Andromeda (A Space-Age Tale)

CHAPTER SEVEN SYMPHONY IN F-MINOR, COLOUR TONE 4.75 μ

The wall of the broad verandah facing south towards the sea was made of sheets of transparent plastic. The pale diffused light from the ceiling complemented rather than rivalled the moonlight, softening its dense black shadows. Almost the whole maritime expedition had gathered on the verandah, only the very youngest members of the expedition were still frolicking in the moonlit sea. Cart Sann, the artist, was there with his beautiful model. Frith Don, the Director of the expedition, shook back his long, golden hair as he told the people about the horse Miyiko had found. When they made tests of the material from which it was made in order to calculate the weight to he lifted they got the most unexpected results. Under the superficial layer of some alloy the statue was pure gold. If the horse were cast solid then its weight, after allowance had been made for water displacement, would be four hundred tons. Special vessels with powerful salvage gear had been sent for — an unexpected development from a pleasant afternoon’s swim enjoyed by Miyiko Eigoro and Darr Veter. Somebody asked how so much valuable metal could have been used so foolishly. One of the older historians recalled a legend discovered in the historical archives telling of the disappearance of the gold reserves of a whole country, and that at a time when gold was the monetary expression of labour values. Certain criminal rulers, guilty of tyranny and the impoverishment of the people, had been forced to flee to another country — in those days there were obstacles called frontiers preventing contact between nations — and before absconding they gathered together the entire gold reserve and cast a statue from it and placed it in the busiest square of the country’s chief city. Nobody was able to find the gold. The historian presumed that in those days nobody had been able to find the precious metal under the layer of the cheap alloy.

The story caused some excitement. The find of a large quantity of gold was a fine gift to mankind. Although the heavy metal had long ceased to serve as a symbol of value it was still very necessary in electrical instruments, medicines and, especially, for the manufacture of anameson.

In a small group in a corner outside the verandah sat Veda Kong, Darr Veter, the artist, Chara Nandi and Evda Nahl. Renn Bose sat down bashfully beside them after his fruitless attempts to find Mven Mass.

"You were right when you said that artists, or rather, art in general, must always inevitably lag behind the rapid advance of knowledge and technique,” said Darr Veter.

‘“You didn’t understand me,” objected Cart Saun. “Art has already corrected its errors and understood its duty to mankind. Art has ceased to create oppressive monumental forms, to depict brilliance and majesty that do not exist in reality, for all that was purely superficial. Art’s most important duty has become the development of man’s emotional side, since only art can rightly attune the human psyche and prepare it for the acceptance of the most complicated impressions. Who does not know how wonderfully easy it is to understand something when you have been pretuned by music, colour or form, and how inaccessible the human spirit is when you try to force a way into it. You historians know better than anybody else how much mankind has suffered through a lack of understanding of the necessity to train and develop the emotional side of the psyche.”

“There was a period in the past when art craved abstract forms,” Veda Kong put in.

“Art craved abstract forms in imitation of the intellect that had gained priority over everything else. Art, however, cannot find expression in the abstract, with the exception, of course, of music, and that occupies a special place and is concrete in its own way. Art in those days was on the wrong track.”

"What do you believe to be the right track?”

“I believe that art should be a reflection of the struggle and anxieties of life in people’s feelings, at times it should illustrate life but under the control of a common purposefulness. This purposefulness, in other words, is beauty, without which I cannot see happiness or a meaning for life. Without it art can easily degenerate into mere fanciful invention, especially if the artist has an insufficient knowledge of life and of history.”

“I have always wanted art to help conquer and change the world and not merely to sense the world,” added Darr Veter. “I agree with that, but with one proviso,” said Cart Sann. “Art shouldn’t treat the outside world alone; it’s more important to treat of man’s inner world, his emotions, his education. With an understanding of all contradictions….”

Evda Nahl placed her strong, warm hand on Darr Veter’s.

“What dream have you renounced today?” At first Veter wanted to put her off, but realized that with Evda equivocation was impossible. And so he pretended to be absorbed in the artist’s discourse.

“Those who have seen the mass art of the past,” continued the artist, “cinema films, recordings of theatre shows, exhibitions of pictures, know how marvellously refined, elegant, purged of all superfluities our present-day spectacles, dances and pictures seem by contrast. I am not comparing them with the periods of decay, of course.”

“He’s clever but too verbose,” whispered Veda Kong. “It’s difficult for an artist to express in words or formulas those complicated phenomena that he sees and selects from his environment,” Chara Nandi said in his defence and Evda Nahl nodded approvingly.

“What I want to do is something like this,” continued Cart Sann, “I want to collect into one image the pure grains of the wonderful genuineness of feeling, form and colour scattered among many people. I want to restore the ancient images by the highest expression of the beauty of each of the races of the distant past that have gone into the makeup of mankind today. The Daughter of Gondwana is unity with nature, a subconscious knowledge of the connections between things and phenomena, a complex of senses and feelings interlaced with instincts.

“The Daughter of Thetis, the Mediterranean, has strongly developed emotions that are fearlessly expansive and infinitely varying; here there is a different degree of the union with nature, through emotions, the power of Eros — that is how I imagine her. The ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean, the Cretan, Etruscan, Hellenic and Proto-Indian — gave rise to the type of man who, alone of all others, could have created that civilization that stemmed from the rule of woman. I had the best of luck when I discovered Chara: she is by pure accident a combination of the traits of ancestors from amongst the Graeco-Cretans of antiquity and the later peoples of Central India.”

Veda smiled at the correctness of her guess and Darr Veter whispered to her that it would be hard to find a better model.

“If my Daughter of the Mediterranean turns out a success then I must go on to the third part of the plan — I must paint the golden- or flaxen-haired northern woman, with her calm and transparent eyes, tall, somewhat slow in her movements, her glance straightforward as she looks out at the world like one of the ancient Russian, Scandinavian or English women. Only when that is finished shall I be able to start on the synthesis, the image of the present-day woman in which I shall have to portray the best features of each of those ancestors.”

“Why do you only paint ‘daughters’ and no ‘sons’?” asked Veda, smiling mysteriously.

“Is there any need for me to explain that by the laws of physiology the beautiful is always more finished and more refined in woman?” frowned the artist.

“When you are ready to paint your third picture, your Daughter of the North, take a good look at Veda Kong,” began Evda Nahl, “you’ll hardly….”

The artist rose swiftly to his feet.

“D’you think I’m blind? I am struggling against myself to prevent that image becoming part of me at a time when I am full of another. But Veda….”

“Is dreaming of music,” continued Veda. “What a pity there is only a solar piano here and it’s silent at night.”

“Is that the piano with a system of semi-conductors that works from sunlight?” asked Renn Bose, leaning over the arm of his chair. “If it is, I can switch it over to use the current of the receiver.”

“Will it take long?” asked Veda, pleased at the opportunity.

“It would take about an hour.”

“Then don’t bother. The news broadcast on the world circuit begins in an hour and we want to see and hear it. We’ve been busy the past two evenings and haven’t switched on the receiver.”

“Then sing us something, Veda,” asked Darr Veter. “Cart Sann has the eternal stringed instrument, the one that dates back to feudal society in the Dark Ages.”

“Guitar,” guessed Chara Nandi.

“Who’ll play? I’ll try myself, perhaps I can manage.”

“I’ll play.” Chara Nandi volunteered to go for the guitar.

“We’ll run together,” suggested Frith Don. Chara roguishly tossed back her mass of black hair. Sherliss pulled a lever moving back the side wall of the verandah giving them a view of the eastern corner of the bay. Frith Don ran with long strides. Chara ran with her head thrown back and soon fell behind but in the end they arrived at the studio together, plunged into the un-lighted entrance and a second later reappeared to skim along the edge of the sea, stubborn and swift-footed. Frith Don was the first to reach the verandah but Chara vaulted over the open side partition and was first in the room. Veda clapped her hands in admiration. “But Frith Don won last year’s decathlon!” “And Chara Nandi was graduated from the Higher School of Dance, both departments. Ancient and Modern,” retorted Cart Sann, in the same tone.

“Veda and I studied dancing too, but only in the lower grades,” sighed Evda Nahl.

“Everybody passes the lower grade nowadays,” said the artist teasingly.

Chara ran her fingers lightly over the strings, sticking out her small, firm chin. The guitar hummed low, pensive notes. The young woman’s high-pitched voice combined longing and challenge. She sang a new song, one that had just come from the southern zone, a song of an unfulfilled dream. Veda’s low contralto joined in 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, Grom 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. Grom 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.

“Diss 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 had 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 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 himself 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 night’s work at the observatory. With a peculiar impatience he waited for eleven o’clock, the time the House of Higher Music had appointed for the transmission of the symphony.

The electro-smelting operator undertook the role of Master of Ceremonies and seated Darr Veter and other music lovers in the focus of the hemispherical screen and opposite the sound reproducer in the music room. She turned out the lights, explaining that with them on it would be difficult to follow the colour scheme of the symphony that could only be properly performed in a special hall and must, in this transmission, of necessity be confined to the limits of the screen.

The screen flickered faintly in the darkness and the noise of the sea could just be heard. Somewhere, incredibly far away, a low note sounded, a note so rich in tone that it seemed almost tangible. It grew in volume, shattering the room and the hearts of the listeners and then suddenly became softer, rose to a higher note and was broken and scattered in a million crystal fragments. Tiny orange sparks appeared in the dark atmosphere. It was like that flash of primordial lightning whose discharge on Earth, millions of centuries ago, had fused simple carbon compounds to form the more intricate molecules, the basis of organic matter and life.

A wave of alarming and dissonant sounds flooded the room, a thousand-voiced chorus of will-power, yearning and despair to complement which vague shadows of purple and vermillion came in hurried flashes and died away again.

In the movement of the short and strongly vibrant notes a circular arrangement could be felt and was accompanied by’ an irregular spiral of whirling grey fire in the heights. Suddenly the whirling chorus of sounds was severed by long notes, proud and resonant, filled with impetuous force.

The vague fiery outlines of space were pierced by clear lines of blue fiery arrows that flew into the bottomless void beyond the edges of the spiral and were drowned in the darkness of horror and silence.

Darkness and silence — on this note ended the first movement of the symphony.

The audience, slightly staggered, did not have time to pronounce a single word before the music began again. Extensive cascades of powerful sounds were accompanied by dazzling opalescences that covered the whole spectrum; they fell, weakening as they grew lower, and glowing fire died away to their melancholy rhythm. Again something narrow and vehement broke through the falling cascades and again blue lights began their rhythmic, dancing ascent.

Astounded, Darr Veter caught in the blue sounds an urge towards ever more complicated rhythms and forms and thought that the primitive struggle of life against entropy could not be better expressed. Steps, dams, filters holding back the cascades that were falling to lower levels of energy…. To retain them for one moment and in that moment to live! So, so and so — there they were, those first splashes of the complicated organization of matter.

Blue arrows resolved into a round dance of geometric figures, crystal and lattice forms that grew more complicated to the accompaniment of various combinations of minor tercets, fell apart, were again combined and then suddenly dissolved in the grey twilight.

The third movement began with the measured tread of bass notes in time with which blue lanterns were lit and extinguished as they moved off into the void of infinite space and time. The surge of tramping basses increased, their rhythm grew faster until they merged into a broken, ominous melody. The blue lights were like flowers swaying on thin stems of fire — they bowed their heads sadly under the flood of low, thundering and blasting notes and were extinguished in the distance. But the lines of lights or lanterns became denser and their stems were thicker. Then two fiery strips marked a road leading into immeasurable blackness and the resonant golden voices of life floated into the immenseness of the Universe, warming with a glorious warmth gloomy, indifferent, ever-moving pattenr. The dark road changed to a river, a gigantic stream of blue flames in which splashes of multicoloured fire made pattern that was constantly changing and becoming more intricate.

The higher combinations of rounded, regular curves and spherical surfaces were of a beauty equal to that of the contradictory quartal chords, in the succession of which a complicated resonant melody increased rapidly, whirling more powerfully and expansively in the rhythmical advance of the low rumble of time.

Darr Veter’s head was in a whirl and he could no longer follow all the shades of music and colour and was able to grasp only the general outline of the gigantic idea. The blue ocean of high notes, pure as crystal, glowed with a beaming, unusually powerful, joyful and clear colour. The tone rose higher and higher and the melody itself began rotating furiously in an ascending spiral until it broke off in flight, in a blinding flash of fire.

The symphony was over and Darr Veter realized what he had been missing all these long months. He needed work that was closer to the Cosmos, closer to the tirelessly unwinding spiral of human urge forward into the future. He went straight from the music room to the telephone room and from there called the Central Employment Bureau of the northern living zone. The young clerk who had sent him to work in the mines was pleased when he recognized him.

“They called for you from the Astronautical Council this morning,” he said, “but I could not get in touch with you. I’ll put you through now.”

The screen grew blank and then the light came on again and Mir Ohm, the senior of the four secretaries of the Council, appeared. His face wore a very serious look and, Darr Veter thought, a look mingled with sadness.

“There has been a great catastrophe! Satellite 57 has perished! The Council is calling you for a most difficult job. I’ll send an ion-powered planetship for you. Be ready to leave!”

Darr Veter stood motionless in amazement in front of the already empty screen.