That
is how the gaps in the reception of the Cosmos are filled in. During the
last six months of the eight-year cycle we have been receiving
incomprehensible messages that undoubtedly come from a great distance."
"I'm very interested in them and would like you to take me as your
assistant."
"It would be better for me to help you. We'll examine the records of
the memory machines together."
"What about Mven Mass?"
"We'll take him, of course."
"Veter, that's just wonderful. I feel very awkward since that ill-fated
experiment of mine, I've a feeling of guilt as far as the Council is
concerned. But I can get along easily with you even if you are a member of
the Council and a former Director and the one who advised me against the
experiment."
"Mven Mass is also a member of the Council."
The physicist thought for a while, smiled at some memory of his own.
"Mven Mass, he has a feeling for my ideas and tries to concretise them
for me."
"Wasn't it in the concretisation that you made a mistake?"
Renn Bose frowned and changed the subject.
"Is Veda Kong coming here?"
"Yes, I'm waiting for her. Did you know that she almost lost her life
during the investigation of a cave, some ancient technical storehouse where
there was a closed steel door?"
"It's the first I've heard of it."
"I forgot that unlike Mven Mass you have no great interest in history.
The whole planet is discussing the affair and wondering what might be behind
the door. Millions of people have volunteered to dig it out. Veda has given
the problem to the Academy of Stochastics and Prognostication. Is Evda Nahl
coming here?"
"No, she can't come."
"A lot of people will be disappointed! Veda's very fond of Evda and
Chara is simply devoted to her. D'you remember Chara?"
"That's the panther-like girl... either Gypsy or Indian in origin!"
Darr Veter spread his hands in mock horror.
"How well you appreciate feminine beauty! However, I'm always making
the mistake that people made in the past when they did not know anything
about the laws of psychophysiology and heredity. I always want to see my
feelings and my perceptions in other people."
"Evda, like everybody else on the planet," said Renn Bose, ignoring
Veter's confessions, "will be watching the take-off."
The physicist pointed to a row of high tripods carrying chambers for
white, infrared and ultra-violet reception placed in a semi-circle around
the spaceship. The different groups of spectral rays introduced into the
coloured reproduction made the screen breathe with real warmth and life in
the same way as the overtone diaphragms " destroyed the metallic resonance
in the transmission of the human voice.
Darr Veter looked towards the north whence came the heavily laden
automatic electrobuses, swaying across the earth. Veda Kong jumped out of
the first bus to arrive and ran towards them, catching her feet in the
grass. At a run she threw herself on Darr Veter's broad chest with such
force that the long plaits that hung down from either side of her head were
thrown over his shoulders and hung down his back.
Darr Veter held Veda off at some distance and looked into that
infinitely dear face to which her unusual hair-do imparted new qualities.
"I was playing the Northern Queen of the Dark Ages for a children's
film," she said, panting slightly. "I hardly had time to change and could
not stop to do my hair."
Darr Veter could imagine her in a long, tight brocade dress and a
golden crown with blue stones, her ash-blonde plaits reaching down below her
knees, with fearless grey eyes-and he smiled with pleasure.
"Did you wear a crown?"
"Oh, yes, and such a crown!" Veda's finger drew in the air the outline
of a wide circle with teeth round it in the shape of clover leaves.
"Shall I see it?"
"This very day. I'll ask them to show you the film."
Darr Veter was going to ask who the "they" were but Veda was already
greeting the serious-looking physicist who was smiling naively but
whole-heartedly.
"Where are the heroes of Achernar?" asked Renn Bose looking at the
spaceship that stood in splendid isolation.
"Over there!" Veda pointed to a tent-shaped building of milk-coloured
glass and outside girders of lattice-work -the main hall of the cosmoport.
"Let's go there, then."
"We're not wanted there," said Veda, firmly. "They are watching Earth's
farewell to them. Let's go to Lebed."
The men followed her advice.
As she walked beside Darr Veter she asked softly:
"Do I look too absurd in this old-fashioned hair-do? I could...."
"You don't need to do anything. It makes a charming contrast to your
modern dress, plaits longer than your skirt. Let it stay!"
"I obey you, my Veter!" Veda whispered the magic words that made his
heart beat faster and brought colour to his pale cheeks.
Hundreds of people were making their way unhurriedly to the ship. Many
of them smiled to Veda or greeted her with a raised hand, much more
frequently than they did Darr Veter or Renn Bose.
"You're very popular, Veda," said Renn Bose, "is that due to your work
as a historian or to your notorious beauty?"
"Neither one nor the other. I mix with a lot of people both in my work
and in my social engagements. You and Veter, you either hide in the depths
of a laboratory or go away alone for some terribly straining night work. You
do more for mankind and much more important things than I do but it is all
one-sided and not for the side that is nearer the heart. Chara Nandi and
Evda Nahl are much more widely known than I am."
"Again a reproach to our technical civilization?" asked Darr Veter,
jokingly.
"Not to ours but to the leftovers of former fatal mistakes. Twenty
thousand years ago our troglodyte ancestors knew that art and the
development of sensations connected with it were no less important to
society than science."
"In respect of relations between people?" asked the physicist, with
interest.
"Exactly."
"There was an ancient sage who said that the most difficult thing on
earth is to preserve joy!" Darr Veter put in. "Look, here comes another of
Veda's loyal allies!"
Mven Mass, with a light, swinging tread, was coming straight towards
them, his huge black figure attracting considerable attention.
"Chara's dance is over!" Veda guessed, "soon we'll see the crew of
Lebed.'"
"If I were them I'd come over here on foot and as slowly as possible,"
said Darr Veter, suddenly.
"You're getting excited," said Veda taking him by the arm.
"Naturally. For me it's painful to think that they're going away for
ever and that I'll never see that ship again. There's something inside me
that protests against that inescapable doom, perhaps because there are
people in the ship that are dear to me!"
"That's probably not the reason," said Mven Mass as he joined them. His
sharp ears had caught Darr Veter's words. "It's the inevitable protest of
man against implacable time."
"Autumn sorrow?" asked Renn Bose, with just a shade of irony as he
smiled at his friend with his eyes.
"Have you noticed that it is the most energetic, vivacious people with
the strongest feelings who mostly like the sad autumn of the temperate
zones?" objected Mven Mass patting the physicist on the shoulder in a
friendly way.
"That's true enough," exclaimed Veda.
"A very ancient observation."
"Darr Veter, are you there on the field? Darr Veter, are you there on
the field? You are wanted on the televisophone of the central building by
Junius Antus. Junius Antus is calling you on the TVP of the central
building."
Renn Bose started and straightened up.
"May I go with you, Veter?"
"Go along in my place. It doesn't matter much to you if you miss the
take-off. Junius Antus likes showing things in the old way, the direct
reception and not the recording;
in that respect he is in complete agreement with Mven Mass."
The cosmoport possessed a powerful TVP receiver and a hemispherical
screen. Renn Bose entered the quiet round room. The operator on duty pressed
a button and pointed to a side screen where the excited Junius Antus
appeared immediately. He looked closely at the physicist and, realizing why
Darr Veter had not come, nodded to Bose.
"I also intended watching the take-off but at the moment there is an
explorer-reception going on in the former direction in the 62/77 range. Take
the directed ray funnel and focus it on the observatory. I'll send a vector
ray across the Mediterranean to El Homra. Pick it up on the tubular fan and
switch on the hemispherical screen." Junius Antus looked away for a moment
and then added, "Hurry up!"
The scientist, experienced in Cosmic reception, did all that had been
ordered within two minutes. In the depths of the hemispherical screen a
gigantic galaxy appeared which both scientists recognized as the Andromeda
Nebula, or M 31, long known to mankind.
In the outer turn of its spiral, the one nearest the onlookers, and
almost in the very centre of the lentil-shaped disc of the enormous galaxy,
a tiny light appeared. There a whole system of stars branched off, looking
like a thin hair although it was probably a huge sleeve of the galaxy a
hundred parsecs in length. The light began to grow and the hair became
bigger, while the galaxy disappeared beyond the field of vision. A stream of
red and yellow stars stretched across the screen. The light changed into a
little circle that gleamed at the end of the star stream. On the edge of the
stream there was a prominent orange star, spectral class K, and around it
the barely perceptible dots of planets were revolving. A disc of light was
placed over one of them, completely covering it. Suddenly it all began to
whirl round in red curves with sparks flying out of them. Renn Bose closed
his eyes.
"That's a rupture," said Junius Antus from the side screen. "I've shown
you a memory machine recording of what we observed last month. Now I'm going
to switch on to a direct reception."
Sparks and dark-red lines were still whirling round on the screen.
"What a peculiar phenomenon!" exclaimed the physicist. "How do you
explain that 'rupture,' as you call it?"
"I'll tell you later. The transmission is beginning again. But what is
it you think strange?"
"The red spectrum of the rupture. In the Andromeda spectrum there is a
violet bias, in other words, it should be drawing closer to us."
"The rupture has nothing to do with Andromeda, it is a local
phenomenon!"
"Do you think it accidental that their transmitting station is placed
on the very edge of the galaxy, in a zone that is even farther removed from
the centre than the zone of the Sun in our Galaxy?"
Junius Antus cast a sceptical glance at Renn Bose. "You're prepared to
start a discussion at any moment, forgetting that you're talking with the
Andromeda Nebula at a distance of 45 parsecs!"
"Yes, yes," muttered the embarrassed Renn Bose, "that is, at a distance
of a million and a half light years. This communication was transmitted
fifteen thousand centuries ago."
"What we're looking at now was sent out long before the Ice Age and the
appearance of man on Earth!" Junius Antus had become more amicable.
The red lines slowed down their movements, the screen went dark and
then lit up again. A dully lit plain could scarcely be discerned in the
twilight with mushroom-shaped structures dotted here and there. Near the
front a gigantic (judging by the extent of the plain) blue circle with an
obviously metallic surface gleamed coldly. One above the other two huge
discs, convex on both sides, hung directly over the centre of the blue
circle. No ... they were not hanging but were slowly rising higher and
higher. The plain vanished and only one of the discs remained on the screen;
it was more convex below than above and there were crudely spiral ribs on
both sides.
"Is it they ... is it they?" exclaimed both scientists, almost
together, thinking of the perfect similarity of this image with the
photographs and drawings of the spiral disc the 37th Cosmic Expedition had
found on the planet of the iron star.
Another whirl of red lines and the screen went dead. Renn Bose waited,
afraid to take his eyes off the screen for even a second. The first human
eye to see something of the life and thoughts of another galaxy! The screen,
however, did not show any further signs of life. Junius Antus spoke from the
side-screen of the TVP.
"The transmission has broken off. We cannot wait any longer because we
are using too much of Earth's power resources. The whole planet will be
astounded. We must ask the Economic Council for reception hours outside the
regular programme at intervals more frequent than at present, but that will
only be possible in a year's time, after so much has been spent on the
dispatch of Lebed. Now we know that the spaceship on the black planet is
from there. If Erg Noor had not found it we should never have understood
what we have seen."
"And that disc came from there? How long did it fly?" asked Renn Bose,
as though talking to himself.
"It has been flying dead for about two million years through the space
that divides our two galaxies," answered Junius Antus, sternly, from the
screen. "It flew until it found refuge on the planet of star T. Those
spaceships are apparently built to land automatically despite the fact that
for thousands and thousands of years no living hand has touched their
mechanism."
"Perhaps they live a long time?"
"But not millions of years, that would contradict the laws of
thermodynamics," answered Junius Antus, coldly. "Even though it is of
enormous size the spiral disc could not contain a whole planet of people...
or intelligences. As yet our two galaxies cannot reach each other, cannot
exchange messages...."
"They will," declared Renn Bose, confidently, said good-bye to Junius
Antus and returned to the cosmoport whence the spaceship Lebed had just
flown off.
Darr Veter, Veda Kong, Chara and Mven Mass stood somewhat apart from
the two long rows of people who had come to see the ship off. All heads were
turned in the direction of the central building. Noiselessly a wide platform
swept past them accompanied by waving hands and shouts of greeting,
something that people only permitted themselves in public on very special
occasions. The twenty-two members of Lebed's crew were on the platform.
The vehicle drew up against Lebed. At the tall retractable lift stood a
number of people in white overalls, the twenty members of the ground crew,
mostly engineers working at the cosmoport: all of them had tired, drawn
faces. During the past twenty-four hours they had checked all the
expedition's equipment once more and had tested the reliability of the ship
with the tensor apparatus.
In accordance with a custom that had been introduced with the first
Cosmic expeditions the Chairman of the Commission reported to Erg Noor who
had again been appointed commander of the spaceship and of the expedition to
Achernar. Other members of the commission placed their insignia on a bronze
plate bearing their portraits which was handed to Erg Noor; after this they
moved away to one side and those who had come to bid farewell to the crew
surged round the ship. The people drew up in front of the travellers,
permitting their relatives to reach the small platform of the lift that was
still vacant. Cinema cameramen recorded every gesture of the parting crew, a
last memory of them to be left on Earth.
Erg Noor noticed Veda Kong when she was still some distance away: he
thrust the bronze certificate into his wide astronaut's belt and hurried to
the young woman.
"It's good of you to have come, Veda!"
"How could I not come!"
"For me you are a symbol of Earth and my past youth!"
"Nisa's youth is with you for ever!"
"I won't say I'm not sorry about anything because it wouldn't be true.
I'm sorry, first of all, for Nisa, my companions and myself.... The loss is
too great. On this last time on the planet I've learned to love Earth in a
new way, more strongly, simply and unconditionally."
"But you're going, nevertheless. Erg?"
"I must. If I were to refuse I should lose Earth as well as the
Cosmos."
"The greater the love the greater the deed."
"You've always understood me perfectly, Veda. Here's Nisa. I've just
been admitting nostalgia to Veda."
The girl with the shock of red curls lowered her eyelashes: she had
grown thinner and looked like a boy.
"I never thought it would be so hard. You're all of you so good ... so
pure ... so beautiful... to leave you, to tear one's body away from Mother
Earth...." The astronavigator's voice trembled. Veda instinctively drew the
girl towards her, whispering the mysterious words of feminine comfort.
"In nine minutes the hatches will be closed," said Erg in a soundless
voice, his eyes fixed on Veda.
"It's a long time yet!" exclaimed Nisa simply and with tears in her
voice.
Veda, Erg, Veter and Mven Mass like others present were surprised and
grieved that they could find no words to say. There was nothing with which
to express their feelings in face of a magnificent deed that was to be
performed for the sake of those who did not yet exist and who would come
many years later. Those who were leaving and those who were staying behind
knew everything. What more could be said?
What wishes, jokes or promises could affect the hearts of people who
were leaving Earth for ever to plunge into the void of the Cosmos?
Man's second system of signals proved to be imperfect and gave way to
the third. Profound glances expressing passionate feelings that could not be
transmitted verbally were met in tense silence or were engaged in making the
most of El Homra's wretched landscape.
"Time!" came Erg Noor's metallic voice like the snap of a herdsman's
whip-the people hurried to board their ship. Veda, sobbing quite openly,
pressed Nisa tightly. For a few seconds the two women stood cheek to cheek,
their eyes tightly closed while the men exchanged parting glances and
handshakes. The lift had already taken eight of the astronauts into the
black oval of the hatch. Erg Noor took Nisa by the hand and whispered
something to her. The girl blushed, broke away and ran to the spaceship. She
turned round before stepping into the lift and met the big eyes of an
unusually pale Chara.
"May I give you a kiss, Chara?" she asked in a loud voice.
Chara did not answer but jumped on to the lift platform, trembling all
over, put her arms round the girl astronaut, then, without a single word,
jumped down again and ran away.
Erg Noor and Nisa went up together.
The crowd stood motionless as the lift stopped for a moment opposite
the black hatch in the brightly illuminated hull of Lebed and two figures, a
tall man and a graceful girl, stood side by side receiving Earth's last
greetings.
Veda Kong clenched her fists and Darr Veter could hear her joints
cracking.
Erg Noor and Nisa disappeared. An oval door of the same grey colour as
the hull moved out of the black opening. A second later the most discerning
eye could not have detected the place where there had been an opening in the
steep flanks of the huge hull.
There was something human about the spaceship standing vertically on
its landing struts. The impression was, perhaps, created by the round globe
of the nose, surmounted by a pointed cap and gleaming with signal lights
that looked like eyes. Or perhaps it was the ribbed bulkheads of the
central, storage part of the ship that had the appearance of the pauldrons
of a knight's armour. The spaceship stood on its struts as though it were a
giant standing on straddled legs, contemptuously and arrogantly peering over
the heads of the crowd.
The first take-off signals sounded ominously. As though by magic, wide
self-propelled platforms appeared beside the ship to take away the people.
The tripods of the TVP and the floodlights crawled away from the ship, too,
but they kept their lenses and their rays fixed on it. The grey hull of
Lebed seemed to fade away and diminish in size. Evil-looking red lights
glowed in the ship's "head," the signal that the crew were ready to start.
The vibration of its powerful motors made the earth tremble as the spaceship
began to turn on its landing struts to get direction for the take-off. The
platforms with the people seeing the ship off moved farther and farther away
until they were to the leeward of the safety line that gleamed
phosphorescent in the darkness. Here the people jumped down from the
platforms and the latter went back for the others.
"They'll never see us again, or our sky, either, will they?" asked
Chara, turning to Mven Mass, who bent low over her.
"No, unless it's in a stereotelescope."
Green lights flashed up under the ship's keel. The radio beacon turned
furiously on the tower of the central building sending out warnings of the
giant ship's take-off in all directions.
"The spaceship is being ordered away!" a metal voice of tremendous
power shouted so suddenly that Chara shuddered and clung tight to Mven Mass.
"Everybody inside the danger circle raise your hands above your heads. Raise
your hands above your heads or you will be killed! Raise your hands above
your heads, or ..." the automaton continued shouting while searchlights
raked the field to make sure that nobody was left inside the danger line.
There was nobody there and the searchlights went out. The robot
screamed again and, it seemed to Chara, more furiously than before.
"After the bell rings turn your backs to the ship and shut your eyes.
Keep them shut until the second bell rings. Turn your backs to the ship and
shut your eyes!" howled the automaton with alarm and menace.
"It's frightening!" whispered Veda Kong to her companion. Darr Veter
calmly took from his belt half masks with dark glasses rolled up into a
tube, put one mask on Veda and the other on his own head. He just had time
to fasten the buckles when a huge, high-pitched bell rang out, swaying back
and forth under the roof of the signal tower.
The ringing stopped and the grasshoppers, indifferent to everything,
could be plainly heard.
Suddenly the spaceship gave a howl that penetrated right to the marrow
of a man's bones and its lights went out. Once, twice, three times, four
times the howl swept across that dark plain and the more impressionable
people standing there felt that the ship itself was crying with sorrow at
the departure.
The howl broke off as suddenly as it had started. A wall of
indescribably bright light shot up round the ship. Everything else in the
world ceased to exist for a moment except that Cosmic fire. The tower of
fire changed to a column, stretched out longer and thinner until it became a
dazzlingly bright line of fire. The bell rang for the second time and as the
people turned round they saw an empty plain on which was a huge patch of
red-hot soil. There was a big star high up in the sky-the spaceship Lebed
was moving away from Earth.
The people wandered slowly back to the electrobuses, looking at the sky
and then at the place where the ship had taken off, a place that had
suddenly become as lifeless as if the Hammada El Homra had returned, the
desert that had been the terror of travellers in days gone by.
Well-known stars gleamed on the southern horizon. All eyes were turned
to the point where the bright blue star Achernar burned in the sky. Lebed
would reach that star after a journey of eighty-four years at a speed of 800
million kilometres an hour. For us, on Earth, it would be eighty-four years
but for Lebed it would be forty-seven. Perhaps they would find a new world,
just as beautiful and joyous, in the green rays of the zirconium sun.
Darr Veter and Veda Kong overtook Chara Nandi and Mven Mass. The
African was answering the girl's questions.
"No, it is not sorrow but a great and sad pride-such are my feelings
today. Pride because we rise ever higher above our planet and merge with the
Cosmos, sorrow because our beloved Earth is becoming so small. Long, long
ago the Mayas, the red-skinned people of Central America, left behind them a
proud and sad inscription. I gave it to Erg Noor and he'll have it written
up in the library-laboratory of Lebed."
The African looked round and noticed that friends who had caught up
with them were listening, too. He continued in a louder voice:
" 'Thou who will later show thy face here! If thy mind can think thou
wilt ask, ''Who were they?" Ask the dawn, ask the forest, ask the waves, ask
the storm, ask love. Ask the earth, the earth of suffering and the earth
beloved. Who are we? We are the Earth!' I too am Earth through and through!"
added Mven Mass.
Renn Bose came running up to meet them, panting for breath. The friends
surrounded the physicist who told them in a few words the unprecedented
news-the first contact between two gigantic stellar islands.
"I hoped to get here before the take-off," said Renn Bose, sadly, "to
tell Erg Noor about it. While he was still on the black planet he realized
that the spiral disc had come from a far distant world, a completely alien
world, and that the strange ship had been flying for a long time in the
Cosmos."
"Will Erg Noor never know that the spiral disc has come from such
tremendous depths of the Universe, that it has come from another galaxy,
from the Andromeda Nebula?" asked Veda. "What a pity that he did not hear
today's reception!"
"He'll hear about it!" said Darr Veter, with confidence. "We'll ask the
Council to sanction power for a special transmission. I'll call the
spaceship through Satellite 36. Lebed will be within range of our
transmitters for another nineteen hours!"
GLOSSARY
1. Billion-is used in its European meaning of a million millions
(1012).
2. Parsec-the unit of measure of astronomical distance, equal to 3.26
light years or 32X1012 km.
3. Sporamin-a drug to maintain the organism active over long periods
without sleep (imaginary).
4. Anameson-atomic fuel in which the meson bonds of the nucleus have
been disrupted; it has an exhaust velocity equal to the speed of light
(imaginary).
5. Bomb Beacons-automatic radio robots transmitting signals powerful
enough to penetrate the atmosphere of a planet. They were dropped from the
spaceships for reconnaissance purposes (imaginary).
6. Independent Year-a terrestrial year that is Independent of the speed
of the spaceship.
7. Spectral Classes-are indicated by the letters 0, B, A, F, G, K, M.
They range from hot blue stars with a surface temperature of 100,000° C. to
red stars with a temperature of 3,000° C. Each class has ten descending
degrees of magnitude shown by indices, as A;. There are special classes N,
P, R and S with an augmented content of carbon, cyanogen, titanium and
zirconium in their spectra. N. B. In other systems of classification the
spectral classes 0, B, A and F are all called ,,white stars" and not ,,blue
stars" as here.
8. Quantum Limit-velocity close to that of light (subphotonic velocity)
at which a solid body cannot exist: the point at which the mass is equal to
infinity and time is equal to zero.
9. K-particles-particles formed inside the atomic nucleus from
fragments of the circular meson cloud (imaginary).
10. Isograves-lines of equal intensity in a gravitational field
(imaginary).
11. Atomized Solid Oxygen-oxygen that is not in its usual molecular
form (02) but in the form of separate atoms. This form produces more
intensive chemical reactions and permits of greater compression than the
molecular state.
12. Optimal Radiant-the optimal radius of the orbit of the spaceship
about a planet and outside its atmosphere; the radius that gives ship a
constant, unchanging orbit; depends on the volume and mass of the planet
(imaginary).
13. Kelvin Scale-a temperature scale beginning from absolute zero which
is - 273° C, or - 459° F. The temperature 320° K is equal to 4- 47° C. or
116.6° F.
14. Silicolloid-made of silicon, a transparent material produced from
fibrous silicon-organic compounds (imaginary).
15. Silicoborum-an amalgam of borum carbide and silicon to produce an
extremely hard, transparent material (imaginary).
16. Chlorella-a seaweed with a considerable albumin content.
17. Chromokatoptric Colours-artist's colours with a strong reflection
of light from the inner layers (imaginary).
18. Repagular Calculus-a calculus in bipolar mathematics that deals
with moments of transition (repagulum) from one state or condition to
another and from one mathematical sign to another (imaginary).
19. Bipolar Mathematics-mathematics based on dialectic logic, with
opposite analyses and solutions (imaginary).
20. Cochlear Calculus-a division of bipolar mathematics dealing with
progressive spiral movement (imaginary).
21. Tiratron-an electronic instrument (electron lamp) to stimulate and
maintain the nervous processes in the human organism, in particular the
beating of the heart (imaginary).
22. Neurosecretory Stimulators-drugs made from the nervous excretions
of the organism (neurosecretory substances) acting specifically on certain
nerves (imaginary).
23. Geological Bomb-a bomb of great explosive power dropped on to a
planet under exploration to get samples of matter contained on the surface
of the planet and hurled into the upper layers of the atmosphere by the
explosion (imaginary).
24. Stochastics-a branch of mathematics studying the laws of large
numbers.
25. Cytoarchitectonics-a detailed study of the structure of the brain
according to the distribution and specialization of the nerve cells.
26. Third System of Signals-thought transmission without speech
(imaginary).
27 Overtone Diaphragms-diaphragms that transmit the overtones of the
human voice and so remove all difference between the living voice and the
sounds of its reproduction (imaginary).
TO THE READER
The Foreign Languages Publishing House
would be glad to have your opinion of this
book and its design and any suggestions
you may have for future publications.
Please send them to 21, Zubovsky Boulevard,
Moscow, V. S. S. R.
Ivan Yefremov (born 1907), novelist, author of much science fiction,
professor of palaeontology, is a great favourite with Soviet readers. The
Foreign Laguages Publishing House has issued two of his books in English,
Stellar Ships, about beings who came to us from the stars, and Land of Foam,
an historical fantasy, the scene of which is laid in Greece, Egypt and
Central Africa in the days of Early Antiquity.
Ivan Yefremov's new story, Andromeda, deals with the future. This is
scientific fantasy on a grand scale, it tells of a gigantic growth of
science and engineering on Earth, of a new type of society, it shows life in
all parts of the Universe in the Era of The Great Circle, and interstellar
organization that keeps Earth in permanent contact with the entire Cosmos.
The time of the story is ...
In respect of time Ivan Yefremov has the following to say:
"The first serial publication of Andromeda had not been completed when
Soviet sputniks began their nights in orbit round the Earth. Confronted with
this indisputable fact it was a pleasure to realize that the ideas on which
the story had been based are correct.
"The fulfilment, with amazing speed, of one of the dreams of the story
posed a question that I had to answer; to what extent do the historical
prospects unfolded in Andromeda ring true? At first I had thought that the
gigantic transformations of our planet and life on it described in the story
could not be effected in less than three thousand years. I based this
calculation on world history but did not take into consideration the rate of
acceleration of technical progress and, more important still, the
possibilities that communist society will offer mankind.
"In preparing the new edition I reduced my original time by a whole
millennium, but the launching of the sputniks showed that the events related
in the story could occur much sooner. All definite dates in Andromeda have
been made indefinite so that the reader may fill them in according to his
own concepts and feeling for time.
"The mass of scientific information and intricate terminology used in
the story are the result of a deliberate plan. It seemed to me that this is
the only way to show our distant descendants and give the necessary local
(or temporal) colour to their dialogue since they are living in a period
when science will have penetrated into all human conceptions and into
language itself."
Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
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