Solaris

Snow

P.S. All I ask is for you to stay outside the cabin. You can call me on the videophone.”

I felt a stir of apprehension as I read the letter, and went over it again carefully before tearing it up and throwing the pieces into the disposal unit.

I went through the same terrible charade that I had begun the previous day, and made up a story for Rheya’s benefit. She did not notice the deception, and when I told her that I had to make an inspection and suggested that she come with me she was delighted. We stopped at the kitchen for breakfast — Rheya ate very little — and then made for the library.

Before venturing on the mission suggested by Sartorius, I wanted to glance through the literature dealing with magnetic fields and neutrino structures. I did not yet have any clear idea of how I would set about it, but I had made up my mind to make an independent check on Sartorius’s activities. Not that I would prevent Snow and Sartorius from ‘liberating’ themselves when the annihilator was completed: I meant to take Rheya out of the Station and wait for the conclusion of the operation in the cabin of an aircraft. I set to work with the automatic librarian. Sometimes it answered my queries by ejecting a card with the laconic inscription “Not on file,” sometimes it practically submerged me under such a spate of specialist physics textbooks that I hesitated to use its advice. Yet I had no desire to leave the big circular chamber. I felt at ease in my egg, among the rows of cabinets crammed with tape and microfilm. Situated right at the center of the Station, the library had no windows: It was the most isolated area in the great steel shell, and made me feel relaxed in spite of finding my researches held up.

Wandering across the vast room, I stopped at a set of shelves as high as the ceiling, and holding about six hundred volumes — all classics on the history of Solaris, starting with the nine volumes of Giese’s monumental and already relatively obsolescent monograph. Display for its own sake was improbable in these surroundings. The collection was a respectful tribute to the memory of the pioneers. I took down the massive volumes of Giese and sat leafing through them. Rheya had also located some reading matter. Looking over her shoulder, I saw that she had picked one of the many books brought out by the first expedition, the Interplanetary Cookery Book. which could have been the personal property of Giese himself. She was poring over the recipes adapted to the arduous conditions of interstellar flight. I said nothing, and returned to the book resting on my knees. Solaris — Ten Years of Exploration had appeared as volumes 4-12 of the Solariana collection whose most recent additions were numbered in the thousands.

Giese was an unemotional man, but then in the study of Solaris emotion is a hindrance to the explorer. Imagination and premature theorizing are positive disadvantages in approaching a planet where — as has become clear — anything is possible. It is almost certain that the unlikely descriptions of the ‘plasmatic’ metamorphoses of the ocean are faithful accounts of the phenomena observed, although these descriptions are unverifiable, since the ocean seldom repeats itself. The freakish character and gigantic scale of these phenomena go too far outside the experience of man to be grasped by anybody observing them for the first time, and who would consider analogous occurrences as ‘sports of nature,’ accidental manifestations of blind forces, if he saw them on a reduced scale, say in a mud-volcano on Earth.

Genius and mediocrity alike are dumbfounded by the teeming diversity of the oceanic formations of Solaris; no man has ever become genuinely conversant with them. Giese was by no means a mediocrity, nor was he a genius. He was a scholarly classifier, the type whose compulsive application to their work utterly divorces them from the pressures of everyday life. Giese devised a plain descriptive terminology, supplemented by terms of his own invention, and although these were inadequate, and sometimes clumsy, it has to be admitted that no semantic system is as yet available to illustrate the behavior of the ocean. The ‘tree-mountains,’ ‘extensors,’ ‘fungoids,’ ‘mimoids,’ ‘symmetriads’ and ‘asymmetriads,’ ‘vertebrids’ and ‘agilus’ are artificial, linguistically awkward terms, but they do give some impression of Solaris to anyone who has only seen the planet in blurred photographs and incomplete films. The fact is that in spite of his cautious nature the scrupulous Giese more than once jumped to premature conclusions. Even when on their guard, human beings inevitably theorize. Giese, who thought himself immune to temptation, decided that the ‘extensors’ came into the category of basic forms. He compared them to accumulations of gigantic waves, similar to the tidal movements of our Terran oceans. In the first edition of his work, we find them originally named as ‘tides.’ This geocentrism might be considered amusing if it did not underline the dilemma in which he found himself.

As soon as the question of comparisons with Earth arises, it must be understood that the ‘extensors’ are formations that dwarf the Grand Canyon, that they are produced in a substance which externally resembles a yeasty colloid (during this fantastic ‘fermentation,’ the yeast sets into festoons of starched open-work lace; some experts refer to ‘ossified tumors’), and that deeper down the substance becomes increasingly resistant, like a tensed muscle which fifty feet below the surface is as hard as rock but retains its flexibility. The ‘extensor’ appears to be an independent creation, stretching for miles between membranous walls swollen with ‘ossified growths,’ like some colossal python which after swallowing a mountain is sluggishly digesting the meal, while a slow shudder occasionally ripples along its creeping body. The ‘extensor’ only looks like a lethargic reptile from overhead. At close quarters, when the two ‘canyon walls’ loom hundreds of yards above the exploring aircraft, it can be seen that this inflated cylinder, reaching from one side of the horizon to the other, is bewilderingly alive with movement. First you notice the continual rotating motion of a greyish-green, oily sludge which reflects blinding sunlight, but skimming just above the ‘back of the python’ (the ‘ravine’ sheltering the ‘extensor’ now resembles the sides of a geological fault), you realize that the motion is in fact far more complex, and consists of concentric fluctuations traversed by darker currents. Occasionally this mantle turns into a shining crust that reflects sky and clouds and then is riddled by explosive eruptions of the internal gases and fluids. The observer slowly realizes that he is looking at the guiding forces that are thrusting outward and upward the two gradually crystallizing gelatinous walls. Science does not accept the obvious without further proof, however, and virulent controversies have reverberated down the years on the key question of the exact sequence of events in the interior of the ‘extensors that furrow the vast living ocean in their millions.

Various organic functions have been ascribed to the ‘extensors.’ Some experts have argued that their purpose is the transformation of matter; others suggested respiratory processes; still others claimed that they conveyed alimentary materials. An infinite variety of hypotheses now moulder in library basements, eliminated by ingenious, sometimes dangerous experiments. Today, the scientists will go no further than to refer to the ‘extensors’ as relatively simple, stable formations whose duration is measurable in weeks — an exceptional characteristic among the recorded phenomena of the planet.

The ‘mimoid’ formations are considerably more complex and bizarre, and elicit a more vehement response from the observer, an instinctive response, I mean. It can be stated without exaggeration that Giese fell in love with the ‘mimoids’ and was soon devoting all his time to them. For the rest of his life, he studied and described them and brought all his ingenuity to bear on defining their nature. The name he gave them indicates their most astonishing characteristic, the imitation of objects, near or far, external to the ocean itself.

Concealed at first beneath the ocean surface, a large flattened disc appears, ragged, with a tar-like coating. After a few hours, it begins to separate into flat sheets which rise slowly. The observer now becomes a spectator at what looks like a fight to the death, as massed ranks of waves converge from all directions like contorted, fleshy mouths which snap greedily around the tattered, fluttering leaf, then plunge into the depths. As each ring of waves breaks and sinks, the fall of this mass of hundreds of thousands of tons is accompanied for an instant by a viscous rumbling, an immense thunderclap. The tarry leaf is overwhelmed, battered and torn apart; with every fresh assault, circular fragments scatter and drift like feebly fluttering wings below the ocean surface. They bunch into pear-shaped clusters or long strings, merge and rise again, and drag with them an undertow of coagulated shreds of the base of the primal disc. The encircling waves continue to break around the steadily expanding crater. This phenomenon may persist for a day or linger on for a month, and sometimes there are no further developments. The conscientious Giese dubbed this first variation a ‘stillbirth,’ convinced that each of these upheavals aspired towards an ultimate condition, the ‘major mimoid,’ like a polyp colony (only covering an area greater than a town) of pale outcroppings with the faculty of imitating foreign bodies. Uyvens, on the other hand, saw this final stage as constituting a degeneration or necrosis: according to him, the appearance of the ‘copies’ corresponded to a localized dissipation of the life energies of the ocean, which was no longer in control of the original forms it created.

Giese would not abandon his account of the various phases of the process as a sustained progression towards perfection, with a conviction which is particularly surprising coming from a man of such a moderate, cautious turn of mind in advancing the most trivial hypothesis on the other creations of the ocean. Normally he had all the boldness of an ant crawling up a glacier.

Viewed from above, the mimoid resembles a town, an illusion produced by our compulsion to superimpose analogies with what we know. When the sky is clear, a shimmering heat-haze covers the pliant structures of the clustered polyps surmounted by membranous palisades. The first cloud passing overhead wakens the mimoid. All the outcrops suddenly sprout new shoots, then the mass of polyps ejects a thick tegument which dilates, puffs out, changes color and in the space of a few minutes has produced an astonishing imitation of the volutes of a cloud. The enormous ‘object’ casts a reddish shadow over the mimoid, whose peaks ripple and bend together, always in the opposite direction to the movement of the real cloud. I imagine that Giese would have been ready to give his right hand to discover what made the mimoids behave in this way, but these ‘isolated’ productions are nothing in comparison to the frantic activity the mimoid displays when ‘stimulated’ by objects of human origin.

The reproduction process embraces every object inside a radius of eight or nine miles. Usually the facsimile is an enlargement of the original, whose forms are sometimes only roughly copied. The reproduction of machines, in particular, elicits simplifications that might be considered grotesque — practically caricatures. The copy is always modelled in the same colorless tegument, which hovers above the outcrops, linked to its base by flimsy umbilical cords; it slides, creeps, curls back on itself, shrinks or swells and finally assumes the most complicated forms. An aircraft, a net or a pole are all reproduced at the same speed. The mimoid is not stimulated by human beings themselves, and in fact it does not react to any living matter, and has never copied, for example, the plants imported for experimental purposes. On the other hand, it will readily reproduce a puppet or a doll, a carving of a dog, or a tree sculpted in any material.

The observer must bear in mind that the ‘obedience’ of the mimoid does not constitute evidence of cooperation, since it is not consistent. The most highly evolved mimoid has its off-days, when it ‘lives’ in slow-motion, or its pulsation weakens. (This pulsation is invisible to the naked eye, and was only discovered after close examination of rapid-motion film of the mimoid, which revealed that each ‘beat’ took two hours.)

During these ‘off-days,’ it is easy to explore the mimoid, especially if it is old, for the base anchored in the ocean, like the protuberances growing out of it, is relatively solid, and provides a firm footing for a man. It is equally possible to remain inside the mimoid during periods of activity, except that visibility is close to nil because of the whitish colloidal dust continually emitted through tears in the tegument above. In any case, at close range it is impossible to distinguish what forms the tegument is assuming, on account of their vast size — the smallest ‘copy’ is the size of a mountain. In addition, a thick layer of colloidal snow quickly covers the base of the mimoid: this spongy carpet takes several hours to solidify (the ‘frozen’ crust will take the weight of a man, though its composition is much lighter than pumice stone). The problem is that without special equipment there is a risk of being lost in the maze of tangled structures and crevasses, sometimes reminiscent of jumbled colonnades, sometimes of petrified geysers. Even in daylight it is easy to lose one’s direction, for the sun’s rays cannot pierce the white ceiling ejected into the atmosphere by the ‘imitative explosions.’

On gala days (for the scientist as well as for the mimoid), an unforgettable spectacle develops as the mimoid goes into hyperproduction and performs wild flights of fancy. It plays variations on the theme of a given object and embroiders ‘formal extensions’ that amuse it for hours on end, to the delight of the non-figurative artist and the despair of the scientist, who is at a loss to grasp any common theme in the performance. The mimoid can produce ‘primitive’ simplifications, but is just as likely to indulge in ‘baroque’ deviations, paroxysms of extravagant brilliance. Old mimoids tend to manufacture extremely comic forms. Looking at the photographs, I have never been moved to laughter; the riddle they set is too disquieting to be funny.

During the early years of exploration, the scientists literally threw themselves upon the mimoids, which were spoken of as open windows on the ocean and the best opportunity to establish the hoped-for contact between the two civilizations. They were soon forced to admit that there was not the slightest prospect of communication, and that the entire process began and ended with the reproduction of forms. The mimoids were a dead end.

Giving way to the temptations of a latent anthropomorphism or zoomorphism, there were many schools of thought which saw various other oceanic formations as ‘sensory organs,’ even as ‘limbs,’ which was how experts like Maartens and Ekkonai classified Giese’s ‘vertebrids’ and ‘agilus’ for a time. Anyone who is rash enough to see protuberances that reach as far as two miles into the atmosphere as limbs, might just as well claim that earthquakes are the gymnastics of the Earth’s crust!

Three hundred chapters of Giese catalogue the standard formations which occur on the surface of the living ocean and which can be seen in dozens, even hundreds, in the course of any day. The symmetriads — to continue using the terminology and definitions of the Giese school — are the least ‘human’ formations, which is to say that they bear no resemblance whatsoever to anything on Earth. By the time, the symmetriads were being investigated, it was already clear that the ocean was not aggressive, and that its plasmatic eddies would not swallow any but the most foolhardy explorer (of course I am not including accidents resulting from mechanical failures). It is possible to fly in complete safety from one part to another of the cylindrical body of an extensor, or of the vertebrids, Jacob’s ladders oscillating among the clouds: the plasma retreats at the speed of sound in the planet’s atmosphere to make way for any foreign body. Deep funnels will open even beneath the surface of the ocean (at a prodigious expenditure of energy, calculated by Scriabin at around 10^19 ergs). Nevertheless the first venture into the interior of a symmetriad was undertaken with the utmost caution and discipline, and involved a host of what turned out to be unnecessary safety measures. Every schoolboy on Earth knows of these pioneers.

It is not their nightmare appearance that makes the gigantic symmetriad formations dangerous, but the total instability and capriciousness of their structure, in which even the laws of physics do not hold. The theory that the living ocean is endowed with intelligence has found its firmest adherents among those scientists who have ventured into their unpredictable depths.

The birth of a symmetriad comes like a sudden eruption. About an hour beforehand, an area of tens of square miles of ocean vitrifies and begins to shine. It remains fluid, and there is no alteration in the rhythm of the waves. Occasionally the phenomenon of vitrification occurs in the neighbourhood of the funnel left by an agilus. The gleaming sheath of the ocean heaves upwards to form a vast ball that reflects sky, sun, clouds and the entire horizon in a medley of changing, variegated images. Diffracted light creates a kaleidoscopic play of color.

The effects of light on a symmetriad are especially striking during the blue day and the red sunset. The planet appears to be giving birth to a twin that increases in volume from one moment to the next. The immense flaming globe has scarcely reached its maximum expansion above the ocean when it bursts at the summit and cracks vertically. It is not breaking up; this is the second phase, which goes under the clumsy name of the ‘floral calyx phase’ and lasts only a few seconds. The membranous arches soaring into the sky now fold inwards and merge to produce a thick-set trunk enclosing a scene of teeming activity. At the center of the trunk, which was explored for the first time by the seventy-man Hamalei expedition, a process of polycrystallization on a giant scale erects an axis commonly referred to as the ‘backbone,’ a term which I consider ill-chosen. The mind-bending architecture of this central pillar is held in place by vertical shafts of a gelatinous, almost liquid consistency, constantly gushing upwards out of wide crevasses. Meanwhile, the entire trunk is surrounded by a belt of snow foam, seething with great bubbles of gas, and the whole process is accompanied by a perpetual dull roar of sound. From the center towards the periphery, powerful buttresses spin out and are coated with streams of ductile matter rising out of the ocean depths Simultaneously the gelatinous geysers are converted into mobile columns that proceed to extrude tendrils that reach out in clusters towards points rigorously predetermined by the over-all dynamics of the entire structure: they call to mind the gills of an embryo, except that they are revolving at fantastic speed and ooze trickles of pinkish ‘blood’ and a dark green secretion.

The symmetriad now begins to display its most exotic characteristic — the property of ‘illustrating,’ sometimes contradicting, various laws of physics. (Bear in mind that no two symmetriads are alike, and that the geometry of each one is a unique ‘invention’ of the living ocean.) The interior of the symmetriad becomes a factory for the production of ‘monumental machines,’ as these constructs are sometimes called, although they resemble no machine which it is within the power of mankind to build: the designation is applied because all this activity has finite ends, and is therefore in some sense ‘mechanical.’

When the geysers of oceanic matter have solidified into pillars or into three-dimensional networks of galleries and passages, and the ‘membranes’ are set into an inextricable pattern of storeys, panels and vaults, the symmetriad justifies its name, for the entire structure is divided into two segments, each mirroring the other to the most infinitesimal detail.

After twenty or thirty minutes, when the axis may have tilted as much as eight to ten degrees from the horizontal, the giant begins slowly to subside. (Symmetriads vary in size, but as the base begins to submerge even the smallest reach a height of half a mile, and are visible from miles away.) At last, the structure stabilizes itself, and the partly submerged symmetriad ceases its activity. It is now possible to explore it in complete safety by making an entry near the summit, through one of the many syphons which emerge from the dome. The completed symmetriad represents a spatial analogue of some transcendental equation.

It is a commonplace that any equation can be expressed in the figurative language of non-Euclidean geometry and represented in three dimensions. This interpretation relates the symmetriad to Lobachevsky’s cones and Riemann’s negative curves, although its unimaginable complexity makes the relationship highly tenuous. The eventual form occupies an area of several cubic miles and extends far beyond our whole system of mathematics. In addition, this extension is four-dimensional, for the fundamental terms of the equations use a temporal symbolism expressed in the internal changes over a given period.

It would be only natural, clearly, to suppose that the symmetriad is a ‘computer’ of the living ocean, performing calculations for a purpose that we are not able to grasp. This was Fremont’s theory, now generally discounted. The hypothesis was a tempting one, but it proved impossible to sustain the concept that the living ocean examined problems of matter, the cosmos and existence through the medium of titanic eruptions, in which every particle had an indispensable function as a controlled element in an analytical system of infinite purity. In fact, numerous phenomena contradict this over-simplified (some say childishly naïve) concept.

Any number of attempts have been made to transpose and ‘illustrate’ the symmetriad, and Averian’s demonstration was particularly well received. Let us imagine, he said, an edifice dating from the great days of Babylon, but built of some living, sensitive substance with the capacity to evolve: the architectonics of this edifice pass through a series of phases, and we see it adopt the forms of a Greek, then of a Roman building. The columns sprout like branches and become narrower, the roof grows lighter, rises, curves, the arch describes an abrupt parabola then breaks down into an arrow shape: the Gothic is born, comes to maturity and gives way in time to new forms. Austerity of line gives way to a riot of exploding lines and shapes, and the Baroque runs wild. If the progression continues — and the successive mutations are to be seen as stages in the life of an evolving organism — we finally arrive at the architecture of the space age, and perhaps too at some understanding of the symmetriad.

Unfortunately, no matter how this demonstration may be expanded and unproved (there have been attempts to visualize it with the aid of models and films), the comparison remains superficial. It is evasive and illusory, and side-steps the central fact that the symmetriad is quite unlike anything Earth has ever produced.

The human mind is only capable of absorbing a few things at a time. We see what is taking place in front of us in the here and now, and cannot envisage simultaneously a succession of processes, no matter how integrated and complementary. Our faculties of perception are consequently limited even as regards fairly simple phenomena. The fate of a single man can be rich with significance, that of a few hundred less so, but the history of thousands and millions of men does not mean anything at all, in any adequate sense of the word. The symmetriad is a million — a billion, rather — raised to the power of N: it is incomprehensible. We pass through vast halls, each with a capacity of ten Kronecker units, and creep like so many ants clinging to the folds of breathing vaults and craning to watch the flight of soaring girders, opalescent in the glare of searchlights, and elastic domes which criss-cross and balance each other unerringly, the perfection of a moment, since everything here passes and fades, The essence of this architecture is movement synchronized towards a precise objective. We observe a fraction of the process, like hearing the vibration of a single string in an orchestra of supergiants. We know, but cannot grasp, that above and below, beyond the limits of perception or imagination, thousands and millions of simultaneous transformations are at work, interlinked like a musical score by mathematical counterpoint. It has been described as a symphony in geometry, but we lack the ears to hear it.

Only a long-distance view would reveal the entire process, but the outer covering of the symmetriad conceals the colossal inner matrix where creation is unceasing, the created becomes the creator, and absolutely identical ‘twins’ are born at opposite poles, separated by towering structures and miles of distance. The symphony creates itself, and writes its own conclusion, which is terrible to watch. Every observer feels like a spectator at a tragedy or a public massacre, when after two or three hours — never longer — the living ocean stages its assault. The polished surface of the ocean swirls and crumples, the desiccated foam liquefies again, begins to seethe, and legions of waves pour inwards from every point of the horizon, their gaping mouths far more massive than the greedy lips that surround the embryonic mimoid. The submerged base of the symmetriad is compressed, and the colossus rises as if on the point of being shot out of the planet’s gravitational pull. The upper layers of the ocean redouble their activity, and the waves surge higher and higher to lick against the sides of the symmetriad. They envelop it, harden and plug the orifices, but their attack is nothing compared to the scene in the interior. First the process of creation freezes momentarily; then there is ‘panic.’ The smooth interpenetration of moving forms and the harmonious play of planes and lines accelerates, and the impression is inescapable that the symmetriad is hurrying to complete some task in the face of danger. The awe inspired by the metamorphosis and dynamics of the symmetriad intensifies as the proud sweep of the domes falters, vaults sag and droop, and ‘wrong notes’ — incomplete, mangled forms — make their appearance. A powerful moaning roar issues from the invisible depths like a sigh of agony, reverberates through the narrow funnels and booms through the collapsing domes. In spite of the growing destructive violence of these convulsions, the spectator is rooted to the spot. Only the force of the hurricane streaing out of the depths and howling through the thousands of galleries keeps the great structure erect. Soon it subsides and starts to disintegrate. There are final flutterings, contortions, and blind, random spasms. Gnawed and undermined, the giant sinks slowly and disappears, and the space where it stood is covered with whirlpools of foam.

So what does all this mean?

I remembered an incident dating from my spell as assistant to Gibarian. A group of schoolchildren visiting the Solarist Institute in Aden were making their way through the main hall of the library and looking at the racks of microfilm that occupied the entire left-hand side of the hall. The guide explained that among other phenomena immortalized by the image, these contained fragmentary glimpses of symmetriads long since vanished — not single shots, but whole reels, more than ninety thousand of them!

One plump schoolgirl (she looked about fifteen, peering inquisitively over her spectacles) abruptly asked: “And what is it for?”

In the ensuing embarrassed silence, the school mistress was content to dart a reproving look at her wayward pupil. Among the Solarists whose job was to act as guides (I was one of them), no one would produce an answer. Each symmetriad is unique, and the developments in its heart are, generally speaking, unpredictable. Sometimes there is no sound. Sometimes the index of refraction increases or diminishes. Sometimes, rhythmic pulsations are accompanied by local changes in gravitation, as if the heart of the symmetriad were beating by gravitating. Sometimes the compasses of the observers spin wildly, and ionized layers spring up and disappear. The catalogue could go on indefinitely. In any case, even if we did ever succeed in solving the riddle of the symmetriads, we would still have to contend with the asymmetriads!

The asymmetriads are born in the same manner as the symmetriads but finish differently, and nothing can be seen of their internal processes except tremors, vibrations and flickering. We do know, however, that the interior houses bewildering operations performed at a speed that defies the laws of physics and which are dubbed ‘giant quantic phenomena.’ The mathematical analogy with certain three-dimensional models of the atom is so unstable and transitory that some commentators dismiss the resemblance as of secondary importance, if not purely accidental. The asymmetriads have a very short life-span of fifteen to twenty minutes, and their death is even more appalling than that of the symmetriads: with the howling gale that screams through its fabric, a thick fluid gushes out, gurgles hideously, and submerges everything beneath a foul, bubbling foam. Then an explosion, coinciding with a muddy eruption, hurls up a spout of debris which rains slowly down into the seething ocean. This debris is sometimes found scores of miles from the focus of the explosion, dried up, yellow and flattened, like flakes of cartilage.

Some other creations of the ocean, which are much more rare and of very variable duration, part company with the parent body entirely. The first traces of these ‘independents’ were identified — wrongly, it was later proved — as the remains of creatures inhabiting the ocean deeps. The free-ranging forms are often reminiscent of many-winged birds, darting away from the moving trunks of the agilus, but the preconceptions of Earth offer no assistance in unravelling the mysteries of Solaris. Strange, seal-like bodies appear now and then on the rocky outcrop of an island, sprawling in the sun or dragging themselves lazily back to merge with the ocean.

There was no escaping the impressions that grew out of man’s experience on Earth. The prospects of Contact receded.

Explorers travelled hundreds of miles in the depths of symmetriads, and installed measuring instruments and remote-control cameras. Artificial satellites captured the birth of mimoids and extensors, and faithfully reproduced their images of growth and destruction. The libraries overflowed, the archives grew, and the price paid for all this documentation was often very heavy. One notorious disaster cost one hundred and six people their lives, among them Giese himself: while studying what was undoubtedly a symmetriad, the expedition was suddenly destroyed by a process peculiar to the asymmetriads. In two seconds, an eruption of glutinous mud swallowed up seventy-nine men and all their equipment. Another twenty-seven observers surveying the area from aircraft and helicopters were also caught in the eruption.

Following the Eruption of the Hundred and Six, and for the first time in Solarist studies, there were petitions demanding a thermo-nuclear attack on the ocean. Such a response would have been more cruelty than revenge, since it would have meant destroying what we did not understand. Tsanken’s ultimatum, which was never offically acknowledged, probably influenced the negative outcome of the vote. He was in command of Giese’s reserve team, and had survived owing to a transmission error that took him off his course, to arrive in the disaster area a few minutes after the explosion, when the black mushroom cloud was still visible. Informed of the proposal for a nuclear strike, he threatened to blow up the Station, together with the nineteen survivors sheltering inside it

Today, there are only three of us on the Station. Its construction was controlled by satellites, and was a technical feat on which the human race has a right to pride itself, even if the ocean builds far more impressive structures in the space of a few seconds. The Station is a disc of one hundred yards radius, and contains four decks at the center and two at the circumference. It is maintained at a height of from five to fifteen hundred yards above the ocean by gravitors programmed to compensate for the ocean’s own field of attraction. In addition to all the machines available to ordinary Stations and the large artificial satellites that orbit other planets, the Solaris Station is equipped with specialized radar apparatus sensitive to the smallest fluctuations of the ocean surface, which trips auxiliary power-circuits capable of thrusting the steel disc into the stratosphere at the first indication of new plasmatic upheavals.

But today, in spite of the presence of our faithful ‘visitors,’ the Station was strangely deserted. Ever since the robots had been locked away in the lower-deck store-rooms — for a reason I had still not discovered — it had been possible to walk around without meeting a single member of the crew of our ghost ship.

As I replaced the ninth volume of Giese on the shelf, the plastic-coated steel floor seemed to shudder under my feet. I stood still, but the vibration had stopped. The library was completely isolated from the other rooms, and the only possible source of vibration must be a shuttle leaving the Station. This thought jerked me back to reality. I had not yet decided to accept Sartorius’s suggestion and leave the Station. By feigning approval of his plan, I had been more or less postponing the outbreak of hostilities, for I was determined to save Rheya. All the same, Sartorius might have some chance of success. He certainly had the advantage of being a qualified physicist, while I was in the ironic position of having to count on the superiority of the ocean. I pored over microfilm texts for an hour, and made myself wrestle with the unfamiliar language of neutrino physics. The undertaking seemed hopeless at first: there were no less than five current theories dealing with neutrino fields, an obvious indication that none was definitive. Eventually I struck promising ground, and was busily copying down equations when there was a knock at the door. I got up quickly and opened it a few inches, to see Snow’s perspiring face, and behind him an empty corridor.

“Yes, it’s me.” His voice was hoarse, and there were dark pouches under the bloodshot eyes. He wore an antiradiation apron of shiny rubber, and the same worn old trousers held up by elastic braces.

Snow’s gaze flickered round the circular chamber and alighted on Rheya where she stood by an armchair at the other end. Then it returned to me, and I lowered my eyelids imperceptibly. He nodded, and I spoke casually:

“Rheya, come and meet Dr. Snow… Snow — my wife.”

“I… I’m just a minor member of the crew. Don’t get about much…” He faltered, but managed to blurt out: “That’s why I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you before…”

Rheya smiled and held out her hand, which he shook in some surprise. He blinked several times and stood looking at her, tongue-tied, until I took him by the arm.

“Excuse me,” he said to Rheya. “I wanted a word with you, Kelvin…”

“Of course.” (My composure was an ugly charade, but what else could I do?) “Take no notice of us, Rheya. We’ll be talking shop…”

I guided Snow over to the chairs on the far side of the room, and Rheya sat in the armchair I had occupied earlier, swivelling it so that she could glance up at us from her book. I lowered my voice:

“Any news?”

“I’m divorced,” he whispered. If anybody had quoted this to me as the opening of a conversation a few days before, I would have burst out laughing, but the Station had blunted my sense of humor. “It feels like years since yesterday morning,” he went on. “And you?”

“Nothing.” I was at a loss for words. I liked Snow, but I distrusted him, or rather I distrusted the purpose of his visit.

“Nothing? Surely…”

“What?” I pretended not to understand.

Eyes half shut, he leaned so close to me that I could feel his breath on my face:

“This business has all of us confused, Kelvin. I can’t make contact with Sartorius. All I know is what I wrote to you, which is what he told me after our little conference…

“Has he disconnected his videophone?”

“No, there’s been a short-circuit at his end. He could have done it on purpose, but there’s also…” He clenched his fist and mimed somebody aiming a punch, curling his lips in an unpleasant grin. “Kelvin, I came here to… What do you intend doing?”

“You want my answer to your letter. All right, I’ll go on the trip, there’s no reason for me to refuse. I’ve only been getting ready…”

“No,” he interrupted. “It isn’t that.”

“What then? Go on.”

“Sartorius thinks he may be on the right track,” Snow muttered. His eyes never left me, and I had to stay still and try to look casual. “It all started with that X-ray experiment that he and Gibarian arranged, you remember. That could have produced some alteration…”

“What kind of alteration?”

“They beamed the rays directly into the ocean. The intensity was only modulated according to a pre-set program.”

“I know. It’s already been done by Nilin and a lot of others.”

“Yes, but the others worked on low power. This time they used everything we had.”

“That could lead to trouble… violating the four-power convention, and the United Nations…”

“Come on, Kelvin, you know as well as I do that it doesn’t matter now. Gibarian is dead.”

“So Sartorius makes him the scapegoat?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t talked about that. Sartorius is intrigued by the visiting hours. They only come as we wake up, which suggests that the ocean is especially interested in our sleeping hours, and that that is when it locates its patterns. Sartorius wants to send our waking selves — our conscious thoughts. You see?”

“By mail?”

“Keep the jokes to yourself. The idea is to modulate the X-rays by hooking in an electro-encephalograph taken from one of us.”

“Ah!” Light was beginning to dawn. “And that one of us is me?”

“Yes, Sartorius had you in mind.”

“Tell him I’m flattered.”

“Will you do it?”

I hesitated. Snow darted a look at Rheya, who seemed absorbed in her book. I felt my face turn pale.

“Well?”

“The idea of using X-rays to preach sermons on the greatness of mankind seems absolutely ridiculous to me. Don’t you think so?”

“You mean it?”

“Yes.”

“Right,” he said, smiling as if I had fallen in with some idea of his own, “then you’re opposed to the plan?”

His expression told me that he had somehow been a step ahead of me all the time.

“Okay,” he went on. “There is a second plan — to construct a Roche apparatus.”

“An annihilator?”

“Yes. Sartorius has already made the preliminary calculations. It is feasible, and it won’t even require any great expenditure of energy. The apparatus will generate a negative field twenty-four hours a day, and for an unlimited period.”

“And its effect?”

“Simple. It will be a negative neutrino field. Ordinary matter will not be affected at all. Only the… neutrino structures will be destroyed. You see?”

Snow gave me a satisfied grin. I stood stock-still and gaping, so that he stopped smiling, looked at me with a frown, and waited a moment before speaking:

“We abandon the first plan then, the ‘Brainwave’ plan? Sartorius is working on the other one right now. We’ll call it ‘Project Liberation.’ “

I had to make a quick decision. Snow was no physicist, and Sartorius’s videophone was disconnected or smashed. I took the chance: