2001_ A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke [29]
At some signal, floodlights around the lip of the crater were switched on, and the bright earthlight was obliterated by a far more brilliant glare. In the lunar vacuum the beams were, of course, completely invisible; they formed overlapping ellipses of blinding white, centered on the monolith. And where they touched it, its ebon surface seemed to swallow them.
Pandora’s box, thought Floyd, with a sudden sense of foreboding — waiting to be opened by inquisitive Man. And what will he find inside?
Chapter 13
The Slow Down
The main pressure dome at the TMA-1 site was only twenty feet across, and its interior was uncomfortably crowded. The bus, coupled to it through one of the two airlocks, gave some much-appreciated extra living room.
Inside this hemispherical, double-walled balloon lived, worked, and slept the six scientists and technicians now permanently attached to the project. It also contained most of their equipment and instruments, all the stores that could not be left in the vacuum outside, cooking, washing, and toilet facilities, geological samples and a small TV screen through which the site could be kept under continuous surveillance.
Floyd was not surprised when Halvorsen elected to remain in the dome; he stated his views with admirable frankness.
“I regard spacesuits as a necessary evil,” said the Administrator. “I wear one four times a year, for my quarterly checkout tests. If you don’t mind, I’ll sit here and watch over the TV.”
Some of this prejudice was now unjustified, for the latest models were infinitely more comfortable than the clumsy suits of armor worn by the first lunar explorers. They could be put on in less than a minute, even without help, and were quite automatic. The Mk V into which Floyd was now carefully sealed would protect him from the worst that the Moon could do, either by day or by night.
Accompanied by Dr. Michaels, he walked into the small airlock. As the throbbing of the pumps died away, and his suit stiffened almost imperceptibly around him, he felt himself enclosed in the silence of vacuum.
That silence was broken by the welcome sound of his suit radio.
“Pressure O.K., Dr. Floyd? Are you breathing normally?”
“Yes — I’m fine.”
His companion carefully checked the dials and gauges on the outside of Floyd’s suit. Then he said:
“O.K. — let’s go.”
The outer door opened, and the dusty moonscape lay before them, glimmering in the earthlight.
With a cautious, waddling movement, Floyd followed Michaels through the lock. It was not hard to walk; indeed, in a paradoxical way the suit made him feel more at home than at any time since reaching the Moon. Its extra weight, and the slight resistance it imposed on his motion, gave some of the illusion of the lost terrestrial gravity.
The scene had changed since the party had arrived barely an hour ago. Though the stars, and the half-earth, were still as bright as ever, the fourteen-day lunar night had almost ended. The glow of the corona was like a false moonrise along the eastern sky — and then, without warning, the tip of the radio mast a hundred feet above Floyd’s head suddenly seemed to burst into flame, as it caught the first rays of the hidden sun.
They waited while the project supervisor and two of his assistants emerged from the airlock, then walked slowly toward the crater. By the time they had reached it, a thin bow of unbearable incandescence had thrust itself above the eastern horizon. Though it would take more than an hour for the sun to clear the edge of the slowly turning moon, the stars were already banished.
The crater was still in shadow, but the floodlights mounted