just a gasbag, why is it such a damn good radar reflector?"

"I haven't the faintest idea. Can you get any closer?"

Brenner's question was not an idle one. If he changed altitude to take
advantage of the differing wind velocities, Falcon could approach the
medusa as closely as he wished. At the moment, however, he preferred his
present twenty-five miles and said so, firmly. "I see what you mean,"
-Brenner answered, a little reluctantly. "Let's stay where we are for
the present." That "we" gave Falcon a certain wry amusement; an extra
sixty thousand miles made a considerable difference in one's point of
view. For the next two hours Kon-Tiki drifted uneventfully in the gyre
of the great whirlpool, while Falcon experimented with filters and
camera contrast, trying to get a clear view of the medusa. He began to
wonder if its elusive coloration was some kind of camouflage; perhaps,
like many animals of Earth, it was trying to lose itself against its
background. That was a trick used by both hunters and hunted. In which
category was the medusa? That was a question he could hardly expect to
have answered in the short time that was left to him.

Yet just before noon, without the slightest warning, the answer came ...
Like a squadron of antique jet fighters, five mantas came sweeping
through the wall of mist that formed the funnel of the vortex. 'Tbey
were flying in a V formation directly toward the pallid gray cloud of
the medusa; and there was no doubt, in'Falcon's mind, that they were'on
the attack. He had been quite wrong to assume that they were harmless
vegetarians. Yet everything happened at such a leisurely pace that it
was like watching a slow-motion film. The mantas undulated along at
perhaps thirty miles an. hour; it seemed ages before they reached the
medusa, which continued to paddle imperturbably along at an even slower
speed. Huge though they were, the mantas looked tiny beside the monster
they were approaching. When they flapped down on its back, they appeared
about as large as birds landing on a whale, 160 THE Va" FROM THE SUN

Could the medusa defend itself, Falcon wondered. He did not see how the
attacking mantas could be in danger as long as they avoided those huge
clumsy tentacles. And perhaps their host was not even aware of them;
they could be insignificant parasites, tolerated as arefleas upon a dog.
But now it was obvious that the medusa was in distress. With agonizing
slowness, it began to tip over like a capsizing ship. After ten minutes
it had tilted forty-five degrees; it was also rapidly losing altitude.
It was impossible not to feel a sense of pity for the beleaguered
monster, and to Falcon the sight brought bitter memories. In a grotesque
way, the fall of the medusa was almost a parody of the dying Queen's
last moments. Yet he knew that his sympathies were on the wrong side.
Ifigh intelligence could develop only among predators-not among the
drifting browsers of either sea or air. The ma6tas were far closer to
him than was this monstrous bag of gas. And anyway, who could
really-sympathize with a creature a hundred thousand times larger than a
whale? Then he noticed that the medusa's tactics seemed to be having
some effect. The mantas had been disturbed by its slow roll and were
flapping heavily away from its back--like gorged vultures interrupted at
mealtime. But they did not move very far, continuing to hover a few
yards from the still-capsizing monster. There was a sudden, blinding
flash of light synchronized with a crash of static over the radio. One
of the mantas, slowly twisting end over end, was plummeting straight
downward. As it fell, a plume of black smoke trailed behind it. The
resemblance to an aircraft going down in flames was quite uncanny. In
unison, the remaining mantas dived steeply away -from the medusa,
gaining speed by losing altitude. They had, within - minutes, vanished
back into the wall of cloud from which they had emerged. And the medusa,
no longer falling, began to roll back toward the horizontal.

Soon it was sailing along once more on an even keel, as if nothing had
happened. "Beautiful!" said Dr. Brenner, after a moment of stunned
silence. "It's developed electric defenses, like some of our eels and
rays. But that must have been about a million volts! Can you see any
organs that might produce the discharge? Any. thing looking like
electrodes?"

"No," Falcon answered, after switching to the highest power of the
telescope. "But here's something odd. Do you

 A Meeting with Medum 161

see this pattern? Check back on the earlier 4nages. I'm sure it wasn't
there before.' A broad, mottled band had appeared along the side of the
medusa. It formed a startlingly regular checkerboard, each square of
which was itself speckled in a complex subpattern. of short horizontal
lines. They were spaced at equal distances in a geometrically perfect
array of rows and columns. "You're right," said Dr. Brenner, with
something very much like awe in his voice. "That's just appeared. And
I'm afraid to tell you what I think it is." ,,well, I have no reputation
to lose-at least as a biologist Shall I give my guess?"

"Go ahead."

"That's a large meter-band radio array. The sort of thing they used back
at the beginning of the twentieth century."

"I was afraid you7d say that. Now we know why it gave such a massive
echo."

"But why has it just appeared?' 'Probably an aftereffect of the
discharge.' "I've just had another thought," said Falcon, rather slowly.
"Do you suppose it's listening to ust"

"On this frequency? I doubt it. Those are meter-no, decameter
antennas-judging by their size. Hmm ... that's an

Dr. Brenner fell silent, obviously contemplating some new fine of
thought. Presently he continued: "I bet they're tuned to the radio
outbursts! That's something nature never got around to doing on Earth
... We have anirnals with sonar and even electric senses, but nothing
ever developed a radio sense. Why bother where there was so much light?
"But its different here. Jupiter is drenched with radio energy. It's
worth while using it-maybe even tapping it. That thing could be a
floating power pland" A new voice cut into the conversation.

"Mission Commander here. This is all very interesting, but there's a
much more important matter to settle. Is it intelligent? If so, we've
got to consider the First Contact directives." "Until I came here," said
Dr. Brenner, somewhat ruefully, "I would have sworn that anything that
could make a shortwave antenna system must be intelligent. Now, I'm not
sure. This could have evolved naturally. I suppose it's no more
fantastic than the human eye."

"11an we have to play safe and assume intelligence. For

162 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

the present, therefore, this expedition comes under all the clauses of
the Prime directive." There was a long silence while everyone on the
radio circuit absorbed the implications of this. For the first time in
the history of space flight, the rules that had been established through
more than a century of argument might have to be applied. Man had-it was
hoped-profited from his mistakes on Earth. Not only moral
considerations, but also his own self-interest demanded that he should
not repeat them among the planets. It could be disastrous to treat a
superior intelligence as the American settlers had treated the Indians,
or as. almost everyone had treated the Africans ... The first rule was:
keep your distance. Make no attempt to approach, or even to communicate,
until "they" have had plenty of time to study you. Exactly what was
meant by "plenty of time," no one had ever been able to decide.

It was left to the discretion of the man on the spot. A responsibility
of which he had never dreamed had descended upon Howard Falcon. In the
few hours that remained to him on Jupiter, he might become the first
ambassador of the human race. And that was an irony so delicious that he
almost wished the surgeons had restored to him the power of laughter.

7. PRMM Dmectrve

It was growing darker, but Falcon scarcely noticed as he strained his
eyes toward that living cloud in the field of the telescope. The wind
that was steadily sweeping Kon-Tiki around the funnel of the great
whirlpool had now brought him within twelve miles of the creature. If he
got much closer than six, he would take evasive action. Though he felt
certain that the inedusa's electric weapons were short ranged, he did
not wish to put the matter to the test. That would be a problem for
future explorers, and he wished them luck. Now it was quite dark in the
capsule. That was strange, because sunset was stiff hours away.

Automatically, he glanced at the horizontally scanning radar, as he had
done every few minutes. Apart from the medusa he was studying, there was
no other object within about sixty miles of him. Suddenly, with
startling power, he heard the sound that had come booming out of the
Jovian night-the throbbing beat that Srew more and more rapid, then
stopped in mid-dre-A Meeting with Medusa 163

scendo. the whole capsule vibrated with it like a pea in a kettledrum.

Falcon realized two things almost simultaneously during the sudden,
aching silence. This time the sound was not coming from thousands of
miles away, over a radio circuit. It was in the very atmosphere around
him. no second thought was even more disturbing. He bad quite
forgotten-it was inexcusable, but there had been other apparently more
important -things on his mind-that most of the sky above him was
completely blanked out by Kontiki's gasbag. Being lightly silvered to
conserve its heat, the great balloon was an effective shield both to
radar and to vision. He had known this, of course; it had been a minor
defect of the design, tolerated because it did not appear important. It
seemed very important to Howard Falcon now-as he saw that fence of
gigantic tentacles, thicker than the trunks of any tree, descending all
around the capsule. He heard Brenner yelling: "Remember the Prime
directivel Don't alarm RV' Before he could make an appropriate answer
that overwhelming drumbeat started again and drowned all other sounds.

The sign of a really skilled test pilot is how he reacts not to
foreseeable emergencies, but to ones that nobody could have anticipated.

Falcon did not hesitate for more than a second to analyze the situation.

In a lightning-swift movement, he puffed the rip cord. nat word was an
archaic survival from the days of the Arst hydrogen balloons; on
Kon-Tiki, the rip cord did not tear open the gasbag, but merely operated
a set of louvers around the upper curve of the envelope. At once the hot
gas started to rush out; Kon- Tiki, deprived of her lift, began to fall
swiftly in this gravity field two and a half times as strong as Earth's.
Falcon had a momentary glimpse of great tentacles whipping upward and
away. He had just time to note that they were studded with large
bladders or sacs, presumably to give them buoyancy, and that they ended
in multitudes of thin feelers like the roots of a plant. He half
expected a bolt of lightning-but nothing happened. His precipitous rate
of descent was slackening as the atmosphere thickened and the deflated
envelope acted as a parachute. When Kon-Tiki had dropped about two
miles, he -felt *t it was safe -to close the louvers again. By the time
he

164 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

had restored buoyancy and was in equilibrium once more, he had lost
another mile of altitude and was getting dangerously near his safety
limit. He peered anxiously through the overhead windows, though he did
not expect to see anything except the obscuring bulk of the balloon. But
he had Aideslipped during his descent, and part of the medusa was just
visible a couple of miles above him. It was much closer than he
expected-and it was still coming down, faster than he would have
believed possible. Mission Control was calling anxiously. He shouted:
-rm O. K.-but it's still coming after me. I can't go any deeper." That
was not quite true. He could go a lot deeper-about one hundred and
eighty miles. But it would be a one-way trip, and most of the journey
would be of little interest to hinl Then, to his great relief, he saw
that the medusa was leveling off, not quite a mile above him. Perhaps it
had decided to approach this strange intruder with caution; or perhaps
it, too, found this deeper layer uncomfortably hot. The temperature was
over fifty degrees centigrade, and Falcon wondered how much longer his
life-support system could handle matters. Dr. Brenner was back on the
circuit, still worrying about the Prime directive.

"Remember-it may only be inquisitive" he cried, without much conviction.

"Try not to frighten it!" Falcon was getting rather tired of this advice
and recalled a TV discussion he had once seen between a space lawyer-and
an astronaut. After the full implications of the Prime directive had
been carefully spelled out, the incredulous spacer had exclaimed: "Then
if there was no alternative, I must sit still and let myself be eaten?"

The lawyer had not even cracked a smile when he answered: "That's an
excellent summing up.' It had seemed funny at the time; it was not at
all amusing now. And then Falcon saw something that made him even more
unhappy. The medusa was still hovering about a mile above him- but one
of its tentacles was becoming incredibly elongated, and was stretching
down toward Kon-Tiki, thinning out at the same time. As a boy he had
once seen the funnel of a tornado descending from a storm cloud over the
Kansas plains. The, thing coming toward him now evoked vivid memories of
that black, twisting snake in the sky. "I'm rapidly running out of
options," he reported to Mission Control. "I now -have only a choice
between frighten-A Meeting with Medusa 165

ing it-and giving it a bad stomach-ache. I don't think it will find Kon-
Tiki very digestible, if that's what it has in mind." He waited for
comments from Brenner, but the biologist remained silent. 'Very well.

It's twenty-seven minutes ahead of time, but Im starting the ignition
sequencer. I hope I'll have enough reserve to correct my orbit later."

He could no longer see the medusa; once more it was directly overhead.

But he knew that the descending tentacle must now be very close to the
balloon. It would take almost five minutes to bring the reactor up to
full thrust ... The fuser was primed. The orbit computer had not
rejected the situation as wholly impossible. The air scoops were open,
ready to gulp in tons of the surrounding hydrohelium on demand. Even
under optimum conditions, this would have been the moment of truth-for
there had been no way of testing how a nuclear ramjet would really work
in the strange atmosphere of Jupiter. Very gently something rocked
Kon-Tiki. Falcon tried to ignore it. Ignition had been planned at six
miles higher, in an atmosphere of less than a quarter of the density and
thirty degrees cooler. Too bad. What was the shallowest dive he could
get away with, for the air scoops to work? When the ram ignited, he'd be
heading toward Jupiter withtwo, and a half g's to help him get there.

Could he possibly pull out in time? A large, heavy hand patted the
balloon. The whole vessel bobbed up and down, like one of the Yo-yo's
that had just become the craze on Earth. Of course, Brenner might be
perfectly right. Perhaps it was just trying to be friendly. Maybe he
should try to talk to it over the radio. VA!& should it be: "Pretty
pussy "? "Down, Fido"? Or

"Take me to your leader"? The tritium-deuterium ratio was correct. He
was ready to light the candle, with a hundred-million-degree match. The
thin tip of the tentacle came slithering around the edge of the balloon
some sixty yards away. It was about the size of an elephants trunk, and
by the delicate way it was moving appeared to be almost as sensitive.
There were little palps at its end, like questing mouths. He was sure
that Dr. Brenner would be fascinated.. This seemed about as good a time
as any. He gave a swift wan of the entire control board, started the
find four-second

166 THE WIND FROM THE SUN

ignition count, broke the safety seal, and pressed the YEmson switch.

There was a sharp explosion and an instant loss of weight. Kon- Tik!

was falling freely, nose down. Overhead, the discarded balloon was
racing upward, dragging the inquisitive tentacle with it. Falcon had no
time to see if the gasbag actually hit the medusa, because at that
moment the ramjet fired and he had other matters to think about. A
roaring column of hot hydrohelium was pouring out of the reactor
nozzles, swiftly building up thrust-but toward Jupiter, not away from
it. He could not pull out yet, for vector control was too sluggish.

Unless he could gain complete control and achieve horizontal flight
within the next five seconds, the vehicle would dive too deeply into the
atmosphere and would be destroyed. With agonizing slowness-those five
seconds seemed like fifty-he managed to flatten out, then pull the nose
upward. He glanced back only once and caught a final glimpse of -the
medusa, many miles away. Kon-Tiki's discarded gasbag had apparently
escaped from its grasp, for he could see no sign of it. Now he was
master once more-no longer drifting I@elplessly on the winds of Jupiter,
but riding his own column of atomic fire back to the stars. He was
confident that the ramjet would steadily give him velocity and altitude
until he had reached near-orbital speed at the fringes of the amosphere.

Then, with a brief burst of pure rocket power, he would regain the
freedom of space. Halfway to orbit, he looked south and saw the
tremendous enigma of the Great Red Spot-that floating island twice the
size of Earth--coming up over the horizon. He stared into its mysterious
beauty until the computer warned him that conversion to rocket thrust
was only sixty seconds ahead. He tore his gaze reluctantly away. "Some
other time," he murmured. 'What's that?" said Mission Control. "What did
you say?' 'It doesn't matter," he replied.

S. 13ETWEEN TWO WORLDS

"You're a hero now, Howard," said Webster, "not just a celebrity.

You! ve given them something to think about-injected some excitement
into their lives. Not one in a million

 A Meeting with Medusa 167

will actually travel to the Outer Giants, but the whole human race will
go in imagination. And that's what counts."

"I'm glad to have made your job a little easier." Webster was too old a
friend to take offense at the note of irony. Yet it surprised him. And
this was not the first change in Howard that he had noticed since the
return from Jupiter. The Administrator pointed to the famous sign on his
desk, borrowed from an impresario of an earlier age: ASTONISH ME1 "I'm
not ashamed of my job.

New knowledge, new resourc08--they're all very well. But men also need
novelty and excitement. Space travel has become routine; you've made it
a Smat adventure once more. It will be a long, long time before we, get
Jupiter pigeonholed. And maybe longer still before we understand those
medusae. I still think that one knew where your blind spot was. Anyway,
have you decided on your next move? Saturn, Uranus, Neptune-you name
it." "I don't know. I've thought about Saturn, but rm not really needed
there. It's only one gravity, not two and a half like Jupiter: So men
can handle it." Men, thought Webster. He said "men." Hes never done that
before. And when did I last hear him use the word "we'7 He's changing,
slipping away from us ... 'Wall," he said aloud, rising from his chair
to conceal his slight uneasiness, "let's get the conference started. The
cameras are all set up and everyone's waiting. You'll meet a lot of old
friends." He stressed the last word, but Howard showed no response. The
leather mask of his face was becoming more and more difficult to read.
Instead, he rolled back from the Administrator's desk, unlocked his
undercarriage so that it no longer formed a chair, and rose on his
hydraulics to his full seven -feet of height. It had been good
psychology on the part of the surgeons to give him that extra twelve
inches, to compensate somewhat for all that he had lost when the Queen
had crashed. Falcon waited until Webster had opened the door, then
pivoted neatly on his balloon tires and headed for it at a smooth and
silent twenty miles an hour. The display of speed and precision was not
flaunted arrogantly; rather, it had become quite unconscious. Howard
Falcon, who had once been a man and could still pass for one over a
voice circuit, felt a calm sense of achievement-and, for the first time
in years, something like

168 THE Va" FROM THE SUN

peace of mind. Sincehis return from Jupiter, the nightmares had ceased.

He had found his role at last. He now knew why he had dreamed about that
superchimp aboard the doomed Queen Elizabeth. Neither man nor beast, it
was between two worlds; and so was he. He alone could travel unprotected
on the lunar surface. The LIFE- support system inside the metal cylinder
that had replaced his fragile body functioned equally well in space or
under water. Gravity fields ten times that of Earth were an
inconvenience, but nothing more. And no gravity was best of all. The
human race was becoming more remote, the ties of kinship more tenuous.

Perhaps these air-breathing, radiationsensitive bundles of unstable
carbon compounds had no right beyond the atmosphere; they should stick
to their natural homes-Earth, Moon, Mars. Some day the real masters of
space would be machines, not ifien---and he was neither. Already
conscious of his destiny, he took a somber pride in his unique
loneliness-the first ininiortal midway between two orders of creation.

He would, after all, be an ambassador; between the old and the
new-between the creatures of carbon and the creatures of metal who must
one day supersede them. Both would have need of him in the troubled
centuries that lay ahead.

February 1971

