It was a commonplace situation, familiar to every householder. One does not replace a blown fuse – until one knows just why it has blown.

Frank Poole had been through the whole routine before, but he took nothing for granted – in space that was a good recipe for suicide. He made his usual thorough check of Betty and her supply of expendables; though he would be outside for no more than thirty minutes, he made sure that there was the normal twenty-four-hour supply of everything, Then he told Hal to open the airlock, and jetted out into the abyss.

The ship looked exactly as it had done on his last excursion – with one important difference. Before, the big saucer of the long-range antenna had been pointing back along the invisible road that Discovery had traveled – back toward the Earth, circling so close to the warm fires of the Sun.

Now, with no directing signals to orientate it, the shallow dish had automatically set itself in the neutral position. It was aimed forward along the axis of the ship – and, therefore, pointing very close to the brilliant beacon of Saturn, still months away. Poole wondered how many more problems would have arisen by the time Discovery reached her still far-distant goal. If he looked carefully, he could just see that Saturn was not a perfect disk; on either side was something that no unaided human eye had ever seen before – the slight oblateness caused by the presence of the rings. How wonderful it would be, he told himself, when that incredible system of orbiting dust and ice filled their sky, and Discovery had become an eternal moon of Saturn! But that achievement would be in vain, unless they could reestablish communication with Earth.

Once again he parked Betty some twenty feet from the base of the antenna support, and switched control over to Hal before opening up.

"Going outside now," he reported to Bowman.

"Everything under control."

"I hope you're right. I'm anxious to see that unit."

"You'll have it on the test bench in twenty minutes, I promise you."

There was silence for some time as Poole completed his leisurely drift toward the antenna. Then Bowman, standing by on the control deck, heard various puffings and gruntings.

"May have to go back on that promise; one of these locknuts has stuck. I must have tightened it too much – whoops – here it comes!"

There was another long silence; then Poole called out:

"Hal, swing the pod light round twenty degrees left – thanks – that's O.K."

The very faintest of warning bells sounded somewhere far down in the depths of Bowman's consciousness. There was something strange – not really alarming, just unusual. He worried over it for a few seconds before he pinpointed the cause.

Hal had executed the order, but he had not acknowledged it, as he invariably did. When Poole had finished, they'd have to look into this.

Out on the antenna mounting, Poole was too busy to notice anything unusual. He had gripped the wafer of circuitry with his gloved hands, and was worrying it out of its slot.

It came loose, and he held it up in the pale sunlight. "Here's the little bastard," he said to the universe in general and Bowman in particular. "It still looks perfectly O.K. to me."

Then he stopped. A sudden movement had caught his eye – out here, where no movement was possible.

He looked up in alarm. The pattern of illumination from the space pod's twin spotlights, which he had been using to fill in the shadows cast by the sun, had started to shift around him.

Perhaps Betty had come adrift; he might have been careless in anchoring her. Then, with an astonishment so great that it left no room for fear, he saw that the space pod was coming directly toward him, under full thrust.

The sight was so incredible that it froze his normal pattern of reflexes; he made no attempt to avoid the onrushing monster. At the last moment, he recovered his voice and shouted: "Hal! Full braking -" It was too late.

At the moment of impact, Betty was still moving quite slowly; she had not been built for high accelerations.

But even at a mere ten miles an hour, half a ton of mass can be very lethal, on Earth or in space.

Inside Discovery, that truncated shout over the radio made Bowman start so violently that only the restraining straps held him in his seat.

"What's happened, Frank?" be called.

There was no answer.

He called again. Again no reply.

Then, outside the wide observation windows, something moved into his field of view. He saw, with an astonishment as great as Poole's had been, that it was the space pod – under full power, heading out toward the stars.

"Hal!" he cried. "What's wrong? Full braking thrust on Betty! Full braking thrust!"

Nothing happened. Betty continued to accelerate on her runaway course.

Then, towed behind her at the end of the safety line, appeared a spacesuit. One glance was enough to tell Bowman the worst. There was no mistaking the flaccid outlines of a suit that had lost its pressure and was open to vacuum.

Yet still he called stupidly, as if an incantation could bring back the dead: "Hello Frank... Hello Frank... Can you read me?... Can you read me?... Wave your arms if you can hear me...

Perhaps your transmitter is broken... Wave your arms!"

And then, almost as if in response to his plea, Poole waved back.

For an instant, Bowman felt the skin prickling at the base of his scalp. The words he was about to call died on his suddenly parched lips. For he knew that his friend could not possibly be alive; and yet he waved.

The spasm of hope and fear passed instantly, as cold logic replaced emotion. The still accelerating pod was merely shaking the burden that it dragged behind it. Poole's gesture was an echo of Captain Ahab's when, lashed to the flanks of the white whale, his corpse had beckoned the crew of the Pequod on to their doom.

Within five minutes, the pod and its satellite had vanished among the stars. For a long time David Bowman stared after it into the emptiness that still stretched, for so many millions of miles ahead, to the goal which he now felt certain he could never reach, Only one thought kept hammering in his brain.

Frank Poole would be the first of all men to reach Saturn.

26 – Dialogue with Hal

Nothing else aboard Discovery had changed. All systems were still functioning normally; the centrifuge turned slowly on its axis, generating its imitation gravity; the hibernauts slept dreamlessly in their cubicles; the ship coasted on toward the goal from which nothing could deflect it, except the inconceivably remote chance of collision with an asteroid. And there were few asteroids indeed, out here far beyond the orbit of Jupiter.

Bowman did not remember making his way from the control deck to the centrifuge. Now, rather to his surprise, he found himself sitting in the little galley, a half-finished beaker of coffee in his hand. He became slowly aware of his surroundings, like a man emerging from a long, drugged sleep.

Directly opposite him was one of the fisheye lenses, scattered at strategic spots throughout the ship, which provided Hal with his onboard visual inputs. Bowman stared at it as if he had never seen it before; then he rose slowly to his feet and walked toward the lens.

His movement in the field of view must have triggered something in the unfathomable mind that was now ruling over the ship; for suddenly, Hal spoke.

"Too bad about Frank, isn't it?"

"Yes," Bowman answered, after a long pause. "It is."

"I suppose you're pretty broken up about it?"

"What do you expect?"

Hal processed this answer for ages of computer-time; it was a full five seconds before he continued:

"He was an excellent crew member."

Finding the coffee still in his hand, Bowman took a slow sip. But he did not answer; his thoughts were in such a turmoil that he could think of nothing to say – nothing that might not make the situation even worse, if that were possible.