2001_ A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke [55]
Yet still he called stupidly, as if an incantation could bring back the dead: “Hello Frank … Hello Frank … Can you read me? … Can you read me? … Wave your arms if you can hear me … Perhaps your transmitter is broken … Wave your arms!”
And then, almost as if in response to his plea, Poole waved back.
For an instant, Bowman felt the skin prickling at the base of his scalp. The words he was about to call died on his suddenly parched lips. For he knew that his friend could not possibly be alive; and yet he waved…
The spasm of hope and fear passed instantly, as cold logic replaced emotion. The still accelerating pod was merely shaking the burden that it dragged behind it. Poole’s gesture was an echo of Captain Ahab’s when, lashed to the flanks of the white whale, his corpse had beckoned the crew of the Pequod on to their doom.
Within five minutes, the pod and its satellite had vanished among the stars. For a long time David Bowman stared after it into the emptiness that still stretched, for so many millions of miles ahead, to the goal which he now felt certain he could never reach. Only one thought kept hammering in his brain.
Frank Poole would be the first of all men to reach Saturn.
Chapter 26
Dialogue with Hal
Nothing else aboard Discovery had changed. All systems were still functioning normally; the centrifuge turned slowly on its axis, generating its imitation gravity; the hibernauts slept dreamlessly in their cubicles; the ship coasted on toward the goal from which nothing could deflect it, except the inconceivably remote chance of collision with an asteroid. And there were few asteroids indeed, out here far beyond the orbit of Jupiter.
Bowman did not remember making his way from the control deck to the centrifuge. Now, rather to his surprise, he found himself sitting in the little galley, a half-finished beaker of coffee in his hand. He became slowly aware of his surroundings, like a man emerging from a long, drugged sleep.
Directly opposite him was one of the fisheye lenses, scattered at strategic spots throughout the ship, which provided Hal with his onboard visual inputs. Bowman stared at it as if he had never seen it before; then he rose slowly to his feet and walked toward the lens.
His movement in the field of view must have triggered something in the unfathomable mind that was now ruling over the ship; for suddenly, Hal spoke.
“Too bad about Frank, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Bowman answered, after a long pause. “It is.”
“I suppose you’re pretty broken up about it?”
“What do you expect?”
Hal processed this answer for ages of computer-time; it was a full five seconds before he continued:
“He was an excellent crew member.”
Finding the coffee still in his hand, Bowman took a slow sip. But he did not answer; his thoughts were in such a turmoil that he could think of nothing to say — nothing that might not make the situation even worse, if that were possible.
Could it have been an accident caused by some failure of the pod controls? Or was it a mistake, though an innocent one, on the part of Hal? No explanations had been volunteered, and he was afraid to demand one, for fear of the reaction it might produce.
Even now, he could not fully accept the idea that Frank bad been deliberately killed — it was so utterly irrational. It was beyond all reason that Hal, who had performed flawlessly for so long, should suddenly turn assassin. He might make mistakes — anyone, man or machine, might do that — but Bowman could not believe him capable of murder.
Yet he must consider that possibility, for if it was true, he was in terrible danger. And though his next move was clearly defined by his standing orders, he was not sure how he could safely carry it out.
If either crew member was killed, the survivor had to replace him at once from the hibernators; Whitehead, the geophysicist, was the first scheduled for awakening, then Kaminski, then Hunter. The revival sequence