"It is vital to remember that information is not knowledge; that knowledge is not wisdom; and that wisdom is not foresight. But information is the first essential step to all of these."
Sir A. C. Clarke, jeden z hvězdné trojice autorů science-fiction konce dvacátého století (Asimov- Clarke - Heinlein), byl vzděláním fyzik a matematik. Jeho vědeckofantastické texty se vyznačují neobyčejnou přesností právě v oblasti fyziky a astronomie, a na hluboké znalosti faktů vyrůstá fantastická konstrukce světa blízké i vzdálené budoucnosti.
1. Zjistěte si něco více o autorovi.
http://www.clarkefoundation.org/
http://www.arthurcclarke.net/?scifi=12
http://www.csfd.cz/tvurce/12377-arthur-c-clarke/
2. Kdy vyšel poprvé román A Fall of Moondust? Kdy člověk poprvé stanul na Měsíci? Ve kterém roce se odehrálo drama Apolla 13?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fall_of_Moondust
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Arthur C. Clarke - A Fall of Moondust
Chapter 1
To be the skipper of the only boat on the Moon was a distinction that
Pat Harris enjoyed. As the passengers filed aboard Selene, jockeying for window
seats, he wondered what sort of trip it would be this time. In the rear-view mirror
he could see Miss Wilkins, very smart in her blue Lunar Tourist Commission
uniform, putting on her usual welcome act. He always tried to think of her as
"Miss Wilkins," not Sue, when they were on duty together; it
helped to keep his mind on business. But what she thought of him, he had never
really discovered.
There were no familiar faces; this was a new bunch, eager for their
first cruise. Most of the passengers were typical tourists--elderly people,
visiting a world that had been the very symbol of inaccessibility when they
were young. There were only four or five passengers on the low side of thirty,
and they were probably technical personnel on vacation from one of the lunar
bases. It was
a fairly good working rule, Pat had discovered, that all the old people came from Earth, while the
youngsters were residents of the Moon.
But to all of them, the Sea of
Thirst was a novelty. Beyond Selene's observation windows, its gray, dusty surface
marched onward unbroken until it reached the stars. Above it hung the waning
crescent Earth, poised forever in the sky from which it had not moved in a billion
years. The brilliant, blue-green light of the mother world flooded this strange
land with a cold radiance—and cold it was indeed, perhaps three hundred below
zero on the exposed surface.
No one could have told, merely
by looking at it, whether the Sea was liquid or solid. It was completely flat and
featureless, quite free from the myriad cracks and fissures that scarred all
the rest of this barren world. Not a single hillock, boulder, or pebble broke
its monotonous uniformity. No sea on Earth--no millpond, even--was ever as calm
as this. It was a sea of dust, not of water, and therefore it was alien to all
the experience of men; therefore, also, it fascinated and attracted them. Fine
as talcum powder, drier in this vacuum than the parched sands of the Sahara, it
flowed as easily and effortlessly as any liquid. A heavy object dropped into it
would disappear instantly, without a splash, leaving no scar to mark its
passage. Nothing could move upon its treacherous surface except the small, two-man
dust-skis--and Selene herself, an improbable combination of sledge and bus, not
unlike the Sno-cats that had opened up the Antarctic a lifetime ago.
Selene's official designation
was Dust-Cruiser, Mark I, though to the best of Pat's knowledge, a Mark II did
not exist even on the drawing board. She was called "ship,"
"boat," or "moon bus," according to taste; Pat preferred
"boat," for it prevented confusion. When he used that word, no one
would mistake him for the skipper of a spaceship--and spaceship captains were,
of course, two a penny.
"Welcome aboard
Selene," said Miss Wilkins, when everyone had settled down. "Captain Harris
and I are pleased to have you with us. Our trip will last four hours, and our
first objective will be Crater Lake, a hundred kilometers east of here, in the
Mountains of Inaccessibility Pat scarcely heard the familiar introduction; he
was busy with his count-down. Selene was virtually a grounded spaceship; she
had to be, since she was traveling in a vacuum, and must protect her frail
cargo from the hostile world beyond her walls. Though she never left the
surface of the Moon, and was propelled by electric motors instead of rockets,
she carried all the basic equipment of a full-fledged ship of space-- and all
of it had to be checked before departure.
Oxygen--O.K. Power--O.K. Radio--O.K. ("Hello, Rainbow Base, Selene
testing. Are you receiving my
beacon?") Inertial navigator--zeroed. Air-lock safety--On. Cabin-leak
detector--O.K. Internal lights--O.K. Gangway--disconnected.
And so on for more than fifty items, every one of which would automatically
call attention to itself in case of trouble. But Pat Harris, like all spacemen
hankering after old age, never relied on autowarnings if he could carry out the
check himself.
At last he was ready. The almost silent motors started to spin, but the
blades were still feathered, and Selene barely quivered at her moorings. Then
he eased the port fan into fine pitch, and she began to curve slowly to the right.
When she was clear of the embarkation building, he straightened her out and
pushed the throttle forward.
She handled very well, when one considered the complete novelty of her
design. There had been no millennia of trial and error here, stretching back to
the first neolithic man who ever launched a log out into a stream. Selene was
the very first of her line, created in the brains of a few engineers who had
sat down at a table and asked themselves: "How do we build a vehicle that will
skim over a sea of dust?"
Some of them, harking back to Ole Man River, had wanted to make her a
stern-wheeler, but the more efficient submerged fans had carried the day. As
they drilled through the dust, driving her before them, they produced a wake
like that of a high-speed mole, but it vanished within seconds, leaving the Sea
unmarked by any sign of the boat's passage.
Now the squat pressure-domes of Port Roris were dropping swiftly below
the sky line. In less than ten minutes, they
had vanished from sight: Selene was utterly alone. She was at the center of
something for which the languages of mankind have no name.
As Pat switched off the motors and the boat coasted to rest, he waited
for the silence to grow around him. It was always the same; it took a little
while for the passengers to realize the strangeness of what lay outside. They
had crossed space and seen stars all about them; they had looked up--or
down--at the dazzling face of Earth, but this was different. It was neither
land nor sea, neither air nor space, but a little of each.
Chapter 24
Chief Engineer Lawrence was standing on the edge of the raft, his
space-suited figure braced against the small crane that had been swung over the
side. Hanging from the jib was a large concrete cylinder, open at both ends--the
first section of the tube that was now being lowered into the dust.
"After a lot of thought," said Lawrence for the benefit of
that distant camera, but, above all, for the benefit of the men and women
fifteen meters beneath him, "we've decided that this is the best way to
tackle the problem. This cylinder is called a caisson"--he pronounced it "kasoon"--"and
it will sink easily under its own weight. The sharp lower edge will cut through
the dust like a knife through butter.
"We have enough sections to reach the cruiser. When we've made
contact, and the tube is sealed at the bottom--its pressure against the roof
will ensure that--we'll start scooping out the dust. As soon as that's done,
we'll have an open shaft, like a small well, right down to Selene.
"That will be half the battle, but only half. Then we'll have to
connect the shaft to one of our pressurized igloos, so that when we cut through
the cruiser's roof there's no loss of air. But I think--I hope--that these are
fairly straightforward problems."
He paused for a minute, wondering if he should touch on any of the
other details that made this operation so much trickier than it looked. Then he
decided not to; those who understood could see with their own eyes, and the
others would not be interested, or would think he was boasting. This blaze of
publicity (about half a billion people were watching, so the Tourist
Commissioner had reported) did not worry him so long as things went well. But
if they did not . . . .
He raised his arm and signaled to the crane operator.
"Lower away!"
Slowly, the cylinder settled
into the dust until its full four-meter length had vanished, except for a
narrow ring just protruding above the surface. It had gone down smoothly and easily.
Lawrence hoped that the remaining sections would be equally obliging. One of
the engineers was carefully going along the rim of the caisson with a spirit
level, to check that it was sinking vertically. Presently he gave the thumbs-up
signal, which Lawrence acknowledged in the same manner. There had been a time
when, like any regular spacehog, he could carry out an extended and fairly technical
conversation by sign-language alone. This was an essential skill of the trade,
for radio sometimes failed and there were occasions when one did not wish to
clutter up the limited number of channels available.
"Ready for Number
Two!" he said.
This would be tricky. The first
section had to be held rigid while the second was bolted to it without altering
the alignment. One really needed two cranes for this job, but a framework of
I-beams, supported a few centimeters above the surface of the dust, could carry
the load when the crane was otherwise engaged. No mistakes now, for God's sake!
he breathed silently. Number-two section swung off the sledge that had brought
it from Port Roris, and three of the technicians manhandled it into the
vertical. This was the sort of job where
the distinction between weight and mass was vital. That swinging cylinder
weighed relatively little, but its momentum was the same as it would be on
Earth, and it could pulp a man if it managed to trap him on one of those
sluggish oscillations. And that was something else peculiar to the Moon--the
slow-motion movement of this suspended mass. In this gravity, a pendulum took two-and-a-half
times as long to complete its cycle as it would on Earth. This was something
that never looked quite right, except to a man who had been born here.
Now the second section was
upended and mated to the first one. They were clamped together, and once again Lawrence
gave the order to lower away. The resistance of the dust was increasing, but
the caisson continued to sink smoothly under its own weight.
"Eight meters gone,"
said Lawrence. "That means we're just past the halfway mark. Number-three
section coming up."
After this, there would only be one more, though Lawrence had provided
a spare section, just in case. He had a hearty respect for the Sea's ability to
swallow equipment. So far, only a few nuts and bolts had been lost, but if that
piece of caisson slipped from the hook, it would be gone in a flash. Though it
might not sink far, especially if it hit the dust broadside on, it would be effectively
out of reach even if it was only a couple of meters down. They had no time to
waste salvaging their own salvage gear.
There went number three, its last section moving with almost
imperceptible slowness. But it was still moving; in a few minutes, with any
luck at all, they would be knocking on the cruiser's roof.
"Twelve meters down," said Lawrence. "We're only three
meters above you now, Selene. You should be able to hear us at any
minute."
Indeed they could, and the sound was wonderfully reassuring. More than
ten minutes ago Hansteen had noticed the vibration of the oxygen inlet pipe as
the caisson scraped against it. You could tell when it stopped, and when it
started moving again. There was that vibration once more, accompanied this time
by a delicate shower of dust from the roof. The two air pipes had now been
drawn up so that about twenty centimeters of their lengths projected through
the ceiling, and the quickdrying cement which was part of the emergency kit of
all space vehicles had been smoothed around their points of entry. It seemed to
be working loose, but that impalpable rain of dust was far too slight to cause
alarm. Nevertheless, Hansteen thought that he had better mention it to the
skipper, who might not have noticed.
"Funny," said Pat, looking up at the projecting pipe. "That
cement should hold, even if the pipe is vibrating."
He climbed up on a seat, and examined the air pipe more closely. For a
moment he said nothing; then he stepped down, looking puzzled and annoyed--and
more than a little worried.
"What's the trouble?" Hansteen asked quietly. He knew Pat
well enough now to read his face like an open book.
"That pipe's pulling up through the roof," he said. "Someone
up on the raft's being mighty careless. It's shortened by at least a
centimeter, since I fixed that plaster." Then Pat stopped, suddenly aghast.
"My God," he whispered, "suppose it's our own fault, suppose
we're still sinking."
"What if we are?" said the Commodore, quite calmly.
"You'd expect the dust to continue settling beneath our weight.
That doesn't mean we're in danger. Judging by that pipe, we've gone down one
centimeter in twenty-four hours. They can always give us some more tubing if we
need it."
Pat laughed a little shamefacedly.
"Of course--that's the answer. I should have thought of it before.
We've probably been sinking slowly all the time, but this is the first chance
we've had to prove it. Still, I'd better report to Mr. Lawrence--it may affect
his calculations."
Pat started to walk toward the front of the cabin; but he never made
it.
Chapter 25
It had taken Nature a million years to set the trap that had snared
Selene and dragged her down into the Sea of Thirst. The second time, she was
caught in a trap that she had made herself.
Because her designers had no need to watch every gram of excess weight,
or plan for journeys lasting more than a few hours, they had never equipped
Selene with those ingenious but unadvertised arrangements whereby spaceships
recycle all their water supply. She did not have to conserve her resources in
the miserly manner of deep-space vehicles; the small amount of water normally used
and produced aboard, she simply dumped. Over the past five days, several
hundred kilos of liquid and vapor had left Selene, to be instantly absorbed by
the thirsty dust. Many hours ago, the dust in the immediate neighborhood of the
waste vents had become saturated and had turned into mud. Dripping downward
through scores of channels, it had honeycombed the surrounding Sea. Silently,
patiently, the cruiser had been washing away her own foundations. The gentle
nudge of the approaching caisson had done the rest.
Up on the raft, the first intimation of disaster was the flashing of
the red warning light on the air purifier, synchronized with the howling of a
radio klaxon across all the space-suit wave bands. The howl ceased almost immediately,
as the technician in charge punched the cutoff button, but the red light
continued to flash. A glance at the dials was enough to show Lawrence the
trouble. The air pipes--both of them--were no longer connected to Selene. The
purifier was pumping oxygen into the Sea through one pipe and, worse still, sucking
in dust through the other. Lawrence wondered how long it would take to clean
out the filters, but wasted no further time upon that thought. He was too busy calling
Selene.
There was no answer. He tried all the cruiser's frequencies, without
receiving even a whisper of a carrier wave. The Sea of Thirst was as silent to
radio as it was to sound.
They're finished, he said to himself; it's all over. It was a near
thing, but we just couldn't make it. And all we needed was another hour.
What could have happened? he thought dully. Perhaps the hull had
collapsed under the weight of the dust. No--that was very unlikely; the
internal air pressure would have prevented that. It must have been another subsidence.
He was not sure, but he thought that there had been a slight tremor underfoot.
From the beginning he had been aware of this danger, but could see no way of guarding
against it. This was a gamble they had all taken, and Selene had lost.
