2001_ A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke [65]
Since that moment, the black slab had done nothing. It had been covered up, then cautiously exposed to the Sun again — without any reaction. No attempt had been made to cut into it, partly through scientific caution, but equally through fear of the possible consequences.
The magnetic field that led to its discovery had vanished at the moment of that radio shriek. Perhaps, some experts theorized, it had been generated by a tremendous circulating current, flowing in a superconductor and thus carrying energy down the ages until it was needed. That the monolith had some internal source of power seemed certain; the solar energy it had absorbed during its brief exposure could not account for the strength of its signal.
One curious, and perhaps quite unimportant, feature of the block had led to endless argument. The monolith was 11 feet high, and 1ݙby 5 feet in cross-section. When its dimensions were checked with great care, they were found to be in the exact ratio 1 to 4 to 9 — the squares of the first three integers. No one could suggest any plausible explanation for this, but it could hardly be a coincidence, for the proportions held to the limits of measurable accuracy. It was a chastening thought that the entire technology of Earth could not shape even an inert block, of any material, with such a fantastic degree of precision. In its way, this passive yet almost arrogant display of geometrical perfection was as impressive as any of TMA-1’s other attributes.
Bowman also listened, with a curiously detached interest, to Mission Control’s belated apologia for its programming. The voices from Earth seemed to have a defensive note; he could imagine the recriminations that must now be in progress among those who had planned the expedition.
They had some good arguments, of course — including the results of a secret Department of Defense study, Project BARSOOM, which had been carried out by Harvard’s School of Psychology in 1989. In this experiment in controlled sociology, various sample populations had been assured that the human race had made contact with extraterrestrials. Many of the subjects tested were — with the help of drugs, hypnosis, and visual effects — under the impression that they had actually met creatures from other planets, so their reactions were regarded as authentic.
Some of these reactions had been quite violent; there was, it seemed, a deep vein of xenophobia in many otherwise normal human beings. In view of mankind’s record of lynchings, pogroms, and similar pleasantries, this should have surprised no one; nevertheless, the organizers of the study had been deeply disturbed, and the results had never been released. The five separate panics caused in the twentieth century by radio broadcasts of H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds also reinforced the study’s conclusions…
Despite these arguments, Bowman sometimes wondered if the cultural shock danger was the only explanation for the mission’s extreme secrecy. Some hints that had been dropped during his briefings suggested that the U.S.-U.S.S.R. bloc hoped to derive advantage by being the first to contact intelligent extraterrestrials. From his present viewpoint, looking back on Earth as a dim star almost lost in the Sun, such considerations now seemed ludicrously parochial.
He was rather more interested — even though this was now very much water under the bridge — in the theory put forward to account for Hal’s behavior. No one would ever be sure of the truth, but the fact that one of the Mission Control 9000s had been driven into an identical psychosis, and was now under deep therapy, suggested that the explanation was the correct one. The same mistake would not be made again; and the fact that Hal’s builders had failed fully to understand the psychology of