“How…?”

“Later, Kelvin. You’ve got to calm down.”

“I’m calm now. Tell me how.”

“Disintegration.”

“But… what did you use?”

“The Roche apparatus was unsuitable. Sartorius built something else, a new destabilizer. A miniature instrument, with a range of a few yards.”

“And she…”

“She disappeared. A pop, and a puff of air. That’s all.”

“A short-range instrument…”

“Yes, we didn’t have the resources for anything bigger.”

The walls loomed over me, and I shut my eyes.

“She will come back.”

“No.”

“What do you know about it?”

“You remember the wings of foam? Since that day, they do not come back.”

“You killed her,” I whispered.

“Yes… In my place, what else would you have done?”

I turned away from him and began pacing up and down the room. Nine steps to the corner. About turn. Nine more rapid steps, and I was facing Snow again.

“Listen, we’ll write a report. We’ll ask for an immediate link with the Council. It’s feasible, and they’ll accept — they must. The planet will no longer be subject to the four-power convention. We’ll be authorized to use any means at our disposal. We can send for anti-matter generators. Nothing can stand up against them, nothing…” I was shouting now, and blinded with tears.

“You want to destroy it? Why?”

“Get out, leave me alone!”

“No, I won’t get out.”

“Snow!” I glared at him, and he shook his head. “What do you want? What am I supposed to do?” He walked back to the table.

“Fine, we’ll draw up a report.”

I started pacing again.

“Sit down!”

“I’ll do what I like!”

“There are two distinct questions. One, the facts. Two, our recommendations.”

“Do we have to talk about it now?”

“Yes, now.”

“I won’t listen, you hear? I’m not interested in your distinctions.”

“We sent our last message about two months ago, before Gibarian’s death. We’ll have to establish exactly how the ‘visitor’ phenomena function…”

I grabbed his arm:

“Will you shut up!”

“Hit me if you like, but I will not shut up.”

“Oh, talk away, if it gives you pleasure…” I let him go.

“Good, listen. Sartorius will want to conceal certain facts. I’m almost certain of it.”

“And what about you? Won’t you conceal anything?”

“No. Not now. This business goes further than individual responsibilities. You know that as well as I do.

‘It’ has given a demonstration of considered activity. It is capable of carrying out organic synthesis on the most complex level, a synthesis we ourselves have never managed to achieve. It knows the structure, micro-structure and metabolism of our bodies…”

“All right… But why stop there? It has performed a series of… experiments on us. Psychic vivisection. It has used knowledge which it stole from our minds without our consent.”

“Those are not facts, Kelvin. They are not even propositions. They are theories. You could say that it has taken account of desires locked into secret recesses of our brains. Perhaps it was sending us… presents.”

“Presents! My God!” I shook with a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

“Take it easy!” Snow took hold of my hand, and I tightened my grip until I heard bones cracking. He went on looking at me without any change of expression. I let go, and walked over to a corner of the workshop:

“I’ll try to get hold of myself.”

“Yes, of course. I understand. What do we ask them?”

“I leave it to you… I can’t think straight right now. Did she say anything — before?”

“No, nothing. If you want my opinion, from now on we stand a chance.”

“A chance? What chance?” I stared at him, and light suddenly dawned. “Contact? Still Contact? Haven’t you had enough of this madhouse? What more do you need? No, it’s out of the question. Count me out!”

“Why not,” he asked quietly. “You yourself instinctively treat it like a human being, now more than ever. You hate it.”

“And you don’t?”

“No, Kelvin. It is blind.” — I thought that I might not have heard him correctly — “… or rather it ‘sees’ in a different way from ourselves. We do not exist for it in the same sense that we exist for each other. We recognize one another by the appearance of the face and the body. That appearance is a transparent window to the ocean. It introduces itself directly into the brain.”

“Right, what if it does? What are you driving at? It succeeded in recreating a human being who exists only in my memory, and so accurately that her eyes, her gestures, her voice…”

“Don’t stop. Talk.”

“I’m talking… Her voice… because it is able to read us like a book. You see what I mean?”

“Yes, that it could make itself understood.”

“Doesn’t that follow?”

“No, not necessarily. Perhaps it used a formula which is not expressed in verbal terms. It may be taken from a recording imprinted on our minds, but a man’s memory is stored in terms of nucleic acids etching asynchronous large-moleculed crystals. ‘It’ removed the deepest, most isolated imprint, the most ‘assimilated’ structure, without necessarily knowing what it meant to us. Suppose, I’m capable of reproducing the architecture of a symmetriad, and I know its composition and have the requisite technology… I create a symmetriad and I drop it into the ocean. But I don’t know why I’m doing so, I don’t know its function, and I don’t know what the symmetriad means to the ocean…”

“Yes. You may be right. In that case it wished us no harm, and it was not trying to destroy us. Yes, it’s possible… and with no intention…”

My mouth began to tremble.

“Kelvin!”

“All right, don’t get worried. You are kind, the ocean is kind. Everybody is kind. But why? Explain that. Why has it done this? What did you say… to her?”

“The truth.”

“I asked you what you said.”

“You know very well. Come back to my cabin and we’ll write out the report. Come on.”

“Wait. What exactly do you want? You can’t be intending to remain on the Station.”

“Yes, I want to stay.”

I sat by the panoramic window, looking at the ocean. There was nothing to do now that the report, which had taken five days to compile, was only a pattern of waves in space. It would be months before a similar pattern would leave earth to create its own line of disturbance in the gravitational field of the galaxy towards the twin suns of Solaris.

Under the red sun, the ocean was darker than ever, and the horizon was obscured by a reddish mist. The weather was unusually close, and seemed to be building up towards one of the terrible hurricanes which broke out two or three times a year on the surface of the planet, whose sole inhabitant, it is reasonable to suppose, controlled the climate and willed its storms.

There were several months to go before I could leave. From my vantage point in the observatory I would watch the birth of the days — a disc of pale gold or faded purple. Now and then I would come upon the light of dawn playing among the fluid forms of some edifice risen from the ocean, watch the sun reflected on the silver sphere of a symmetriad, follow the oscillations of the graceful agiluses that curve in the wind, and linger to examine old powdery mimoids.

And eventually, the screens of all the videophones would start to blink and all the communications equipment would spring to life again, revived by an impulse originating billions of miles away and announcing the arrival of a metal colossus. The Ulysses, or it might be the Prometheus, would land on the Station to the piercing whine of its gravitors, and I would go out onto the flat roof to watch the squads of white, heavy-duty robots which proceed in all innocence with their tasks, not hesitating to destroy themselves or to destroy the unforeseen obstacle, in strict obedience to the orders echoed into the crystals of their memory. Then the ship would rise noiselessly, faster than sound, leaving a sonic boom far behind over the ocean, and every passenger’s face would light up at the thought of going home.