2001_ A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke [27]
That it had been buried, and quite deliberately, Dr. Michaels was absolutely sure. “At first,” he explained, “I rather hoped it might mark the site of some underground structure, but our latest excavations have eliminated that. It’s sitting on a wide platform of the same black material, with undisturbed rock beneath it. The — creatures — who designed it wanted to make sure it stayed put, barring major moonquakes. They were building for eternity.”
There was triumph, and yet sadness, in Michaels’ voice, and Floyd could share both emotions. At last, one of man’s oldest questions had been answered; here was the proof, beyond all shadow of doubt, that his was not the only intelligence that the universe had brought forth. But with that knowledge there came again an aching awareness of the immensity of Time. Whatever had passed this way had missed mankind by a hundred thousand generations. Perhaps, Floyd told himself, it was just as well. And yet — what we might have learned from creatures who could cross space, while our ancestors were still living in trees!
A few hundred yards ahead, a signpost was coming up over the Moon’s strangely close horizon. At its base was a tent-shaped structure covered with shining silver foil, obviously for protection against the fierce heat of day. As the bus rolled by, Floyd was able to read in the brilliant earthlight:
EMERGENCY DEPOT No. 3
20 Kilos Lox
10 Kilos Water
20 Foodpaks Mk 4
1 Toolkit Type B
1 Suit Repair Outfit
! TELEPHONE !
“Have you thought of that?” asked Floyd, pointing out of the window. “Suppose the thing’s a supply cache, left behind by an expedition that never returned?”
“It’s a possibility,” admitted Michaels. “That magnetic field certainly labeled its position, so that it could be easily found. But it’s rather small — it couldn’t hold much in the way of supplies.”
“Why not?” interjected Halvorsen. “Who knows bow big they were? Perhaps they were only six inches tall, which would make the thing twenty or thirty stories high.”
Michaels shook his head. “Out of the question,” he protested. “You can’t have very small, intelligent creatures; you need a minimum brain size.”
Michaels and Halvorsen, Floyd had noticed, usually took opposing viewpoints, yet there appeared to be little personal hostility or friction between them. They seemed to respect each other, and simply agreed to disagree.
There was certainly little agreement anywhere about the nature of TMA-1 — or the Tycho Monolith, as some preferred to call it, retaining part of the abbreviation. In the six hours since he had landed on the Moon, Floyd had heard a dozen theories, but had committed himself to none. Shrine, survey marker, tomb, geophysical instrument — these were perhaps the favorite suggestions, and some of the protagonists grew very heated in their defense. A good many bets had already been placed, and a lot of money would change hands when the truth was finally known — if, indeed, it ever was.
So far, the hard black material of the slab had resisted all the rather mild attempts that Michaels and his colleagues had made to obtain samples. They had no doubt that a laser beam would cut into it — for, surely, nothing could resist that frightful concentration of energy — but the decision to employ such violent measures would be left to Floyd. He had already decided that X rays, sonic probes, neutron beams, and all other nondestructive means of investigation would be brought into play before he called up the heavy artillery of the laser. It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand; but perhaps men were barbarians, beside the creatures who had made this thing.
And where could they have come from? The Moon itself? No, that was utterly impossible. If there had ever been indigenous life on this barren world, it had been destroyed during the last crater-forming epoch, when most of the lunar surface was white-hot.
Earth?Very unlikely, though perhaps not quite impossible. Any advanced terrestrial civilization — presumably