2001_ A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke [36]
Although Bowman was nominal Captain on this phase of the mission, no outside observer could have deduced the fact. He and Poole switched roles, rank, and responsibilities completely every twelve hours. This kept them both at peak training, minimized the chances of friction, and helped toward the goal of 100 percent redundancy.
Bowman’s day began at 0600, ship’s time — the Universal Ephemeris Time of the astronomers. If he was late, Hal had a variety of beeps and chimes to remind him of his duty, but they had never been used. As a test, Poole had once switched off the alarm; Bowman had still risen automatically at the right time.
His first official act of the day would be to advance the Master Hibernation Timer twelve hours. If this operation was missed twice in a row, Hal would assume that both he and Poole had been incapacitated, and would take the necessary emergency action.
Bowman would attend to his toilet, and do his isometric exercises, before settling down to breakfast and the morning’s radio-fax edition of the World Times. On Earth, he never read the paper as carefully as he did now; even the smallest items of society gossip, the most fleeting political rumors, seemed of absorbing interest as it flashed across the screen.
At 0700 he would officially relieve Poole on the Control Deck, bringing him a squeeze-tube of coffee from the kitchen. If — as was usually the case — there was nothing to report and no action to be taken, he would settle down to check all the instrument readings, and would run through a series of tests designed to spot possible malfunctions. By 1000 this would be finished, and he would start on a study period.
Bowman had been a student for more than half his life; he would continue to be one until he retired. Thanks to the twentieth-century revolution in training and information-handling techniques, he already possessed the equivalent of two or three college educations — and, what was more, he could remember 90 percent of what he had learned.
Fifty years ago, he would have been considered a specialist in applied astronomy, cybernetics, and space propulsion systems — yet he was prone to deny, with genuine indignation, that he was a specialist at all. Bowman had never found it possible to focus his interest exclusively on any subject; despite the dark warnings of his instructors, he had insisted on taking his Master’s degree in General Astronautics — a course with a vague and woolly syllabus, designed for those whose IQs were in the low 130s and who would never reach the top ranks of their profession.
His decision had been right; that very refusal to specialize had made him uniquely qualified for his present task. In much the same way Frank Poole — who sometimes disparagingly called himself “General Practitioner in space biology”— had been an ideal choice as his deputy. The two of them, with, if necessary, help from Hal’s vast stores of information, could cope with any problems likely to arise during the voyage — as long as they kept their minds alert and receptive, and continually reengraved old patterns of memory.
So for two hours, from 1000 to 1200, Bowman would engage in a dialogue with an electronic tutor, checking his general knowledge or absorbing material specific to this mission. He would prowl endlessly over ship’s plans, circuit diagrams, and voyage profiles, or would try to assimilate all that was known about Jupiter, Saturn, and their far-ranging families of moons.
At midday, he would retire to the galley and leave the ship to Hal while he prepared his lunch. Even here he was still fully in touch with events, for the tiny lounge-cum-dining room contained a