The train stopped and Darr Veter stepped out on to the extensive, glass-paved square of the Equator Station. Near the foot-bridge that stretched over the grey tops of the Atlas cedars, stood a white truncated pyramid of porcelain-like aplite from the River Lualaba, surmounted by the statue of a worker of an age long past. The luxuriant silver foliage of trees brought from South Africa surrounded the pedestal whose sides gleamed dazzlingly bright in the sunshine. In his right hand he held a gleaming sphere with four transmitting antennae jutting out from it, his left was stretched out towards the pale equatorial sky. The man’s body, straining backwards as though to launch the sphere into the sky, was the expression of inspired effort. The figures of people in strange clothing arranged around the pedestal at the feet of the central figure increased the impression of effort. This was a monument to the builders of the first man-made Earth satellites, people who had performed miracles of inventiveness, labour and courage.
Darr Veter could never look at these sculptured faces without a feeling of excitement. He knew that the first people to build artificial Earth satellites and reach the threshold of the Cosmos had been Russians, that amazing nation from whom Darr Veter was descended, the people who had taken the first steps towards building the new social order and towards the conquest of the Cosmos….
That day, as usual, Darr Veter made his way to the monument to look once more at the carvings of the heroes of ancient times and to seek in them similarities and differences in comparison with the people of his own day and with himself….
Two tall, youthful figures appeared through the trees, stopped and then one of them rushed to Darr Veter. He placed his arms round Veter’s shoulders and took a stealthy look at the familiar features of that well-known face: the big nose, wide chin, the unexpectedly mirthful turn of the lips that did not seem to fit in with the rather grim expression of the steel-grey eyes under their joined brows.
Darr Veter cast a glance of approval over the son of a famous man who had built bases on the planets of the Centaurus system and had been elected President of the Astronautical Council for five three-year periods in succession. Groin Orme must have been at least 130 years old — three times the age of Darr Veter — but his son was very young.
Diss Ken called over his friend, a dark-haired boy.
“This is Thor Ahn, my best friend, the son of Zieg Zohr, the composer,” he said. “We’re working together in the swamps and we want to do our Labours of Hercules together and after that we want to continue working together.”
“Are you still interested in the cybernetics of heredity?” asked Darr Veter.
“Oh, yes! Thor has got me even more interested — he’s a musician, like his father. He and his girl-friend dream of working in a field where music helps us understand the development of living organisms, that is, they want to study the symphony of their structure….”
“It’s all very indefinite, the way you put it,” said Veter, frowning.
“I don’t know enough yet,” answered Diss in confusion, “perhaps Thor can tell you better than I.”
The other lad blushed but stood up to the test of the penetrating glance.
“Digs wanted to tell you about the rhythms of the mechanism of heredity. As the living organism develops from the original cell it attunes itself by chords of molecules. The primordial paired spiral develops along lines analogous to the development of a musical symphony, or, to put it another way, to the logical development in an electronic computing machine.”
“Really!” exclaimed Darr Veter in exaggerated astonishment. “Then you will reduce the entire evolution of all living and non-living matter to some sort of a gigantic symphony?”
“The plan and internal rhythm of which are determined by basic physical laws. We have only to understand how the programme is built up and where the information of the musico-cybernetic mechanism comes from,” insisted Thor Ahn with the unconquerable confidence of youth.
“Whose idea is it?”
“My father’s, Zieg Zohr’s. He recently published his 13th Cosmic Symphony in F-minor, Colour Tone 4.75 m
“I’ll most certainly hear it! I love blue tones…. Now about your immediate plans, your Labours of Hercules. Do you know what has been allotted you?”
“Only the first six.”
“Of course, the other six will be allotted when the first half has been done,” Darr Veter recalled.
“Clean out the lower tier of the Kon-I-Gut caves in Central Asia so that visitors can go there.” began Thor Ahn.
“Build a road to Lake Mental across the steep mountain ridge,” continued Diss Ken, “renew a grove of old bread trees in the Argentine, explain the causes for the appearance of big octopuses in the region of the recent lift near Trinidad….”
“And destroy them!”
“That’s five, what’s the sixth?”
The two lads turned somewhat bashful.
“We are both proficient at music,” began Diss Ken, blushing, “and… we have been asked to collect material on the ancient dances of the Island of Bali and resuscitate them musically and choreographically.”
“By that do you mean select girls to dance them and form a troupe?” laughed Darr Veter.
“Yes,” admitted Thor Ahn, unwillingly.
“An interesting job. But that’s a group job, like the road to the lake, isn’t it?”
“Yes, we’ve got a good group. Only… they want you to be their mentor, too. It would be fine if you only agreed!”
Darr Veter doubted his abilities with regard to the last of the six tasks. The lads, however, their faces beaming, danced for joy and assured him that “Zieg Zohr himself” had promised to guide the sixth task.
“In a year and four months I’ll find myself something to do in Central Asia,” said Darr Veter, pleased at the happy faces of the two youngsters.
“It’s a good thing you’re not Director of the Outer Stations any more,” exclaimed Diss Ken, “I never thought I’d be working with such a mentor!..” The lad suddenly blushed so furiously that his forehead was covered with tiny beads of perspiration and Thor even moved away from him with an expression of reproach. Darr Veter hurried to help Grom Orme’s son over his faux pas. “Have you got plenty of time?”
“No, we were given three hours off and we brought a man here who is ill with a fever he caught in our swamps.” “Is there still fever here? I thought….” “It’s very rare and only occurs in the swamps,” put in Diss, very hurriedly, “that’s what we’re here for!”
“So we still have two hours left. Let’s go into the town, you’ll probably want to go to News House.”
“Oh, no. We’d like you to… answer our questions — we have got them ready and you know how important it is when we are selecting our life’s work.”
Darr Veter gave his consent and the three of them went to the Guest Hall and sat in one of its cool rooms fanned with an artificial sea breeze.
Two hours later another coach took Darr Veter farther on his way; tired out he dozed on a sofa on the lower deck. He woke up when the train stopped in the City of Chemists. A huge structure in the form of a star with ten glazed glass-covered radial buildings stretching from it rose up over an extensive coal-field. The coal that was extracted here was processed into medicines, vitamins, hormones, artificial silk and fur. The waste products went for the manufacture of sugar. In one of the rays of the Star the rare metals germanium and vanadium were extracted from the coal — there was no end to the things that could be got out of that valuable black mineral!
One of Darr Veter’s old friends who worked as a chemist in the fur ray came to the station to meet him. Once, long before, there had been three happy young mechanics working on the fruit-gathering machines in Indonesia. Now one of them was a chemist in charge of a laboratory in a big factory, the second had remained a fruit-grower and bad invented a valuable new pollination process and the third, Darr Veter, was once more returning to Mother Earth, only deeper down this time, into the mines. The friends spent no more than ten minutes together, but even such a meeting was much pleasanter than meetings on the TVP.