Solaris

Still the hypotheses rained down — old, ‘resurrected’ hypotheses, superficially modified, simplified, or complicated to the extreme — and Solaristics, a relatively well-defined discipline in spite of its scope, became an increasingly tangled maze where every apparent exit led to a dead end. In the despondency, the ocean of Solaris was submerging under an ocean of printed paper.

Two years before I began the stint in Gibarian’s laboratory which ended when I obtained the diploma of the Institute, the Mett-Irving Foundation offered a huge prize to anybody who could find a viable method of tapping the energy of the ocean. The idea was not a new one. Several cargoes of the plasmatic jelly had been shipped back to Earth in the past, and various methods of preservation had been patiently tested: high and low temperatures, artificial micro-atmospheres and micro-climates, and prolonged irradiation. The whole gamut of physical and chemical processes had been run, only to end with the same outcome, a gradual process of decomposition which passed through well-defined stages, starting with wasting, maceration, then first-degree (primary) and late (secondary) liquefaction. The samples removed from the plasmatic growths and creations met with the same fate, with certain variations in the phases of decomposition. The end-product was always a light metallic ash.

Once the scientists recognized that it was impossible to keep alive, or even in a ‘vegetative’ state, any fragment of the ocean, large or small, in dissociation from the entire organism, a growing tendency developed (under the influence of the Meunier-Proroch school) to isolate this problem as the key to the mystery. It was seen as a matter of interpretation — solve it, and the back of the problem would be broken.

The quest for this key, the philosopher’s stone of Solarist studies, had absorbed the time and energy of all kinds of people with little or no scientific training. During the fourth decade of Solaristics the craze spread like an epidemic, and provided a fertile ground for the psychologists. An unknown number of cranks and ignorant fanatics toiled at their fumbling researches with a greater enthusiasm than any which had animated the old prophets of perpetual motion, or the squaring of the circle. The craze fizzled out in only a few years, and by the time I was ready to leave for Solaris it had vanished from the headlines and from conversation, and the ocean itself was practically forgotten by the public.

I took care to replace the Compendium in its correct alphabetical position, and in doing so dislodged a slim pamphlet by Grastrom, one of the most eccentric authors in Solarist literature. I had read the pamphlet, which was dictated by the urge to understand what lies beyond the grasp of mankind, and aimed in particular against the individual, man, and the human species. It was the abstract, acidulous work of an autodidact who had previously made a series of unusual contributions to various marginal and rarefied branches of quantum physics. In this fifteen-page booklet (his magnum opus!), Grastrom set out to demonstrate that the most abstract achievements of science, the most advanced theories and victories of mathematics represented nothing more than a stumbling one- or two-step progression from our rude, prehistoric, anthropomorphic understanding of the universe around us. He pointed out correspondences with the human body — the projections of our senses, the structure of our physical organization, and the physiological limitations of man — in the equations of the theory of relativity, the theorem of magnetic fields and the various unified field theories. Grastrom’s conclusion was that there neither was, nor could be, any question of ‘contact’ between mankind and any nonhuman civilization. This broadside against humanity made no specific mention of the living ocean, but its constant presence and scornful, victorious silence could be felt between every line, at any rate such had been my own impression. It was Gibarian who drew it to my attention, and it must have been Gibarian who had added it to the Station’s collection, on his own authority, since Grastrom’s pamphlet was regarded more as a curiosity than a true contribution to Solarist literature.

With a strange feeling almost of respect, I carefully slid the slim pamphlet back into the crowded bookshelf, then stroked the green bronze binding of the Solaris A

Was the ocean a living creature? It could hardly be doubted any longer by any but lovers of paradox or obstinacy. It was no longer possible to deny the ‘psychic’ functions of the ocean, no matter how that term might be defined. Certainly it was only too obvious that the ocean had ‘noticed’ us. This fact alone invalidated that category of Solarist theories which claimed that the ocean was an ‘introverted’ world, a ‘hermit entity,’ deprived by a process of degeneration of the thinking organs it once possessed, unaware of the existence of external objects and events, the prisoner of a gigantic vortex of mental currents created and confined in the depths of this monster revolving between two suns.

Not only that, we had discovered that the ocean was capable of reproducing what we ourselves had never succeeded in creating artificially — a perfect human body, modified in its sub-atomic structure for purposes we could not guess.

The ocean lived, thought and acted. The ‘Solaris problem’ had not been a

Perhaps we had arrived at a turning-point. What would the high-level decision be? Would we be ordered to give up and return to Earth, immediately or in the near future? Was it even possible that we would be ordered to liquidate the Station? It was at least not improbable. But I did not favor the solution by retreat. The existence of the thinking colossus was bound to go on haunting men’s minds. Even when man had explored every corner of the cosmos, and established relations with other civilizations founded by creatures similar to ourselves, Solaris would remain an eternal challenge.

Misplaced among the thick volumes of the A