2001_ A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke [60]
He looked at Whitehead first: one glance was sufficient. He had thought that a hibernating man showed no sign of life, but now he knew that this was wrong. Though it was impossible to define it, there was a difference between hibernation and death. The red lights and unmodulated traces on the biosensor display only confirmed what he had already guessed.
It was the same with Kaminski and Hunter. He had never known them very well; he would never know them now.
He was alone in an airless, partially disabled ship, all communication with Earth cut off. There was not another human being within half a billion miles.
And yet, in one very real sense, he was not alone. Before he could be safe, he must be lonelier still.
He had never before made the journey through the weightless hub of the centrifuge while wearing a spacesuit; there was little clearance, and it was a difficult and exhausting job. To make matters worse, the circular passage was littered with debris left behind during the brief violence of the gale which had emptied the ship of its atmosphere.
Once, Bowman’s light fell upon a hideous smear of sticky red fluid, left where it had splashed against a panel. He had a few moments of nausea before he saw fragments of a plastic container, and realized that it was only some foodstuff — probably jam — from one of the dispensers. It bubbled obscenely in the vacuum as he floated past.
Now he was out of the slowly spinning drum and drifting forward into the control deck. He caught at a short section of ladder and began to move along it, hand over hand, the brilliant circle of illumination from his suit light jogging ahead of him.
Bowman had seldom been this way before; there had been nothing for him to do here — until now. Presently he came to a small elliptical door bearing such messages as: “No Admittance Except to Authorized Personnel,” “Have You Obtained Certificate H.19?” and “Ultra-clean Area — Suction Suits Must Be Worn.”
Though the door was not locked, it bore three seals, each with the insignia of a different authority, including that of the Astronautics Agency itself. But even if one had been the Great Seal of the President, Bowman would not have hesitated to break it.
He had been here only once before, while installation was still in progress. He had quite forgotten that there was a vision input lens scanning the little chamber which, with its neatly ranged rows and columns of solid-state logic units, looked rather like a bank’s safe-deposit vault.
He knew instantly that the eye had reacted to his presence. There was the hiss of a carrier wave as the ship’s local transmitter was switched on; then a familiar voice came over the suit speaker.
“Something seems to have happened to the life-support system, Dave.”
Bowman took no notice. He was carefully studying the little labels on the logic units, checking his plan of action.
“Hello, Dave,” said Hal presently. “Have you found the trouble?”
This would be a very tricky operation; it was not merely a question of cutting off Hal’s power supply, which might have been the answer if he was dealing with a simple unselfconscious computer back on Earth. In Hal’s case, moreover, there were six independent and separately wired power systems, with a final back-up consisting of a shielded and armored nuclear isotope unit. No — he could not simply “pull the plug”; and even if that were possible, it would be disastrous.
For Hal was the nervous system of the ship; without his supervision, Discovery would be a mechanical corpse. The only answer was to cut out the higher centers of this sick but brilliant brain, and to leave the purely automatic regulating systems in operation. Bowman was not attempting this blindly, for the problem had been discussed during his training, though no one had ever dreamed that it would-arise in reality. He knew that he would be taking a fearful risk; if there was a spasm reflex, it would all be over in seconds.
“I think there’s been a failure in the pod-bay doors,” Hal remarked conversationally.