And now Halley was too close to be seen; ironically, observers back on Earth would get a far better
view of the tail, already stretching fifty million kilometres at right angles to the comet's orbit, like a
pennant fluttering in the invisible gale of the solar wind.
On the morning of the rendezvous, Heywood Floyd woke early from a troubled sleep. It was unusual for him to dream - or at
least to remember his dreams - and doubtless the anticipated excitements of the
next few hours were responsible. He was also slightly worried by a message from Caroline, asking if he
had heard from Chris lately. He had radioed back, a little tersely, that Chris had never bothered to say
thank you when he had helped him get his current position on Universe's sister ship Cosmos; perhaps he
was already bored with the Earth-Moon run and was looking for excitement elsewhere.
'As usual,' Floyd had added, 'we'll hear from him in his own good time.'
Immediately after breakfast, passengers and science team had gathered for a final briefing from
Captain Smith. The scientists certainly did not need it, but if they felt any irritation, so childish an emotion
would have been quickly swept away by the weird spectacle on the main viewscreen.
It was easier to imagine that Universe was flying into a nebula, rather than a comet. The entire sky
ahead was now a misty white fog - not uniform, but mottled with darker condensations and streaked with
luminous bands and brightly glowing jets, all radiating away from a central point. At this magnification,
the nucleus was barely visible as a tiny black speck, yet it was clearly the source of all the phenomena
around it.
'We cut our drive in three hours,' said the Captain. 'Then we'll be only a thousand kilometres away
from the nucleus, with virtually zero velocity. We'll make some final observations, and confirm our landing
site.'
'So we'll go weightless at 12.00 exactly. Before then, your cabin stewards will check that everything's
correctly stowed. It will be just like turnaround, except that this time it's going to be three days, not two
hours, before we have weight again.
'Halley's gravity? Forget it - less than one centimetre per second squared - just about a thousandth of
Earth's. You'll be able to detect it if you wait long enough, but that's all. Takes fifteen seconds for
something to fall a metre.
'For safety, I'd like you all here in the observation lounge, with your seat belts properly secured, during
rendezvous and touchdown. You'll get the best view from here anyway, and the whole operation won't
take more than an hour. We'll only be using very small thrust corrections, but they may come from any
angle and could cause minor sensory disturbances.'
What the Captain meant, of course, was spacesickness - but that word, by general agreement, was
taboo aboard Universe. It was noticeable, however, that many hands strayed into the compartments
beneath the seats, as if checking that the notorious plastic bags would be available if urgently required.
The image on the viewscreen expanded, as the magnification was increased. For a moment it seemed
to Floyd that he was in an aeroplane, descending through light clouds, rather than in a spacecraft
approaching the most famous of all comets. The nucleus was growing larger and clearer; it was no longer
a black dot, but an irregular ellipse - now a small, pockmarked island lost in the cosmic ocean - then,
suddenly, a world in its own right.
There was still no sense of scale. Although Floyd knew that the whole panorama spread before him was
less than ten kilometres across, he could easily have imagined that he was looking at a body as large as
the Moon. But the Moon was not hazy around the edges, nor did it have little jets of vapour - and two
large ones - spurting from its surface.
'My God!' cried Mihailovich, 'what's that?'
He pointed to the lower edge of the nucleus, just inside the terminator. Unmistakably - impossibly -a
light was flashing there on the nightside of the comet with a perfectly regular rhythm: on, off, on, off,
once every two or three seconds.
Dr Willis gave his patient 'I can explain it to you in words of one syllable' cough, but Captain Smith got
there first. 'I'm sorry to disappoint you, Mr Mihailovich. That's only the beacon on Sampler Probe Two - it's been
sitting there for a month, waiting for us to come and pick it up.'
'What a shame; I thought there might be someone - something - there to welcome us.'
'No such luck, I'm afraid; we're very much on our own out here. That beacon is just where we intend to
land - it's near Halley's south pole and is in permanent darkness at the moment. That will make it easier
on our life-support systems. The temperature's up to 120 degrees on the Sunlit side - way above boiling
point.'
'No wonder the comet's perking,' said the unabashed Dimitri. 'Those jets don't look very healthy to me.
Are you sure it's safe to go in?'
'That's another reason we're touching down on the nightside; there's no activity there. Now, if you'll
excuse me, I must get back to the bridge. This is the first chance I've ever had of landing on a new world -
and I doubt if I'll get another.'
Captain Smith's audience dispersed slowly, and in unusual silence. The image on the viewscreen
zoomed back to normal, and the nucleus dwindled once more to a barely visible spot. Yet even in those
few minutes it seemed to have grown slightly larger, and perhaps that was no illusion. Less than four
hours before encounter, the ship was still hurtling towards the comet at fifty thousand kilometres an hour.
It would make a crater more impressive than any that Halley now boasted, if something happened to
the main drive at this stage of the game.
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