Solaris Read online

  "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.

  The Solarists

  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, ex
pelling, 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.

  This was an original point of view. Nevertheless, the means whereby this colloidal envelope was able to stabilize the planet's orbit remained unknown. For almost a century, devices had existed capable of creating artificial magnetic and gravitational fields; they were called gravitors. But no one could even guess how this formless glue could produce an effect which the gravitors achieved by the use of complicated nuclear reactions and enormously high temperatures. The newspapers of the day, exciting the curiosity of the layman and the anger of the scientist, were full of the most improbable embroideries on the theme of the 'Solaris Mystery,' one reporter going so far as to suggest that the ocean was, no less, a distant relation to our electric eels!