'For a man of seventy, you're in extremely good shape,' remarked Dr Glazunov, looking up from the
Medcom's final print-out. 'I'd have put you down as not more than sixty-five.'
'Happy to hear it, Oleg. Especially as I'm a hundred and three - as you know perfectly well.'
'Here we go again! Anyone would think you've never read Professor Rudenko's book.'
'Dear old Katerina! We'd planned a get-together on her hundredth birthday. I was so sorry she never
made it - that's what comes of spending too much time on Earth.'
'Ironic, since she was the one who coined that famous slogan "Gravity is the bringer of old age."'
Dr Heywood Floyd stared thoughtfully at the ever-changing panorama of the beautiful planet, only six
thousand kilometres away, on which he could never walk again. It was even more ironic that, through the most stupid accident
of his life, he was still in excellent health when virtually all his old friends were dead.
He had been back on Earth only a week when, despite all the warnings and his own determination that
nothing of the sort would ever happen to him, he had stepped off that second-storey balcony. (Yes, he
had been celebrating: but he had earned it - he was a hero on the new world to which Leonov had
returned.) The multiple fractures had led to complications, which could best be handled in the Pasteur
Space Hospital.
That had been in 2015. And now - he could not really believe it, but there was the calendar on the wall - it was 2061.
For Heywood Floyd, the biological clock had not merely been slowed down by the one-sixth Earth
gravity of the hospital; twice in his life it had actually been reversed. It was now generally believed -
though some authorities disputed it - that hibernation did more than merely stop the ageing process; it
encouraged rejuvenation. Floyd had actually become younger on his voyage to Jupiter and back.
'So you really think it's safe for me to go?'
'Nothing in this Universe is safe, Heywood. All I can say is that there are no physiological objections.
After all, your environment will be virtually the same aboard Universe as it is here. She may not have
quite the standard of - ah - superlative medical expertise we can provide at Pasteur, but Dr Mahindran is
a good man. If there's any problem he can't cope with, he can put you into hibernation again, and ship
you back to us, COD.'
It was the verdict that Floyd had hoped for, yet somehow his pleasure was alloyed with sadness. He
would be away for weeks from his home of almost half a century, and the new friends of his later years.
And although Universe was a luxury liner compared with the primitive Leonov (now hovering high above
Farside as one of the main exhibits at the Lagrange Museum) there was still some element of risk in any
extended space voyage. Especially like the pioneering one on which he was now preparing to embark.
Yet that, perhaps, was exactly what he was seeking - even at a hundred and three (or, according to
the complex geriatric accounting of the late Professor Katerina Rudenko, a hale and hearty sixty-five.)
During the last decade, he had become aware of an increasing restlessness and a vague dissatisfaction
with a life that was too comfortable and well-ordered.
Despite all the exciting projects now in progress around the Solar System - the Mars Renewal, the
establishment of the Mercury Base, the Greening of Ganymede - there had been no goal on which he
could really focus his interests and his still considerable energies. Two centuries ago, one of the first poets
of the Scientific Era had summed up his feelings perfectly, speaking through the lips of Odysseus/Ulysses:
Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one of me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things: and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
'Three suns', indeed! It was more than forty:
Ulysses would have been ashamed of him. But the next verse - which he knew so well - was even more
appropriate:
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
'To seek, to find...' Well, now he knew what he was going to seek, and to find - because he knew
exactly where it would be. Short of some catastrophic accident, there was no way in which it could
possibly elude him.
It was not a goal he had ever consciously had in mind, and even now he was not quite sure why it had
become so suddenly dominant. He would have thought himself immune to the fever which was once again
infecting mankind - for the second time in his life! - but perhaps he was mistaken. Or it could have been
that the unexpected invitation to join the short list of distinguished guests aboard Universe had fired his
imagination, and awakened an enthusiasm he had not even known he possessed.
There was another possibility. After all these years, he could still remember what an anticlimax the
1985/6 encounter had been to the general public. Now was a chance - the last for him, and the first for
humanity - to more than make up for any previous disappointment.
Back in the twentieth century, only flybys had been possible. This time, there would be an actual
landing, as pioneering in its way as Armstrong's and Aldrin's first steps on the Moon.
Dr Heywood Floyd, veteran of the 2010-15 mission to Jupiter, let his imagination fly outwards to the
ghostly visitor once again returning from the deeps of space, gaining speed second by second as it
prepared to round the Sun. And between the orbits of Earth and Venus the most famous of all comets
would meet the still uncompleted space-liner Universe, on her maiden flight.
The exact point of rendezvous was not yet settled, but his decision was already made.
'Halley - here I come...' whispered Heywood Floyd.
