2001_ A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke [75]
Discovery was still a brilliant star in the black sky far above. He was pulling ahead as he gained speed during his descent, but soon the pod’s braking jets would slow him down and the ship would sail on out of sight — leaving him alone on this shining plain with the dark mystery at its center.
A block of ebony was climbing above the horizon, eclipsing the stars ahead. He rolled the pod around its gyros, and used full thrust to break his orbital speed. In a long, flat arc, he descended toward the surface of Japetus.
On a world of higher gravity, the maneuver would have been far too extravagant of fuel. But here the space pod weighed only a score of pounds; he had several minutes of hovering time before he would cut dangerously into his reserve and be stranded without any hope of return to the still orbiting Discovery. Not, perhaps, that it made much difference…
His altitude was still about five miles, and he was heading straight toward the huge, dark mass that soared in such geometrical perfection above the featureless plain. It was as blank as the flat white surface beneath; until now, he had not appreciated how enormous it really was. There were very few single buildings on Earth as large as this; his carefully measured photographs indicated a height of almost two thousand feet. And as far as could be judged, its proportions were precisely the same as TMA-1’s — that curious ratio 1 to 4 to 9.
“I’m only three miles away now, holding altitude at four thousand feet. Still not a sign of activity — nothing on any of the instruments. The faces seem absolutely smooth and polished. Surely you’d expect some meteorite damage after all this time!
“And there’s no debris on the — I suppose one could call it the roof. No sign of any opening, either. I’d been hoping there might be some way in…
“Now I’m right above it, hovering five hundred feet up. I don’t want to waste any time, since Discovery will soon be out of range. I’m going to land. It’s certainly solid enough — and if it isn’t I’ll blast off at once.
“Just a minute — that’s odd —”
Bowman’s voice died into the silence of utter bewilderment. He was not alarmed; he literally could not describe what he was seeing.
He had been hanging above a large, flat rectangle, eight hundred feet long and two hundred wide, made of something that looked as solid as rock. But now it seemed to be receding from him; it was exactly like one of those optical illusions, when a three-dimensional object can, by an effort of will, appear to turn inside out — its near and far sides suddenly interchanging.
That was happening to this huge, apparently solid structure. Impossibly, incredibly, it was no longer a monolith rearing high above a flat plain. What had seemed to be its roof had dropped away to infinite depths; for one dizzy moment, he seemed to be looking down into a vertical shaft — a rectangular duct which defied the laws of perspective, for its size did not decrease with distance…
The Eye of Japetus had blinked, as if to remove an irritating speck of dust. David Bowman had time for just one broken sentence which the waiting men in Mission Control, nine hundred million miles away and eighty minutes in the future, were never to forget:
“The thing’s hollow — it goes on forever — and — oh my God! — it’s full of stars!”
Chapter 40
Exit
The Star Gate opened. The Star Gate closed.
In a moment of time too short to be measured, Space turned and twisted upon itself.
Then Japetus was alone once more, as it had been for three million years — alone, except for a deserted but not yet derelict ship, sending back to its makers messages which they could neither believe nor understand.
PART SIX
THROUGH THE STARGATE
Chapter 41
Grand Central
There was no sense of motion, but he was falling toward those impossible stars, shining there in the dark heart of a moon. No — that was not