Solaris (2 page)

He blinked rapidly.

"Nothing," he said, wiping his forehead, "nothing, Forgive me,
Kelvin, it's nothing, I assure you. I was simply surprised, I
didn't expect to see you."

"What do you mean, you didn't expect to see me? You were
notified months ago, and Moddard radioed only today from the
Prometheus
."

"Yes; yes, indeed. Only, you see, we're a bit disorganized at
the moment."

"So I see," I answered dryly.

Snow walked around me, inspecting my atmosphere suit, which was
standard issue with the usual harness of wires and cables attached
to the chest. He coughed, and rubbed his bony nose:

"Perhaps you would like a bath? It would do you good. It's the
blue door, on the other side."

"Thanks—I know the Station lay-out."

"You must be hungry."

"No. Where's Gibarian?"

Without answering, he went over to the window. From behind he
looked considerably older. His close-cropped hair was grey, and
deep wrinkles creased his sunburnt neck.

The wave-crests glinted through the window, the colossal rollers
rising and falling in slow-motion. Watching the ocean like this one
had the illusion—it was surely an illusion—that the
Station was moving imperceptibly, as though teetering on an
invisible base; then it would seem to recover its equilibrium, only
to lean the opposite way with the same lazy movement. Thick foam,
the color of blood, gathered in the troughs of the waves. For a
fraction of a second, my throat tightened and I thought longingly
of the
Prometheus
and its strict
discipline; the memory of an existence which suddenly seemed a
happy one, now gone forever.

Snow turned around, nervously rubbing his hands together.

"Listen," he said abruptly, "except for me there's no one around
for the moment. You'll have to make do with my company for today.
Call me Ratface; don't argue. You know me by my photograph, just
imagine we're old friends. Everyone calls me Ratface, there's
nothing I can do about it."

Obstinately, I repeated my question:

"Where is Gibarian?"

He blinked again.

"I'm sorry to have received you like that. It's…it's not
exactly my fault. I had completely forgotten…A lot has been
happening here, you see…"

"It's all right. But what about Gibarian? Isn't he on the
Station? Is he on an observation flight?"

Snow was gazing at a tangled mass of cables.

"No, he hasn't left the Station. And he won't be flying. The
fact is…."

My ears were still blocked, and I was finding it more and more
difficult to hear.

"What? What do you mean? Where is he then?"

"I should think you might guess," he answered in a changed
voice, looking me coldly in the eyes. I shivered. He was drunk, but
he knew what he was saying.

"There's been an accident?"

He nodded vigorously, watching my reactions closely.

"When?"

"This morning, at dawn."

By now, my sensations were less violent; this succinct exchange
of questions and answers had calmed me. I was beginning to
understand Snow's strange behavior.

"What kind of accident?"

"Why not go to your cabin and take off your spacesuit? Come back
in, say, an hour's time."

I hesitated.

"All right," I said finally.

As I made to leave, he called me back.

"Wait!" He had an uneasy look, as if he wanted to add something
but was finding it difficult to bring out the words. After a pause,
he said:

"There used to be three of us here. Now, with you, there are
three of us again. Do you know Sartorius?"

"In the same way as I knew you—only from his
photographs."

"He's up there, in the laboratory, and I doubt if he'll come
down before dark, but…In any case, you'll recognize him. If
you should see anyone else—someone who isn't me or Sartorius,
you understand, then…"

"Then what?"

I must be dreaming. All this could only be a dream! The inky
waves, their crimson gleams under the low-hanging sun, and this
little man who had gone back to his armchair, sitting there as
before, hanging his head and staring at the heap of cables.

"In that case, do nothing."

"Who could I see?" I flared up. "A ghost?"

"You think I'm mad, of course. No, no, I'm not mad. I can't say
anything more for the moment. Perhaps…who
knows?…Nothing will happen. But don't forget I warned
you."

"Don't be so mysterious. What's all this about?"

"Keep a hold on yourself. Be prepared to meet…anything.
It sounds impossible I know, but try. It's the only advice I can
give you. I can't think of anything better."

"But what could I possibly meet?" I shouted.

Seeing him sitting there, looking sideways at me, his sunburnt
face drooping with fatigue, I found it difficult to contain myself.
I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him.

Painfully, dragging the words out one by one, he answered:

"I don't know. In a way, it depends on you."

"Hallucinations, you mean?"

"No…it's real enough. Don't attack. Whatever you do,
remember that!"

"What are you getting at?" I could hardly recognize the sound of
my own voice.

"We're not on Earth, you know."

"A Polytherian form?" I shouted. "There's nothing human about
them!"

I was about to rush at him, to drag him out of the trance,
prompted, apparently, by his crazy theories, when he murmured:

"That's why they're so dangerous. Remember what I've told you,
and be on your guard!"

"What happened to Gibarian?"

He did not answer.

"What is Sartorius doing?"

"Come back in an hour."

I turned and went out. As I closed the door behind me, I took a
last look at him. Tiny, shrunken, his head in his hands and his
elbows resting on his stained knees, he sat there, motionless. It
was only then that I noticed the dried bloodstains on the backs of
his hands.

In the empty corridor I stood for a moment in front of the
closed door. I noticed a strip of plaster carelessly stuck on one
of the panels. Pencilled on it was the word "Man!" At the sight of
this faintly scribbled word, I had a sudden longing to return to
Snow for company; but I thought better of it.

His crazy warnings still ringing in my ears, I started off down
the narrow, tubular passage which was filled with the moaning of
the wind, my shoulders bowed under the weight of the spacesuit. On
tip-toe, half-consciously fleeing from some invisible watcher, I
found two doors on my left and two more on my right. I read the
occupants' names: Dr. Gibarian, Dr. Snow, Dr. Sartorius. On the
fourth, there was no nameplate. I hesitated, then pressed the
handle down gently and slowly opened the door. As I did so, I had a
premonition, amounting almost to a certainty, that there was
someone inside. I went in.

There was no one. Another wide panoramic window, almost as large
as the one in the cabin where I had found Snow, overhung the ocean,
which, sunlit on this side, shone with an oleaginous gleam, as
though the waves secreted a reddish oil. A crimson glow pervaded
the whole room, whose lay-out suggested a ship's cabin. On one
side, flanked by book-filled shelves, a retractable bed stood
against the wall. On the other, between the numerous lockers, hung
nickel frames enclosing a series of aerial photographs stuck end to
end with adhesive tape, and racks full of test-tubes and retorts
plugged with cotton-wool. Two tiers of white enamel boxes took up
the space beneath the window. I lifted some of the lids; the boxes
were crammed with all kinds of instruments, intertwined with
plastic tubing. The corners of the room were occupied by a
refrigerator, a tap and a demisting device. For lack of space on
the big table by the window, a microscope stood on the floor.
Turning round, I saw a tall locker beside the entrance door. It was
half-open, filled with atmosphere suits, laboratory smocks,
insulated aprons, underclothing, boots for planetary exploration,
and aluminum cylinders: portable oxygen gear. Two sets of this
equipment, complete with masks, hung down from one of the knobs of
the vertical bed. Everywhere there was the same chaos, a general
disorder which someone had made a hasty attempt to disguise. I
sniffed the air. I could detect a faint smell of chemical reagents
and traces of something more acrid—chlorine? Instinctively I
searched the ceiling for the grills over the air-vents: strips of
paper attached to the bars were fluttering gently; the air was
circulating normally. In order to make a relatively free space
around the bed, between the bookshelves and the locker, I cleared
two chairs of their litter of books, instruments, and tools, which
I piled haphazardly on the other side of the room.

I pulled out a bracket to hang up my spacesuit, took hold of the
zip-fastener, then let go again. Deterred by the confused idea that
I was depriving myself of a shield, I could not bring myself to
remove it. Once more I looked round the room. I checked that the
door was shut tight and that it had no lock, and after a brief
hesitation I dragged some of the heaviest boxes to the doorway.
Having built this temporary barricade, I freed myself from my
clanking armor in three quick movements. A narrow looking-glass,
built into the locker door, reflected part of the room, and out of
the corner of my eye I caught sight of something moving. I jumped,
but it was only my own reflection. Underneath the spacesuit, my
overalls were drenched with sweat. I took them off and pulled back
a sliding door, revealing the bright-tiled walls of a small
bathroom. A long, flat box lay in the hollow at the base of the
shower; I carried it into the room. As I put it down, the springlid
flew up and disclosed a number of compartments filled with strange
objects: misshapen forms in a dark metal, grotesque replicas of the
instruments in the racks. Not one of the tools was usable; they
were blunted, distorted, melted, as though they had been in a
furnace. Strangest of all, even the porcelain handles, virtually
incombustible, were twisted out of shape. Even at maximum
temperature, no laboratory furnace could have melted them; only,
perhaps, an atomic pile. I took a Geiger counter from the pocket on
my spacesuit, but when I held it over the debris, it remained
dumb.

By now I was wearing nothing but my underwear. I tore it off,
flung it across the room and dashed under the shower. The shock of
the water did me good. Turning beneath the scalding, needle-sharp
jets, I scrubbed myself vigorously, splashing the walls, expelling,
eradicating from my skin the thick scum of morbid apprehensions
which had pervaded me since my arrival.

I rummaged in the locker and found a work-suit which could also
be worn under an atmosphere suit. As I pocketed my few belongings,
I felt something hard tucked between the pages of my notebook: it
was a key, the key to my apartment, down there on Earth. Absently,
I turned it over in my fingers. Finally I put it down on the table.
It occurred to me suddenly that I might need a weapon. An
all-purpose pocket-knife was hardly sufficient for my needs, but I
had nothing else, and I was not going to start searching for a
gamma pistol or something else of the kind.

I sat down on a tubular stool in the middle of the clear space,
glad to be alone, and seeing with satisfaction that I had over half
an hour to myself. (By nature, I have always been scrupulous about
keeping engagements, whether important or trivial.) The hands of
the clock, its face divided into twenty-four hours, pointed to
seven o'clock. The sun was setting. 07.00 hours here was 20.00
hours on board the
Prometheus
. On Moddard's
screens, Solaris would be nothing but an indistinct dust-cloud,
mingled with the stars. But what did the
Prometheus
matter to me now? I closed my eyes. I
could hear no sound except the moaning of the ventilation pipes and
a faint trickling of water from the bathroom.

If I had understood correctly, it was only a short time since
Gibarian had died. What had they done with his body? Had they
buried it? No, that was impossible on this planet. I puzzled over
the question for a long time, concentrating on the fate of the
corpse; then, realizing the absurdity of my thoughts, I began to
pace up and down. My toe knocked against a canvas bag half-buried
under a pile of books; I bent down and picked it up. It contained a
small bottle made of colored glass, so light that it might have
been blown out of paper. I held it up to the window in the purplish
glow of the somber twilight, now overhung by a sooty fog. What was
I doing, allowing myself to be distracted by irrelevancies, by the
first trifle which came to hand?

I gave a start: the lights had gone on, activated by a
photo-electric relay; the sun had set. What would happen next? I
was so tense that the sensation of an empty space behind me became
unbearable. In an attempt to pull myself together, I took a chair
over to the bookshelves and chose a book familiar to me: the second
volume of the early monograph by Hughes and Eugel,
Historia Solaris
. I rested the thick, solidly bound volume
on my knees and began leafing through the pages.

The discovery of Solaris dated from about 100 years before I was
born.

The planet orbits two suns: a red sun and a blue sun. For 45
years after its discovery, no spacecraft had visited Solaris. At
that time, the Gamow-Shapley theory—that Life was impossible
on planets which are satellites of two solar bodies—was
firmly believed. The orbit is constantly being modified by
variations in the gravitational pull in the course of its
revolutions around the two suns.

Due to these fluctuations in gravity, the orbit is either
flattened or distended and the elements of life, if they appear,
are inevitably destroyed, either by intense heat or an extreme drop
in temperature. These changes take place at intervals estimated in
millions of years—very short intervals, that is, according to
the laws of astronomy and biology (evolution takes hundreds of
millions of years if not a billion).

According to the earliest calculations, in 500,000 years' time
Solaris would be drawn one half of an astronomic unit nearer to its
red sun, and a million years after that would be engulfed by the
incandescent star.

A few decades later, however, observations seemed to suggest
that the planet's orbit was in no way subject to the expected
variations: it was stable, as stable as the orbit of the planets in
our own solar system.

The observations and calculations were reworked with great
precision; they simply confirmed the original conclusions:
Solaris's orbit was unstable.

A modest item among the hundreds of planets discovered
annually—to which official statistics devoted only a few
lines defining the characteristics of their orbits—Solaris
eventually began to attract special attention and attain a high
rank.

Four years after this promotion, overflying the planet with the
Laakon
and two auxiliary craft, the
Ottenskjöld expedition undertook a study of Solaris. This
expedition being in the nature of a preliminary, not to say
improvised, reconnaissance, the scientists were not equipped for a
landing. Ottenskjöld placed a quantity of automatic
observation satellites into equatorial and polar orbit, their
principal function being to measure the gravitational pull. In
addition, a study was made of the planet's surface, which is
covered by an ocean dotted with innumerable flat, low-lying islands
whose combined area is less than that of Europe, although the
diameter of Solaris is a fifth greater than Earth's. These expanses
of barren, rocky territory, irregularly distributed, are largely
concentrated in the southern hemisphere. At the same time the
composition of the atmosphere—devoid of oxygen—was
analyzed, and precise measurements made of the planet's density,
from which its albedo and other astronomical characteristics were
determined. As was foreseeable, no trace of life was discovered,
either on the islands or in the ocean.

During the following ten years, Solaris became the center of
attraction for all observatories concerned with the study of this
region of space, for the planet had in the meantime shown the
astonishing faculty of maintaining an orbit which ought, without
any shadow of doubt, to have been unstable. The problem almost
developed into a scandal: since the results of the observations
could only be inaccurate, attempts were made (in the interests of
science) to denounce and discredit various scientists or else the
computers they used.

Lack of funds delayed the departure of a proper Solaris
expedition for three years. Finally Shannahan assembled his team
and obtained three C-tonnage vessels from the Institute, the
largest starships of the period. A year and a half before the
arrival of the expedition, which left from the region of Alpha in
Aquarius, a second exploration fleet, acting in the name of the
Institute, placed an automatic satellite—Luna 247—into
orbit around Solaris. This satellite, after three successive
reconstructions at roughly ten-year intervals, is still functioning
today. The data it supplied confirmed beyond doubt the findings of
the Ottenskjöld expedition concerning the active character of
the ocean's movements.

One of Shannahan's ships remained in orbit, while the two
others, after some preliminary attempts, landed in the southern
hemisphere, in a rocky area about 600 miles square. The work of the
expedition lasted eighteen months and was carried out under
favorable conditions, apart from an unfortunate accident brought
about by the malfunction of some apparatus. In the meantime, the
scientists had split into two opposing camps; the bone of
contention was the ocean. On the basis of the analyses, it had been
accepted that the ocean was an organic formation (at that time, no
one had yet dared to call it living). But, while the biologists
considered it as a primitive formation—a sort of gigantic
entity, a fluid cell, unique and monstrous (which they called
'prebiological'), surrounding the globe with a colloidal envelope
several miles thick in places—the astronomers and physicists
asserted that it must be an organic structure, extraordinarily
evolved. According to them, the ocean possibly exceeded terrestrial
organic structures in complexity, since it was capable of exerting
an active influence on the planet's orbital path. Certainly, no
other factor could be found that might explain the behavior of
Solaris; moreover, the planeto-physicists had established a
relationship between certain processes of the plasmic ocean and the
local measurements of gravitational pull, which altered according
to the 'matter transformations' of the ocean.

Consequently it was the physicists, rather than the biologists,
who put forward the paradoxical formulation of a 'plasmic
mechanism', implying by this a structure, possibly without life as
we conceive it, but capable of performing functional
activities—on an astronomic scale, it should be
emphasized.

It was during this quarrel, whose reverberations soon reached
the ears of the most eminent authorities, that the Gamow-Shapely
doctrine, unchallenged for eighty years, was shaken for the first
time.

There were some who continued to support the Gamow-Shapley
contentions, to the effect that the ocean had nothing to do with
life, that it was neither 'parabiological' nor 'prebiological' but
a geological formation—of extreme rarity, it is
true—with the unique ability to stabilize the orbit of
Solaris, despite the variations in the forces of attraction. Le
Chatelier's law was enlisted in support of this argument.

To challenge this conservative attitude, new hypotheses were
advanced—of which Civito-Vitta's was one of the most
elaborate—proclaiming that the ocean was the product of a
dialectical development: on the basis of its earliest pre-oceanic
form, a solution of slow-reacting chemical elements, and by the
force of circumstances (the threat to its existence from the
changes of orbit), it had reached in a single bound the stage of
'homeostatic ocean,' without passing through all the stages of
terrestrial evolution, by-passing the unicellular and multicellular
phases, the vegetable and the animal, the development of a nervous
and cerebral system. In other words, unlike terrestrial organisms,
it had not taken hundreds of millions of years to adapt itself to
its environment—culminating in the first representatives of a
species endowed with reason—but dominated its environment
immediately.