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发信人: by (春天的小懒虫), 信区: SFworld
标  题: 2010  (4)
发信站: 哈工大紫丁香 (Wed Oct  6 14:28:22 1999), 转信

                    4
               Mission Profile

                 English Version

To:    Captain Tatiana (Tanya) Orlova, Commander, Spacecraft Cosmo-
       naut Alexei Leonov (UNCOS Registration 08/342).
From:  National Council on Astronautics, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washing-
       ton
       Commission on Outer Space, USSR Academy of Science,
       Korolyev Prospect, Moscow

                Mission Objectives

The objectives of your mission are, in order of priority:
  1. To proceed to the Jovian system and rendezvous with US
Spacecraft Discovery (UNCOS 01/283).
  2. To board this spacecraft, and obtain all possible information relating
to its earlier mission.
  3. To reactivate Spacecraft Discovery's onboard systems and, if
propellant supplies are adequate, inject the ship into an Earth-return
trajectory.
  4. To locate the alien artifact encountered by Discovery, and to investi-
gate it to the maximum extent possible by remote sensors.
  5. If it seems advisable, and Mission Control concurs, to rendezvous
with this object for closer inspection.
  6. To carry out a survey of Jupiter and its satellites, as far as this is
compatible with the above objectives.

It is realized that unforeseen circumstances may require a change of
priorities, or even make it impossible to achieve some of these objec-
tives. It must be clearly understood that the rendezvous with Spacecraft
Discovery is for the express purpose of obtaining information about the
artifact; this must take precedence over all other objectives, including
attempts at salvage.

                          Crew

The crew of Spacecraft Alexei Leonov will consist of:
  Captain Tatiana Orlova (Engineering-Propulsion)
  Dr Vasili Orlov (Navigation-Astronomy}
  Dr Maxim Brailovsky (Engineering-Structures)
  Dr Alexander Kovalev (Engineering-Communications)
  Dr Nikolai Ternovsky (Engineering-Control Systems)
  Surgeon-Commander Katerina Rudenko (Medical-Life-Support)
  Dr Irina Yakunina {Medical-Nutrition)
In addition, the US National Council on Astronautics will provide the
following three experts:

Dr Heywood Floyd dropped the memorandum, and leaned
back in his chair. It was all settled; the point of no return had
been passed. Even if he wished to do so, there was no way to
put back the clock.
  He glanced across at Caroline, sitting with two-year-old
Chris on the edge of the pool. The boy was more at home in
the water than on land, and could stay submerged for
periods that often terrified visitors. And though he could
not yet speak much Human, he already seemed fluent in
Dolphin.
  One of Christopher's friends had just swum in from the
Pacific and was presenting his back to be patted. You too are
a wanderer, thought Floyd, in a vast and trackless ocean; but
how small your tiny Pacific seems, against the immensity I
am facing now!
  Caroline became aware of his gaze, and rose to her feet.
She looked at him sombrely, but without anger; all that had
been burned out in the last few days. As she approached, she
even managed a wistful smile.
  'I've found that poem I was looking for,' she said. 'It
starts like this:

             What is a woman that you forsake her,
             And the hearth-fire and the home acre,
             To go with the old grey Widow-maker?'

  'Sorry -- I don't quite understand. Who is the Widow-
maker?'
  'Not who -- what. The sea. The poem's a lament by a
Viking woman. It was written by Rudyard Kipling, a hun-
dred years ago.'
  Floyd took his wife's hand; she did not respond, but
neither did she resist.
  'Well, I don't feel at all like a Viking. I'm not after loot,
and adventure is the very last thing I want.'
  'Then why -- no, I don't intend to start another fight. But
it would help us both, if you know exactly what your
motives are.'
  'I wish I could give you one single good reason. Instead,
I've a whole host of little ones. But they add up to a final
answer I can't argue with -- believe me.'
  'I believe you. But are you sure you're not fooling your-
self?'
  'If I am, then so are a lot of other people. Including, may I
remind you, the President of the United States.'
  'I'm not likely to forget. But suppose-just suppose --- that
he hadn't asked you. Would you have volunteered?'
  'I can answer that truthfully: No. It would never have
occurred to me. President Mordecai's call was the biggest
shock of my life. But when I thought it over, I realized he
was perfectly right. You know I don't go in for false mod-
esty. I am the best-qualified man for the job -- when the
space docs give their final okay. And you should know that
I'm still in pretty good shape.'
  That brought the smile he had intended.
  'Sometimes I wonder if you'd suggested it yourself.'
  The thought had indeed occurred to him; but he could
answer honestly.
  'I would never have done so without consulting you.'
  'I'm glad you didn't. I don't know what I'd have said.'
  'I could still turn it down.'
  'Now you're talking nonsense, and you know it. Even if
you did, you'd hate me for the rest of your life -- and you'd
never forgive yourself. You have too strong a sense of duty.
Maybe that's one of the reasons I married you.'
  Duty! Yes, that was the key word, and what multitudes it
contained. He had a duty to himself, to his family, to the
University, to his past job (even though he had left it under
a cloud), to his country -- and to the human race. It was not
easy to establish the priorities; and sometimes they
conflicted with one another.
  There were perfectly logical reasons why he should go on
the mission -- and equally logical reasons, as many of his
colleagues had already pointed out, why he should not. But
perhaps in the final analysis, the choice had been made by
his heart, not his brain. And even here, emotion urged him
in two opposite directions.
  Curiosity, guilt, the determination to finish a job that had
been badly botched --- they all combined to drive him toward
Jupiter and whatever might be waiting there. On the other
hand, fear -- he was honest enough to admit that --- united
with love of his family to keep him on Earth. Yet he had
instantly, and had deflected all of Caroline's arguments as
gently as he could.
  And there was one other consoling thought that he had
not yet risked sharing with his wife. Though he would be
gone two and a half years, all but the fifty days at Jupiter
would be spent in timeless hibernation. When he returned,
the gap between their ages would have narrowed by more
than two years.
  He would have sacrificed the present so that they could
share a longer future together.

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