فصل 43

CHAPTER FORTY THREE

Fireball

Now there was only the red sun filling the sky from side to side. He was so close now that he could see great clouds of gas moving across its surface.

He did not even try to understand how big this planet was. The sizes of Jupiter and Saturn had been beyond his imagination, but everything here was a hundred times larger. He could only accept the pictures that were flooding into his mind, without attempting to think what they meant.

As that sea of fire grew beneath him, Bowman expected to be afraid - but, curiously, he now felt only a slight nervousness. He knew that he was under the protection of a higher intelligence. He was now very close to the red sun, but someone - or something - was protecting him from the heat, so perhaps there was reason to hope.

The vehicle was now moving in a shallow curve almost parallel to the surface of the star. And, as he looked down, Bowman saw something new. Moving across the ocean of hot gas were thousands of bright spots. They shone in a soft light that became brighter and fainter every few seconds. And they were all travelling in the same direction, like fish moving up a river. Bowman felt that their movement had some purpose. He would probably never know what it was.

He was moving through a new kind of world, which few people had ever dreamed of. Beyond sea and land and air and space lay the regions of fire, which only he had been lucky enough to see. It was too much to expect that he would also understand.