"CLARKE, Arthur C. - Odyssey 4 - 3001 The Final Odyssey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clarke Arthur C)

'You probably wouldn't recognize it,' said the visitor who had introduced himself as Dr Alistair Kim, Director of Astronautics. 'Especially as it's now scattered over the Solar System - the main off-Earth collections are on Mars and the Moon, and many of the exhibits that legally belong to us are still heading for the stars. Some day we'll catch up with them and bring them home. We're particularly anxious to get our hands on Pioneer 10 - the first manmade object to escape from the Solar System.'

'I believe I was on the verge of doing that, when they located me.'

'Lucky for you - and for us. You may be able to throw light on many things we don't know.'

'Frankly, I doubt it - but I'll do my best. I don't remember a thing after that runaway space-pod charged me. Though I still find it hard to believe, I've been told that Hal was responsible.'

'That's true, but it's a complicated story. Everything we've been able to learn is in this recording - about twenty hours, but you can probably Fast most of it.'

'You know, of course, that Dave Bowman went out in the Number 2 Pod to rescue you - but was then locked outside the ship because Hal refused to open the pod-bay doors.'

'Why, for God's sake?'

Dr Kim winced slightly. It was not the first time Poole had noticed such a reaction.

(Must watch my language, he thought. 'God' seems to be a dirty word in this culture - must ask Indra about it.)

'There was a major programming error in Hal's instructions - he'd been given control of aspects of the mission you and Bowman didn't know about, it's all in the recording...

'Anyway, he also cut off the life-support systems to the three hybernauts - the Alpha Crew - and Bowman had to jettison their bodies as well.'

(So Dave and I were the Beta Crew - something else I didn't know...)

'What happened to them?' Poole asked. 'Couldn't they have been rescued, just as I was?'

'I'm afraid not: we've looked into it, of course. Bowman ejected them several hours after he'd taken back control from Hal, so their orbits were slightly different from yours. Just enough for them to burn up in Jupiter - while you skimmed by, and got a gravity boost that would have taken you to the Orion Nebula in a few thousand more years...'

'Doing everything on manual override - really a fantastic performance! - Bowman managed to get Discovery into orbit round Jupiter. And there he encountered what the Second Expedition called Big Brother - an apparent twin of the Tycho Monolith, but hundreds of times larger.'

'And that's where we lost him. He left Discovery in the remaining space-pod, and made a rendezvous with Big Brother. For almost a thousand years, we've been haunted by his last message: "By Deus - it's full of stars!"

(Here we go again! Poole told himself. No way Dave could have said that... Must have been 'My God - it's full of stars!')

'Apparently the pod was drawn into the Monolith by some kind of inertial field, because it - and presumably Bowman - survived an acceleration which should have crushed them instantly. And that was the last information anyone had, for almost ten years, until the joint US-Russian Leonov mission...'

'Which made a rendezvous with the abandoned Discovery so that Dr Chandra could go aboard and reactivate Hal. Yes, I know that.'

Dr Kim looked slightly embarrassed.

'Sorry - I wasn't sure how much you'd been told already Anyway, that's when even stranger things started to happen.'

'Apparently the arrival of Leonov triggered something inside Big Brother. If we did not have these recordings, no one would have believed what happened. Let me show you... here's Dr Heywood Floyd keeping the midnight watch aboard Discovery, after power had been restored. Of course you'll recognize everything.'

(Indeed I do: and how strange to see the long-dead Heywood Floyd, sitting in my old seat with Hal's unblinking red eye surveying everything in sight. And even stranger to think that Hal and I have both shared the same experience of resurrection from the dead...)

A message was coining up on one of the monitors, and Floyd answered lazily, 'OK, Hal. Who is calling?'

NO IDENTIFICATION.