and became the beam around which Chara's
voice coiled and quivered. It was a magnificent duet, the two singers were
absolute opposites and yet they complemented each other perfectly. Darr
Veter turned his gaze from one to the other unable to decide to whom the
singing was most becoming-Veda, who stood leaning her elbows on the receiver
and her head bowed under the weight of a mass of blonde hair that glittered
silver in the moonlight, or Chara, leaning forward with the guitar on her
round, bare knees, with a face tanned by the sun in which the white of her
teeth and the bluish whites of her eyes stood out in sharp contrast.
The song finished, Chara picked idly at the strings. Darr Veter
clenched his teeth-she was strumming the song that had once separated him
from Veda, a song that was now painful to her, too.
She plucked at the strings spasmodically, the chords following each
other and dying before they could merge. It was a jerky melody, like the
splashes of waves falling on the beach, spreading over the sand for an
instant and then rolling back, one after another, to the black depths of the
sea. Chara was quite unaware of anything, her clear voice gave life to the
words of love that flew out into the icy void of the Cosmos from star to
star, trying to find, to understand, to feel where he was ... he who had
gone into the Cosmos for the great deed of discovery-he would never
return-let it be so, if only for one moment .she could know what was
happening to him, help him with a whispered word, a kind thought, a
greeting!
Veda remained silent and Chara felt there was something wrong, she
broke off the song, jumped up, tossed the guitar to the artist and went over
to where the fair-haired woman was standing, her head bowed guiltily.
Veda smiled.
"Dance for me, Chara."
The latter nodded obediently but Frith Don stopped her.
"The dances can wait, there's a transmission beginning now.
On the roof of the building a telescopic pipe was put up on which there
were two metal sheets at right angles to each other surmounted by a circular
structure with eight hemispheres arranged around its circumference. The room
was filled with the mighty sounds of the world information service.
"The discussion of the project introduced by the Academy of Directed
Radiation continues," said a man on the screen. "The project provides for
the substitution of electronic recording for the linear alphabet. The
project is not being universally supported. The chief objection is the
intricacy of the reading apparatus. The book will cease to be a friend to
accompany men everywhere. Despite all its apparent advantages the project
will probably be rejected!"
"It's been discussed for a long time," said Renn Bose.
"A big contradiction," answered Darr Veter, "on the one hand, there is
the tempting simplicity of the writing and, on the other, the difficulty of
reading."
The man on the screen continued:
"Yesterday's report is confirmed-Cosmic Expedition No. 37 has been
heard from. They are returning ...."
Darr Veter was staggered by the strength of his own contrasting
emotions. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Veda Kong slowly rise to her
feet, her eyes opening wider and wider. With the keen ears of a lover Darr
Veter caught the sound of her spasmodic breathing.
"... from the direction of square four hundred and one the ship has
just come out of the negative field at one-hundredth of a parsec from
Neptune's orbit. The expedition has been delayed through an encounter with a
black sun. There have been no losses of life! The speed of the ship.'" said
the news reader in conclusion, "is about five-sixths of the absolute unit.
The expedition is expected at Triton in eleven days! ... Listen for reports
of their marvellous discoveries!"
The broadcast continued. There were other items of "news but nobody
listened to them any more. They crowded round Veda, congratulating her. She
smiled, her cheeks were burning but there was anxiety hidden deep down in
her eyes. Darr Veter also approached. Veda felt the firm pressure of his
hand and met his eyes, direct and sincere. Not for a long time had he looked
at her like that and she understood the sadness of his former attitude
towards her and she realized that at that moment he read something else in
her face besides joy.
Darr Veter slowly released her hand, smiled in a way all his own,
inimitably open and frank, and walked away. Her companions from the
expedition were excitedly discussing the news. Veda remained inside the
circle of people but watched Darr Veter out of the corner of her eye. She
saw Evda Nahl go up to him and a moment later they were joined by Renn Bose.
"We must find Mven Mass, he still doesn't know the news!" exclaimed
Darr Veter, as though he had suddenly remembered. "Come along with me, Evda.
And what about you, Renn?"
"I'll come too," said Chara Nandi as she came up.
"May I?"
They went down towards the gently lapping waves. Darr Veter stopped,
turned his face to the cool breeze and sighed deeply. Turning round he met
Evda Nahl's eyes.
"I'm going away without returning to the house," he said in answer to
her unasked question. Evda took him by the arm. For some time they walked on
in silence.
"I've been thinking... must you?" whispered Evda, "but I suppose you
must, I suppose you're right. If Veda ..." Evda stopped, but Darr Veter
squeezed her hand understandingly and pressed it to his cheek. Renn Bose
followed on their heels, carefully edging away from Chara who, with a
slightly mocking smile, ogled him with her big eyes and swayed her body
exaggeratedly as she walked with long steps beside him. Evda laughed a
scarcely audible laugh and suddenly offered the physicist her free arm. Rcnn
Bose seized it with a predatory movement that seemed funny in that bashful
fellow.
"Where are we to look for your friend?" asked Chara, stopping at the
edge of the water. Darr Veter looked round in the bright moonlight and saw
fresh footprints on the strip of wet sand. They were made at exactly the
same intervals and the soles were turned outward symmetrically with such
precision that the footprints seemed to be the work of a machine.
"He went that way," said Darr Veter pointing towards some big boulders.
"Yes, those are his footprints," confirmed Evda Nahl.
"Why are you so sure?" asked Chara, doubtfully. "Look at the-regularity
of the paces, that's how primitive hunters walked... or those who have
inherited their traits. It seems to me that Mven, despite all his learning,
is closer to nature than any of us ... although ... I don't know about you;
Chara." Evda turned to the girl who was pondering over something.
"Me? Oh, no!" She pointed forward and exclaimed, "There he is!"
The huge figure of the African, shining like polished black marble in
the moonlight, appeared on the nearest boulder. Mven Mass was shaking his
fists energetically as though he were threatening somebody. The powerful
muscles of his mighty body rose and fell and rolled beneath his gleaming
skin.
"He's like the spirit of the night from the children's tales,"
whispered Chara excitedly. Mven Mass noticed the people approaching him,
jumped down from his rock and soon appeared before them with his clothes on.
In a few words Darr Veter explained what had happened and Mven Mass
expressed a desire to see Veda Kong.
"Go over there with Chara," said Evda, "and we'll stay down here for a
little while." Darr Veter made a gesture of farewell and saw by Mven's face
that he had understood. A burst of something like childishness egged Mven on
to whisper words of farewell that had long since gone out of usage. Darr
Veter was touched by this gesture and walked away, deep in thought,
accompanied by the silent Evda. Renn Bose hesitated for a while in some
confusion and then followed behind Mven Mass and Chara.
Darr Veter and Evda walked down as far as the cape that protected the
bay from the open sea. From there they would see the lights round the huge
disc-shaped rafts of the maritime expedition.
Darr Veter pushed a transparent plastic boat off the sand and stood by
the water in front of Evda, even more massive and powerful than Mven Mass.
Evda stretched up on tiptoes to give her friend a parting kiss.
"Veter, I'll be with Veda," she said, as though answering his thoughts.
"We'll go back to our zone together and there we'll await your arrival. Let
me know where you fix yourself up, I'll always be glad to help you."
For a long time Evda followed the boat with her eyes as it crossed the
silvery sea.
Darr Veter went as far as the second raft where the mechanics were
still working in a hurry to set up the accumulators. In response to Veter's
request they lit three green lights in the form of a triangle. An hour and a
half later, the first helicopter that came that way hung over the raft, the
roar of its engines rumbling over the sleepy sea. Darr Veter entered the
lift it lowered; for a second he could be seen against the illuminated
bottom of the aircraft and then disappeared through the hatch. By morning he
reached his permanent abode near the Council observatory which he had not
had time to change for another. Darr Veter opened the air-taps in both his
rooms and in a few minutes all dust had vanished. He pulled his bed out of
the wall and, tuning his bedroom in to the smell and sounds of the sea that
he had lately become accustomed to, was soon sound asleep.
He awoke with a sensation that the beauty of the world had been lost.
Veda was far away and would remain far away ... now ... until .... But he
must help her and not complicate matters!
In his bathroom a whirling column of cold electrified water burst upon
him. Darr Veter stood under the column of water so long that he began to
shiver. Feeling refreshed he went to the televisophone, opened its mirror
doors and called up the nearest Registrar of Vacancies. The face of the
registrar, a young man, appeared on the screen. He knew Darr Veter and
greeted him with a scarcely perceptible shade of respect that was considered
the hallmark of politeness.
"I want to get some hard and lengthy job, with tough physical labour,"
said Darr Veter, "something like the Antarctic mines!"
"All the jobs there are taken!" answered the registrar, in tones of
sincere regret. "All the miner's jobs on Venus, Mars and even Mercury have
been filled too. You know that the young people are always anxious to go
where the work is hardest."
"That's true but I can no longer place myself in that fine category.
What is there now? I want a job immediately."
"There are the diamond workings in Central Siberia," began the
registrar slowly, glancing at a list that Darr Veter could not see, "that
is, if you want mine work. Then there are some jobs on the rafts of the
oceanic food-packing plants, at the solar pumping station in Tibet, but
that's easy work. There are some other places, but nothing particularly
hard!"
Darr Veter thanked him and asked for some time to think things over and
asked him to keep the place open in the diamond workings.
He switched off the Registrar of Vacancies and tuned in to Siberia
House, the centre for geographical information concerning that country. His
televisophone was switched on to a memory machine that showed him the latest
records and he saw pictures of extensive forests go floating past him. The
boggy, scanty, larch forests growing on permafrost that had once occupied
the region were gone for ever, giving place to such giants as Siberian
cedars and American sequoias, trees that had formerly been in danger of
extinction. Their gigantic red trunks made a magnificent fence round hills
covered with ferroconcrete caps. Steel tubes, thirty feet in diameter,
crawled from under the caps and curved over ridges to the nearest rivers
that they sucked entirely into their huge scoops. Monstrously huge pumps
roared dully. Billions of gallons of water were driven into the volcanic
chimneys where the diamonds were found; the water whirled and raged as it
washed the clay away and then found its way out again leaving behind tons of
diamonds on the grids of the washing chambers. In long, well-lit buildings
people were watching the dials of the sorting machines. The brilliant stones
were sifted like grain through the calibrated holes of a screen into boxes.
The pumping station operators were keeping constant watch over the
calculating machines that computed the ever-changing resistance of the rock,
the pressure and expenditure -of water, the depth of the shaft and the
expulsion of solid matter. Darr Veter thought that though the joyful picture
of sun-bathed forests did not suit his mood at that moment, the concentrated
activity of the work at the pumps might suit him and he switched off Siberia
House. Immediately the call signal rang out and the Registrar of Vacancies
appeared on the screen.
''I'd like to give you something more concrete to think about. We have
received a request for somebody to fill a vacancy that has just occurred in
the submarine titanium mines off the west coast of South America. This is
the hardest work available today, but if you take it you'll have to go there
immediately."
That last piece of information rather upset Darr Veter. "But I shan't
have time to pass the tests at the nearest station of the Academy of the
Psychophysiology of Labour," he said.
"The sum of the annual tests that were obligatory for your former work
is sufficient to exempt you from them."
"Inform them that I'm coming and give me the coordinates!" answered
Darr Veter immediately.
"Western section of the Spiral Way, seventeenth southern branch.
Station 6L, Point KM40. I'll inform them."
The serious-looking face disappeared from the screen. Darr Veter
gathered together all the little trifles that belonged to him personally and
filled a box with films containing the photographs and voices of his nearest
relatives and friends and the most important records of his own thoughts. He
took a chromoreflex reproduction of an old Russian picture from the wall and
from the table he took a bronze statuette of the actress Bello Galle, which
he kept because it bore a resemblance to Veda Kong. All these things and his
few clothes he packed into an aluminium box with some letters and figures
embossed on the lid. Darr Veter dialled the coordinates he had been given,
opened a hatch in the wall and pushed the box into it. The box disappeared,
taken up by an endless belt. Then he checked up on his rooms. Long before
the Great Circle Era special cleaners and charwomen had been abolished. The
work was now done by every person in his own place, something he could do
because of his sense of absolute orderliness and discipline and because
domestic and public buildings were designed more conveniently and fitted
with means to clean and air them automatically.
When he had finished his examination he pulled down the lever at the
door which immediately informed the Housing Bureau that his rooms had been
vacated. Outside, on an external gallery glazed with sheets of milk-coloured
plastic, the sun's warmth made itself felt, but on the flat roof the sea
breeze was as cool as ever. The light footbridges thrown from one high
latticed building to another seemed to be soaring in the air and tempting
the onlooker to a leisurely saunter along them. Darr Veter, however, no
longer belonged to himself. Through the tubular tunnel of the automatic
descent he made his way to the underground electromagnetic mail tunnel and a
tiny truck took him with switchback-like movements to the Spiral Way
station. Darr Veter did not travel north, to the Behring Straits, where he
could get on the intercontinental arch of the Spiral Way. To reach South
America by this route, especially as far south as the seventeenth branch,
would take four days and nights. In the northern and southern inhabited
zones there were helicopter lines that handled heavy cargo round the planet,
crossing the oceans and short-circuiting the brandies of the Spiral Way.
Darr Veter travelled by the Central Branch as far as the southern inhabited
zone hoping there to be able to convince the Director of Transport that he
was urgent cargo. Apart from saving thirty hours by going this way he would
be able to see Diss Ken, the son of Grom Orme, President of the
Astronautical Council, who had selected him as his mentor.
Diss Ken had come to the end of his school years and in the following
year would begin his twelve Labours of Hercules; in the meantime he was
working in the Watchers' Service of the West African swamps.
Every youth wanted to enter the Watchers' Service- to keep a look-out
for sharks in the ocean, for harmful insects, vampires and reptiles in the
tropical swamps, for disease microbes in the living zones, for epizoons and
forest fires in the savanna and forest zones-hunting down and destroying all
harmful life left over from the old world that in some mysterious way kept
reappearing in remote corners of the planet. The struggle against harmful
forms of life never ceased for a moment. Microorganisms, insects and fungi
reacted to new and most radical chemical destroyers by the development of
new, impervious forms. People learned to make proper use of strong
antibiotics without generating dangerous and stable bacteria only after the
Era of Disunity.
"If Diss Ken has been appointed to the Swamp Watchers' Service,"'
thought Darr Veter, ''he must be a serious young man."
Diss Ken, Groin Orme's son, like all children in the Great Circle Era,
had been brought up away from his parents in a school on the sea-shore in
the northern zone. There, too, he had passed the first tests made by a local
station of the Academy of the Psychophysiology of Labour. When young people
were allotted work the psychological specifics of youth-the urge to go
farther, an exaggerated sense of responsibility and egocentrism-were taken
into consideration.
The huge coach ran on smoothly and silently. Darr Veter went up to the
top deck where there was a transparent roof. Far below, on either side of
the Spiral Way, buildings, canals, forests and mountain tops swept past. The
brightly gleaming, transparent domes of buildings marked the narrow belt of
automatic factories at the junction of the agricultural and forestry belts.
The rugged shapes of the huge servicing machines could be clearly seen
through the glass walls of the buildings.
The monument erected to Zhinn Cahd, the inventor of a cheap method of
manufacturing artificial sugar, flashed past and then the arches of the
Spiral Way cut across the forests of the tropical agricultural zone.
Plantations of trees stretching away into infinite distance showed every
conceivable shade of leaf and bark and great variety in the shape and
height. Harvesting, pollination and calculating machines crawled along the
smooth narrow roads that separated the plantations: countless cables formed
a giant cobweb. There was a time when a field of ripe, golden corn had been
the symbol of abundance. In the Era of World Unity, however, the economic
inefficiency of annual crops was realized and, after all farming had been
transferred to the tropical belt, the hard labour involved in the annual
cultivation of herbage and bush plants became unnecessary. In the Great
Circle Era perennial trees that did not take too much out of the soil and
were impervious to climatic changes, became the chief crop.
Bread, berry and nut trees, yielding thousands of different kinds of
fruit rich in proteins, produced up to a hundred kilograms of food each.
Forests of these trees ran round the planet in two belts covering thousands
of millions of acres-true belts of Ceres, the ancient Goddess of
Agriculture. Between these two belts lay the equatorial forestry zone, an
ocean of humid tropical forests that supplied the whole world with its
timber-white, black, violet, pink, golden and grey wood with a silky grain,
wood as hard as Lone or as soft as an apple, wood that sank like a stone and
wood that floated like cork. The forests also yielded dozens of kinds of
resin cheaper than the synthetic varieties, possessing valuable technical or
medicinal properties.
The tops of the forest giants were level with the permanent way and
waved and surged on both sides like a green ocean. In the dark depths of
these forests, in cosy-looking glades, stood houses on metal piles and
beside them mechanical spider-like monsters capable of turning these stands
of 80-metre trees into stacks of logs and planks.
To the left appeared the rounded summits of the famous equatorial
mountains. On one of them, Kenya, was the installation for the maintenance
of communications with the Great Circle. The ocean of trees moved away to
the left, making way for a stony plateau. Blue cube-shaped buildings
appeared on both sides.
The train stopped and Darr Veter stepped out on to the extensive,
glass-paved square of the Equator Station. Near the foot-bridge that
stretched over the grey tops of the Atlas cedars, stood a white truncated
pyramid of porcelain-like aplite from the River Lualaba, surmounted by the
statue of a worker of an age long past. The luxuriant silver foliage of
trees brought from South Africa surrounded the pedestal whose sides gleamed
dazzlingly bright in the sunshine. In his right hand he held a gleaming
sphere with four transmitting antennae jutting out from it, his left was
stretched out towards the pale equatorial sky. The man's body, straining
backwards as though to launch the sphere into the sky, was the expression of
inspired effort. The figures of people in strange clothing arranged around
the pedestal at the feet of the central figure increased the impression of
effort. This was a monument to the builders of the first man-made Earth
satellites, people who had performed miracles of inventiveness, labour and
courage.
Darr Veter could never look at these sculptured faces without a feeling
of excitement. He knew that the first people to build artificial Earth
satellites and reach the threshold of the Cosmos had been Russians, that
amazing nation from whom Darr Veter was descended, the people who had taken
the first steps towards building the new social order and towards the
conquest of the Cosmos....
That day, as usual, Darr Veter made his way to the monument to look
once more at the carvings of the heroes of ancient times and to seek in them
similarities and differences in comparison with the people of his own day
and with himself ....
Two tall, youthful figures appeared through the trees, stopped and then
one of them rushed to Darr Veter. He placed his arms round Veter's shoulders
and took a stealthy look at the familiar features of that well-known face:
the big nose, wide chin, the unexpectedly mirthful turn of the lips
that did not seem to fit in with the rather grim expression of the
steel-grey eyes under their joined brows.
Darr Veter cast a glance of approval over the son of a famous man who
had built bases on the planets of the Centaurus system and had been elected
President of the Astronautical Council for five three-year periods in
succession. Groin Orme must have been at least 130 years old -three times
the age of Darr Veter-but his son was very young.
Diss Ken called over his friend, a dark-haired boy.
"This is Thor Ahn, my best friend, the son of Zieg Zohr, the composer,"
he said. "We're working together in the swamps and we want to do our Labours
of Hercules together and after that we want to continue working together."
"Are you still interested in the cybernetics of heredity?" asked Darr
Veter.
"Oh, yes! Thor has got me even more interested-he's a musician, like
his father. He and his girl-friend dream of working in a field where music
helps us understand the development of living organisms, that is, they want
to study the symphony of their structure ...."
"It's all very indefinite, the way you put it," said Veter, frowning.
"I don't know enough yet," answered Diss in confusion, "perhaps Thor
can tell you better than I."
The other lad blushed but stood up to the test of the penetrating
glance.
"Digs wanted to tell you about the rhythms of the mechanism of
heredity. As the living organism develops from the original cell it attunes
itself by chords of molecules. The primordial paired spiral develops along
lines analogous to the development of a musical symphony, or, to put it
another way, to the logical development in an electronic computing machine."
"Really!" exclaimed Darr Veter in exaggerated astonishment. "Then you
will reduce the entire evolution of all living and non-living matter to some
sort of a gigantic symphony?"
"The plan and internal rhythm of which are determined by basic physical
laws. We have only to understand how the programme is built up and where the
information of the musico-cybernetic mechanism comes from," insisted Thor
Ahn with the unconquerable confidence of youth.
"Whose idea is it?"
"My father's, Zieg Zohr's. He recently published his 13th Cosmic
Symphony in F-minor, Colour Tone 4.75 m
"I'll most certainly hear it! I love blue tones.... Now about your
immediate plans, your Labours of Hercules. Do you know what has been
allotted you?"
"Only the first six."
"Of course, the other six will be allotted when the first half has been
done," Darr Veter recalled.
"Clean out the lower tier of the Kon-I-Gut caves in Central Asia so
that visitors can go there." began Thor Ahn.
"Build a road to Lake Mental across the steep mountain ridge,"
continued Diss Ken, "renew a grove of old bread trees in the Argentine,
explain the causes for the appearance of big octopuses in the region of the
recent lift near Trinidad ...."
"And destroy them!"
"That's five, what's the sixth?"
The two lads turned somewhat bashful.
"We are both proficient at music," began Diss Ken, blushing, "and ...
we have been asked to collect material on the ancient dances of the Island
of Bali and resuscitate them musically and choreographically."
"By that do you mean select girls to dance them and form a troupe?"
laughed Darr Veter.
"Yes," admitted Thor Ahn, unwillingly.
"An interesting job. But that's a group job, like the road to the lake,
isn't it?"
"Yes, we've got a good group. Only ... they want you to be their
mentor, too. It would be fine if you only agreed!"
Darr Veter doubted his abilities with regard to the last of the six
tasks. The lads, however, their faces beaming, danced for joy and assured
him that "Zieg Zohr himself" had promised to guide the sixth task.
"In a year and four months I'll find myself something to do in Central
Asia," said Darr Veter, pleased at the happy faces of the two youngsters.
"It's a good thing you're not Director of the Outer Stations any more,"
exclaimed Diss Ken, "I never thought I'd be working with such a mentor! ..."
The lad suddenly blushed so furiously that his forehead was covered with
tiny beads of perspiration and Thor even moved away from him with an
expression of reproach. Darr Veter hurried to help Grom Orme's son over his
faux pas. "Have you got plenty of time?"
"No, we were given three hours off and we brought a man here who is ill
with a fever he caught in our swamps." "Is there still fever here? I
thought...." "It's very rare and only occurs in the swamps," put in Diss,
very hurriedly, "that's what we're here for!"
"So we still have two hours left. Let's go into the town, you'll
probably want to go to News House."
"Oh, no. We'd like you to ... answer our questions- we have got them
ready and you know how important it is when we are selecting our life's
work."
Darr Veter gave his consent and the three of them went to the Guest
Hall and sat in one of its cool rooms fanned with an artificial sea breeze.
Two hours later another coach took Darr Veter farther on his way; tired
out he dozed on a sofa on the lower deck. He woke up when the train stopped
in the City of Chemists. A huge structure in the form of a star with ten
glazed glass-covered radial buildings stretching from it rose up over an
extensive coal-field. The coal that was extracted here was processed into
medicines, vitamins, hormones, artificial silk and fur. The waste products
went for the manufacture of sugar. In one of the rays of the Star the rare
metals germanium and vanadium were extracted from the coal-there was no end
to the things that could be got out of that valuable black mineral!
One of Darr Veter's old friends who worked as a chemist in the fur ray
came to the station to meet him. Once, long before, there had been three
happy young mechanics working on the fruit-gathering machines in Indonesia.
Now one of them was a chemist in charge of a laboratory in a big factory,
the second had remained a fruit-grower and bad invented a valuable new
pollination process and the third, Darr Veter, was once more returning to
Mother Earth, only deeper down this time, into the mines. The friends spent
no more than ten minutes together, but even such a meeting was much
pleasanter than meetings on the TVP.
He had not much farther to go. The Director of the latitudinal air
lines listened to his persuasion with the 'friendly helpfulness that was
typical of the Great Circle Era. Darr Veter flew across the ocean and
arrived on the western section of the Spiral Way south of the seventeenth
branch, at the dead end of which he transferred to a hydroplane to continue
his journey.
High mountains came right down to the sea. The gentler slops at the
foot were terraced with white stone to hold the soil and were planted with
rows of southern pines and Widdringtonia in alternate avenues of bronze and
bluish-green needles. High up the bare rocks, there were clefts to be seen
in which waterfalls sent up clouds of water dust. Buildings painted bright
orange or yellow with bluish-grey roofs stretched at intervals along the
terraces.
Jutting out into sea there was an artificial sand-bank at the end of
which stood a wave-washed tower. It stood at the edge of the continental
shelf which in those parts ended in a submarine cliff a good thousand metres
deep. From the tower an extremely thick concrete pipe, strong enough to
withstand the pressure in the depths of the ocean, led down vertically. At
the bottom the pipe rested on the summit of a submarine mountain that
consisted almost entirely of pure rutile or titanium dioxide. The processing
of the ore was done under the water, inside the mountain. All that reached
the surface was slabs of pure titanium and waste products that spread far
into sea, turning the water a muddy yellow. The hydroplane tossed on the
yellow waves in front of the landing stage on the southern side of the
tower, and Darr Veter waited his opportunity to jump on to the spray-soaked
platform. He went upstairs to the railed gallery where several people, not
on duty, gathered to welcome the newcomer. Darr' Veter had imagined the mine
to be in complete isolation but the people who met him were not at all the
anchorites his own mood had led him to expect. The faces that greeted him
were happy even if they were somewhat tired from their exacting work. There
five men and three women-so women worked there, too!
Before ten days had passed Darr Veter had settled down to his new job.
The mine had its own power plant-in the depths of the abandoned
workings on the mainland there was an old nuclear power station type E, or
type 2, as it used to be called, which did not have a harmful fall-out and
was, therefore, useful for local stations.
A most involved complex of machines was housed in the stone belly of
the submarine mountain and moved forward as it bit into the friable
reddish-brown mineral. The most difficult work was at the bottom of the
installation where the ore was automatically extracted and crushed. The
machine received signals from the central control post in the upper storey
where all the data on the work of the cutting and crushing apparatus, on the
changing hardness and viscosity of the extracted rock as well as information
from the flotation tables were accumulated. Depending on the changing metal
content in the ore, the crushing and washing arrangements were accelerated
or decelerated. The work had to be done by mechanics as the entire control
could not be passed over to cybernetic machines owing to the small area
protected from the sea.
Darr Veter was given the job of mechanic, testing and setting the lower
assembly. He spent his daily tours of duty in semi-dark rooms, packed with
indicator dials, where the pump of the air conditioning system could
scarcely cope with the overwhelming heat made worse by the increased
pressure due to the inevitable leakage of compressed air.
After work Darr Veter and his young assistant would make their way to
the top, stand for a long time on the balcony breathing in the fresh air,
then take a bath, eat and go each to his own room in one of the houses at
the pithead. Darr Veter had tried to renew his study of the new cochlear
branch of mathematics but, as time went on, he began to fall asleep more and
more quickly, waking up only in time for work. As the months passed he began
to feel better. He seemed to have forgotten his former contact with the
Cosmos. Like all other workers at the titanium mines he got pleasure out of
seeing off the rafts that transported the ingots of titanium. Since the
polar ice-caps had been reduced, storms all over the planet had decreased in
violence so that many cargoes could be transported on sea-going rafts,
either pulled by tugs or self-propelled. The staff of the mines changed but
Darr Veter, with two other mining enthusiasts, stayed for another term.
Nothing goes on for ever in this changing world and in the mine the ore
crushing and washing assembly had to atop work for an overhaul. It was then
that Darr Veter made his first visit to the mine chamber beyond the
tunnelling shield where he had to wear a special suit to protect him from
the heat and pressure and from sudden streams of poisonous gas that burst
out of cracks in the rocks. The brilliantly illuminated brown rutile walls
gleamed with a special diamond-like lustre of their own and gave off
flashing red lights like the infuriated glower of eyes hidden in the
mineral. It was exceptionally quiet in the chamber. The hydro-electric spark
rock-drill and the huge discs radiating ultra-short waves stood motionless
for the first time in many months. Geophysicists who had only just arrived,
were busy under the shields setting up their instruments, so as to take
advantage of the stoppage to check the contours of the mineral deposit.
On the surface it was autumn, a period of calm, hot days in the south.
Darr Veter went up into the mountains and felt very strongly the loneliness
of those masses of stone that had stood poised between sea and sky for
thousands of years. The dry grass rustled and from down below came the faint
sounds of the surf beating against the shore. His tired body asked for rest
but his brain grasped hungrily at impressions of the world that came fresh
to him after long, arduous labour underground.
The former Director of the Outer Stations, breathing deeply the odour
of heated rocks and desert grasses, recalled the little island in a distant
sea where the golden horse had been hidden. And he had faith in his
intuitive feeling that there was much that was good still ahead of him, and
that the better and stronger he himself was the more of the good there would
be.
Sow a fault and reap a habit.
Sow a habit and reap a character.
Sow a character and reap your fate ...
was the way the old saw went. Yes, he thought to himself, man's
greatest fight is against egoism. This is a fight that cannot be fought by
sentimental rules and pretty but helpless morals but by the dialectic
realization that egoism is not the outcome of some forces of evil but is a
natural instinct of primitive man that played an important role in his life
as a savage and had been his means of self-preservation. This is why strong,
outstanding individuals often have egoism highly developed and find it
difficult to combat. The victory over egoism is, however, essential,
probably the most important thing in modern society. This accounts for the
time and effort that are expended on the upbringing of young people and the
care with which the structure of every person's heredity is studied. In the
great mixture of races and peoples that forms the single family of our
planet today, the most unexpected traits of character belonging to distant
ancestors suddenly emerge out of the depths of heredity. There are the most
amazing deviations of a psychology acquired at the time of the great
calamities in the Era of Disunity, when engineers were not careful enough in
their use of nuclear energy and did great hereditary harm to many people.
There was a time when genealogies were drawn up for predatory conquerors who
called themselves noble and high born; this was done to enable them to place
themselves and their families above all others. Today we understand the
great importance of genealogy in life-in the selection of a profession, for
medical treatment, etc. Darr Veter had formerly possessed a long genealogy,
but today such things are no longer necessary. The study of ancestors has
been replaced by the direct analysis of the structure of heredity mechanisms
which is much more important in view of greater longevity. Ever since the
Era of Common Labour people have been living to the age of 170 and now it is
clear that even 300 is not the limit....
The rattle of stones awakened Darr Veter out of his complicated and
vague reverie. Coming down the valley from above were two people, an
operator from the electro-smelting section, a reticent and bashful young
woman and an excellent pianist, and an engineer from the surface workings,
lively and small in stature. They were both flushed from their rapid walk,
greeted Darr Veter and would have passed on, but he stopped them in response
to something he suddenly remembered.
"I've been wanting to ask you a long time,'' lie said, turning to the
young woman. "Can you play something for me-the 13th Blue Cosmic Symphony in
F-Minor. You've often played for us but you've never played that even once."
"Do you mean Zieg Zohr's Cosmic?" she asked and when Darr Veter
answered with a nod of confirmation she burst out laughing.
"There aren't many people on the planet who could play that piece for
you. A solar piano with a triple keyboard is not enough and it hasn't been
transposed yet... and probably never will be. Why don't you ask the House of
Higher Music to play a recording for you? Our receiver is universal and has
power enough!"
"I don't know how," muttered Darr Veter, "before, I never...."
"I'll do it for you this evening," she said and, holding out her hand
to her companion, continued her way down the valley.
For the rest of the day Darr Veter could not rid him-elf of the feeling
that something important was going to happen. It was probably the same
feeling that had come over Mven Mass on his first n