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发信人: by (春天的小懒虫), 信区: SFworld
标  题: 2010 (24)
发信站: 哈工大紫丁香 (Wed Oct  6 14:48:40 1999), 转信

                      24
                Reconnaissance

Discovery  had  left  Earth with three of the little space pods
that  allowed  an  astronaut  to perform extravehicular activi-
ties  in  shirt-sleeve  comfort. One had been lost in the acci-
dent  -  if  it  was an accident - that had killed Frank Poole.
Another   had   carried  Dave  Bowman  to  his  final  appoint-
ment   with  Big  Brother,  and  shared  whatever  fate  befell
him. A third was still in the ship's garage, the Pod Bay.
  It  lacked  one  important  component  - the hatch, blown off
by   Commander   Bowman   when   he   had  made  his  hazardous
vacuum-crossing    and    entered    the   ship   through   the
emergency  airlock,  after  Hal  had  refused  to open the Pod
Bay  door.  The  resulting  blast  of  air had rocketed the pod
several   hundred   kilometres   away   before   Bowman,   busy
with   more  important  matters,  had  brought  it  back  under
radio  control.  It  was  not  surprising  that  he  had  never
bothered to replace the missing hatch.
  Now  Pod  Number  3  (on  which  Max,  refusing  all explana-
tions,  had  stencilled  the  name Nina) was being prepared for
another  EVA.  It  still  lacked a hatch, but that was unimpor-
tant. No one would be riding inside.
  Bowman's   devotion   to  duty  was  a  piece  of  unexpected
luck,  and  it  would  have been folly not to take advantage of
it.  By  using  Nina  as  a  robot  probe, Big Brother could be
examined   at  close  quarters  without  risking  human  lives.
That  at  least  was  the  theory;  no  one  could rule out the
possibility of a backlash that might engulf the ship. After all,
fifty  kilometres  was  not  even  a  hair's breadth, as cosmic
distances went.
  After years of neglect, Nina looked distinctly shabby.
The dust that was always floating around in zero gee had
settled over the outer surface, so that the once immaculately
white hull had become a dingy grey. As it slowly acceler-
ated away from the ship, its external manipulators folded
neatly back and its oval viewport staring spaceward like a
huge, dead eye, it did not seem a very impressive ambassa-
dor of Mankind. But that was a distinct advantage; so
humble an emissary might be tolerated, and its small size
and low velocity should emphasize its peaceful intentions.
There had been a suggestion that it should approach Big
Brother with open hands; the idea was quickly turned down
when almost everyone agreed that if they saw Nina heading
toward them, mechanical claws outstretched, they would
run for their lives.
  After a leisurely two-hour trip, Nina came to rest a hun-
dred metres from one comer of the huge rectangular slab.
From so close at hand, there was no sense of its true shape;
the TV cameras might have been looking down on the tip of
a black tetrahedron of indefinite size. The onboard instru-
ments showed no sign of radioactivity or magnetic fields;
nothing whatsoever was coming from Big Brother except
the tiny fraction of sunlight it condescended to reflect.
  After five minutes' pause - the equivalent, it was in-
tended, of `Hello, here I am!'  Nina started a diagonal
crossing of the smaller face, then the next larger, and finally
the largest, keeping at a distance of about fifty metres, but
occasionally coming in to five. Whatever the separation,
Big Brother looked exactly the same - smooth and feature-
less. Long before the mission was completed, it had become
boring, and the spectators on both ships had gone back to
their various jobs, only glancing at the monitors from time
to time.
  `That's it,' said Walter Curnow at last, when Nina had
arrived back where she had started. `We could spend the rest
of  our  lives  doing  this,  without  learning  anything  more.
What do I do with Nina - bring her home?'
  `No,'  said  Vasili,  breaking  into  the  circuit from aboard
Leonov.  `I've  a  suggestion.  Take  her to the exact centre of
the  big  face.  Bring  her  to  rest-oh, a hundred metres away.
And   leave  her  parked  there,  with  the  radar  switched  to
maximum precision.'
  `No   problem   -   except  that  there's  bound  to  be  some
residual drift. But what's the point?'
  `I've just  remembered  an  exercise  from  one  of  my college
astronomy  courses  -  the  gravitational  attraction  of an in-
finite flat plate. I never thought I'd have a chance of using it
in  real  life.  After  I've  studied Nina's movements for a few
hours,  at  least I'll be able to calculate Zagadka's mass. That
is,  if it has any. I'm beginning to think there's nothing really
there.'
  `There's  an  easy way to settle that, and we'll have to do it
eventually. Nina must go in and touch the thing.'
  `She already has.'
  `What   do   you   mean?'   asked  Curnow,  rather  indignantly.
`I never got nearer than five metres.'
  `I'm  not  criticizing  your  driving skills - though it was a
pretty  close  thing at that first corner, wasn't it? But you've
been  tapping  gently  on  Zagadka  every  time  you  use Nina's
thrusters near its surface.'
  `A flea jumping on an elephant!'
  `Perhaps.  We  simply  don't  know.  But  we'd  better  assume
that,  one  way  or  another,  it's  aware  of our presence, and
will only tolerate us as long as we aren't a nuisance.'
  He  left  the  unspoken  question  hanging  in the air. How did
one   annoy   a   two-kilometre-long   black  rectangular  slab?
And just what form would its disapproval take?

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