2001_ A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke [30]
Floyd’s suit radio interrupted his reverie. “Project supervisor speaking. If you’d all line up on this side, we’d like to take a few photos. Dr. Floyd, will you stand in the middle — Dr. Michaels — thank you … “
No one except Floyd seemed to think that there was anything funny about this. In all honesty, he had to admit that he was glad someone had brought a camera; here was a photo that would undoubtedly be historic, and he wanted copies for himself. He hoped that his face would be clearly visible through the helmet of the suit.
“Thanks, gentlemen,” said the photographer, after they had posed somewhat self-consciously in front of the monolith, and he had made a dozen exposures. “We’ll ask the Base Photo Section to send you copies.”
Then Floyd turned his full attention to the ebon slab — walking slowly around it, examining it from every angle, trying to imprint its strangeness upon his mind. He did not expect to find anything, for he knew that every square inch had already been gone over with microscopic care.
Now the sluggish sun had lifted itself above the edge of the crater, and its rays were pouring almost broadside upon the eastern face of the block. Yet it seemed to absorb every particle of light as if it had never been.
Floyd decided to try a simple experiment; he stood between the monolith and the sun, and looked for his own shadow on the smooth black sheet. There was no trace of it. At least ten kilowatts of raw heat must be falling on the slab; if there was anything inside, it must be rapidly cooking.
How strange, Floyd thought, to stand here while — this thing — is seeing daylight for the first time since the Ice Ages began on Earth. He wondered again about its black color; that was ideal, of course, for absorbing solar energy. But he dismissed the thought at once; for who would be crazy enough to bury a sunpowered device twenty feet underground?
He looked up at the Earth, beginning to wane in the morning sky. Only a handful of the six billion people there knew of this discovery; how would the world react to the news when it was finally released?
The political and social implications were immense; every person of real intelligence — everyone who looked an inch beyond his nose — would find his life, his values, his philosophy, subtly changed. Even if nothing whatsoever was discovered about TMA-1, and it remained an eternal mystery, Man would know that he was not unique in the universe. Though he had missed them by millions of years, those who had once stood here might yet return: and if not, there might well be others. All futures must now contain this possibility.
Floyd was still musing over these thoughts when his helmet speaker suddenly emitted a piercing electronic shriek, like a hideously overloaded and distorted time signal. Involuntarily, he tried to block his ears with his spacesuited hands; then he recovered and groped frantically for the gain control of his receiver. While he was still fumbling four more of the shrieks blasted out of the ether; then there was a merciful silence.
All around the crater, figures were standing in attitudes of paralyzed astonishment. So it’s nothing wrong with my gear, Floyd told himself; everyone heard those piercing electronic screams.
After three million years of darkness, TMA-1 had greeted the lunar dawn.
Chapter 14
The Listeners
A hundred million miles beyond Mars, in the cold loneliness where no man had yet traveled, Deep Space Monitor 79 drifted slowly among the tangled orbits of the asteroids. For three years it had fulfilled its mission flawlessly — a tribute to the American scientists who had designed it,