Страница 11 из 91
“I’ve spoken to many audiences, but not like this,” she said.
“The Council is following a custom. Communications for the different planets are always read by beautiful women. This gives them an impression of the sense of the beautiful as perceived by the inhabitants of our world, and in general it tells them a lot,” continued Darr Veter. “The Council is not mistaken in its choice!” exclaimed Mven Mass.
Veda gave the African a penetrating look. “Are you a bachelor?” she asked softly and, acknowledging Mven Mass’s nod of affirmation, smiled.
“You wanted to talk to me?” she asked, turning to Darr Veter. The friends went out on to the circular verandah and Veda welcomed the touch of the fresh sea breeze on her face.
The Director of the Outer Stations told her of his decision to go to the dig; he told her of the way he had wavered between the 38th Cosmic Expedition, the Antarctic submarine mines and archaeology.
“Anything, but not the Cosmic Expedition!” exclaimed Veda and Darr Veter felt that he had been rather tactless.
Carried away by his own feelings he had accidentally touched the sore spot in Veda’s heart.
He was helped out by the melody of disturbing chords that reached the verandah.
“It’s time to go. In half an hour the Great Circle will be switched on!”
Darr Veter took Veda Kong carefully by the arm. Accompanied by the others they went down an escalator to a deep underground chamber, the Cubic Hall, carved out of living rock.
There was little in the hall but instruments. The dull black walls had the appearance of velvet divided into panels by clean lines of crystal. Gold, green, blue and orange lights lit up the dials, signs and figures. The emerald green points of needles trembled on black semicircles, giving the broad walls an appearance of strained, quivering expectation.
The furniture consisted of a few chairs and a big black-wood table, one end of which was pushed into a huge hemispherical screen the colour of mother-of-pearl set in a massive gold frame.
Veda Kong and Mven Mass examined everything with rapt attention for this was their first visit to the observatory of the Outer Stations.
Darr Veter beckoned to Mven Mass and pointed to high black armchairs for the others. The African came towards him, walking on the balls of his feet, just as his ancestors had once walked in the sunbaked sava
And from the next day on, he, Mven Mass, would be in charge of these communications. He was to be entrusted with the control of that tremendous power. A slight shiver ran down his back. He had probably only at that moment realized what a burden of responsibility he had undertaken when he had accepted the Council’s proposal. As he watched Darr Veter manipulating the control switches something of the admiration that burned in the eyes of Darr Veter’s young assistant could be seen in his.
A deep, ominous rumble sounded, as though a huge gong had been struck. Darr Veter turned round swiftly and threw over a long lever. The gong ceased and Veda Kong noticed that a narrow panel on the right-hand wall laid lit up from floor to ceiling. The wall seemed to have disappeared into the unfathomable distance. The phantom-like outlines of a pyramidal mountain surmounted by a gigantic stone ring appeared. Below the cap of molten stone, patches of pure white mountain snow lay here and there.
Mven Mass recognized the second highest mountain in Africa, Mount Kenya.
Again the strokes of the gong resounded through the underground chamber making all present alert and compelling them to concentrate their thoughts.
Darr Veter took Mven’s hand and placed it on a handle in which a ruby eye glowed. Mven obediently turned the handle as far as it would go. All the power produced on Earth by 1,760 gigantic power stations was being concentrated on the equator, on a mountain 5,000 metres high. A multicoloured luminescence appeared over the peak, formed a sphere and then surged upwards in a spearheaded column that pierced the very depths of the sky. Like the narrow column of a whirlwind it remained poised over the glassy sphere, and over its surface, climbing upwards, ran a spiral of dazzlingly brilliant blue smoke.
The directed rays cut a regular cha
The narrow panel on the right went dark, a signal that the transmission cha
Veda Kong, at a sign from Darr Veter, stood before the screen on a gleaming round metal dais. Invisible rays poured down from above and noticeably deepened the sun-tan of her skin. Electron machines worked soundlessly as they translated her words into the language of the Great Circle. In thirteen years’ time the receivers on the planet of the dull-red star would write down the incoming oscillations in universal symbols and, if they had them, electron machines would translate the symbols into the living speech of the planet’s inhabitants.
“All the same, it is a pity that those distant beings will not hear the soft melodious voice of a woman of Earth and will not understand its expressiveness,” thought Darr Veter. “Who knows how their ears may be constructed, they may possess quite a different type of hearing. But vision, which uses that part of the electromagnetic oscillations capable of penetrating the atmosphere, is almost the same throughout the Universe and they will behold the charming Veda in her flush of excitement….”
Darr Veter did not take his eyes off Veda’s tiny ear, partly covered by a lock of hair, while he listened to her lecture.
Briefly but clearly Veda Kong spoke of the chief stages in the history of mankind. She spoke of the early epochs of man’s existence, when there were numerous large and small nations that were in constant conflict owing to the economic and ideological hostility that divided their countries. She spoke very briefly and gave the era the name of the Era of Disunity. People living in the Era of the Great Circle were not interested in lists of destructive wars and horrible sufferings or the so-called great rulers that filled the ancient history books. More important to them was the development of productive forces and the forming of ideas, the history of art and knowledge and the struggle to create a real man, the way in which the creative urge had been developed, and people had arrived at new conceptions of the world, of social relations and of the duty, rights and happiness of man, conceptions that had nurtured the mighty tree of communist society that flourished throughout the planet.