In the empty corridor I stood for a moment in front of the closed door. I noticed a strip ofplaster carelessly stuck on one of the panels. Pencilled on it was the word "Man!" At the sightof this faintly scribbled word, I had a sudden longing to return to Snow for company; but Ithought better of it.

His crazy warnings still ringing in my ears, I started off down the narrow, tubular passagewhich was filled with the moaning of the wind, my shoulders bowed under the weight of thespacesuit. On tip-toe, half-consciously fleeing from some invisible watcher, I found two doorson my left and two more on my right. I read the occupants' names: Dr. Gibarian, Dr. Snow, Dr.

Sartorius. On the fourth, there was no nameplate. I hesitated, then pressed the handle downgently and slowly opened the door. As I did so, I had a premonition, amounting almost to acertainty, that there was someone inside. I went in.

There was no one. Another wide panoramic window, almost as large as the one in the cabinwhere I had found Snow, overhung the ocean, which, sunlit on this side, shone with anoleaginous gleam, as though the waves secreted a reddish oil. A crimson glow pervaded thewhole room, whose lay-out suggested a ship's cabin. On one side, flanked by book-filledshelves, a retractable bed stood against the wall. On the other, between the numerous lockers,hung nickel frames enclosing a series of aerial photographs stuck end to end with adhesivetape, and racks full of test-tubes and retorts plugged with cotton-wool. Two tiers of whiteenamel boxes took up the space beneath the window. I lifted some of the lids; the boxes werecrammed with all kinds of instruments, intertwined with plastic tubing. The corners of theroom were occupied by a refrigerator, a tap and a demisting device. For lack of space on thebig table by the window, a microscope stood on the floor. Turning round, I saw a tall lockerbeside the entrance door. It was half-open, filled with atmosphere suits, laboratory smocks,insulated aprons, underclothing, boots for planetary exploration, and aluminum cylinders:

portable oxygen gear. Two sets of this equipment, complete with masks, hung down from oneof the knobs of the vertical bed. Everywhere there was the same chaos, a general disorderwhich someone had made a hasty attempt to disguise. I sniffed the air. I could detect a faintsmell of chemical reagents and traces of something more acrid—chlorine? Instinctively Isearched the ceiling for the grills over the air-vents: strips of paper attached to the bars werefluttering gently; the air was circulating normally. In order to make a relatively free spacearound the bed, between the bookshelves and the locker, I cleared two chairs of their litter ofbooks, instruments, and tools, which I piled haphazardly on the other side of the room.

I pulled out a bracket to hang up my spacesuit, took hold of the zip-fastener, then let go again.

Deterred by the confused idea that I was depriving myself of a shield, I could not bring myselfto remove it. Once more I looked round the room. I checked that the door was shut tight andthat it had no lock, and after a brief hesitation I dragged some of the heaviest boxes to thedoorway. Having built this temporary barricade, I freed myself from my clanking armor inthree quick movements. A narrow looking-glass, built into the locker door, reflected part of theroom, and out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of something moving. I jumped, but it wasonly my own reflection. Underneath the spacesuit, my overalls were drenched with sweat. Itook them off and pulled back a sliding door, revealing the bright-tiled walls of a smallbathroom. A long, flat box lay in the hollow at the base of the shower; I carried it into theroom. As I put it down, the springlid flew up and disclosed a number of compartments filledwith strange objects: misshapen forms in a dark metal, grotesque replicas of the instruments inthe racks. Not one of the tools was usable; they were blunted, distorted, melted, as though theyhad been in a furnace. Strangest of all, even the porcelain handles, virtually incombustible,were twisted out of shape. Even at maximum temperature, no laboratory furnace could havemelted them; only, perhaps, an atomic pile. I took a Geiger counter from the pocket on myspacesuit, but when I held it over the debris, it remained dumb.

By now I was wearing nothing but my underwear. I tore it off, flung it across the room anddashed under the shower. The shock of the water did me good. Turning beneath the scalding,needle-sharp jets, I scrubbed myself vigorously, splashing the walls, expelling, eradicatingfrom my skin the thick scum of morbid apprehensions which had pervaded me since myarrival.

I rummaged in the locker and found a work-suit which could also be worn under anatmosphere suit. As I pocketed my few belongings, I felt something hard tucked between thepages of my notebook: it was a key, the key to my apartment, down there on Earth. Absently, Iturned it over in my fingers. Finally I put it down on the table. It occurred to me suddenly that Imight need a weapon. An all-purpose pocket-knife was hardly sufficient for my needs, but Ihad nothing else, and I was not going to start searching for a gamma pistol or something else ofthe kind.

I sat down on a tubular stool in the middle of the clear space, glad to be alone, and seeing withsatisfaction that I had over half an hour to myself. (By nature, I have always been scrupulousabout keeping engagements, whether important or trivial.) The hands of the clock, its facedivided into twenty-four hours, pointed to seven o'clock. The sun was setting. 07.00 hours herewas 20.00 hours on board the Prometheus. On Moddard's screens, Solaris would be nothingbut an indistinct dust-cloud, mingled with the stars. But what did the Prometheus matter to menow? I closed my eyes. I could hear no sound except the moaning of the ventilation pipes and afaint trickling of water from the bathroom.

If I had understood correctly, it was only a short time since Gibarian had died. What had theydone with his body? Had they buried it? No, that was impossible on this planet. I puzzled overthe question for a long time, concentrating on the fate of the corpse; then, realizing theabsurdity of my thoughts, I began to pace up and down. My toe knocked against a canvas baghalf-buried under a pile of books; I bent down and picked it up. It contained a small bottlemade of colored glass, so light that it might have been blown out of paper. I held it up to thewindow in the purplish glow of the somber twilight, now overhung by a sooty fog. What was Idoing, allowing myself to be distracted by irrelevancies, by the first trifle which came to hand?

I gave a start: the lights had gone on, activated by a photo-electric relay; the sun had set. Whatwould happen next? I was so tense that the sensation of an empty space behind me becameunbearable. In an attempt to pull myself together, I took a chair over to the bookshelves andchose a book familiar to me: the second volume of the early monograph by Hughes and Eugel,Historia Solaris. I rested the thick, solidly bound volume on my knees and began leafingthrough the pages.

The discovery of Solaris dated from about 100 years before I was born.

The planet orbits two suns: a red sun and a blue sun. For 45 years after its discovery, nospacecraft had visited Solaris. At that time, the Gamow-Shapley theory—that Life wasimpossible on planets which are satellites of two solar bodies—was firmly believed. The orbitis constantly being modified by variations in the gravitational pull in the course of itsrevolutions around the two suns.

Due to these fluctuations in gravity, the orbit is either flattened or distended and the elementsof life, if they appear, are inevitably destroyed, either by intense heat or an extreme drop intemperature. These changes take place at intervals estimated in millions of years—very shortintervals, that is, according to the laws of astronomy and biology (evolution takes hundreds ofmillions of years if not a billion).

According to the earliest calculations, in 500,000 years' time Solaris would be drawn one halfof an astronomic unit nearer to its red sun, and a million years after that would be engulfed bythe incandescent star.

A few decades later, however, observations seemed to suggest that the planet's orbit was in noway subject to the expected variations: it was stable, as stable as the orbit of the planets in ourown solar system.

The observations and calculations were reworked with great precision; they simply confirmedthe original conclusions: Solaris's orbit was unstable.

A modest item among the hundreds of planets discovered annually—to which official statisticsdevoted only a few lines defining the characteristics of their orbits—Solaris eventually beganto attract special attention and attain a high rank.

Four years after this promotion, overflying the planet with the Laakon and two auxiliary craft,the Ottenskj.ld expedition undertook a study of Solaris. This expedition being in the nature ofa preliminary, not to say improvised, reconnaissance, the scientists were not equipped for alanding. Ottenskj.ld placed a quantity of automatic observation satellites into equatorial andpolar orbit, their principal function being to measure the gravitational pull. In addition, a studywas made of the planet's surface, which is covered by an ocean dotted with innumerable flat,low-lying islands whose combined area is less than that of Europe, although the diameter ofSolaris is a fifth greater than Earth's. These expanses of barren, rocky territory, irregularlydistributed, are largely concentrated in the southern hemisphere. At the same time thecomposition of the atmosphere—devoid of oxygen—was analyzed, and precise measurementsmade of the planet's density, from which its albedo and other astronomical characteristics weredetermined. As was foreseeable, no trace of life was discovered, either on the islands or in theocean.

During the following ten years, Solaris became the center of attraction for all observatoriesconcerned with the study of this region of space, for the planet had in the meantime shown theastonishing faculty of maintaining an orbit which ought, without any shadow of doubt, to havebeen unstable. The problem almost developed into a scandal: since the results of theobservations could only be inaccurate, attempts were made (in the interests of science) todenounce and discredit various scientists or else the computers they used.

Lack of funds delayed the departure of a proper Solaris expedition for three years. FinallyShannahan assembled his team and obtained three C-tonnage vessels from the Institute, thelargest starships of the period. A year and a half before the arrival of the expedition, which leftfrom the region of Alpha in Aquarius, a second exploration fleet, acting in the name of theInstitute, placed an automatic satellite—Luna 247—into orbit around Solaris. This satellite,after three successive reconstructions at roughly ten-year intervals, is still functioning today.

The data it supplied confirmed beyond doubt the findings of the Ottenskj.ld expeditionconcerning the active character of the ocean's movements.

One of Shannahan's ships remained in orbit, while the two others, after some preliminaryattempts, landed in the southern hemisphere, in a rocky area about 600 miles square. The workof the expedition lasted eighteen months and was carried out under favorable conditions, apartfrom an unfortunate accident brought about by the malfunction of some apparatus. In themeantime, the scientists had split into two opposing camps; the bone of contention was theocean. On the basis of the analyses, it had been accepted that the ocean was an organicformation (at that time, no one had yet dared to call it living). But, while the biologistsconsidered it as a primitive formation—a sort of gigantic entity, a fluid cell, unique andmonstrous (which they called 'prebiological'), surrounding the globe with a colloidal envelopeseveral miles thick in places—the astronomers and physicists asserted that it must be anorganic structure, extraordinarily evolved. According to them, the ocean possibly exceededterrestrial organic structures in complexity, since it was capable of exerting an active influenceon the planet's orbital path. Certainly, no other factor could be found that might explain thebehavior of Solaris; moreover, the planeto-physicists had established a relationship betweencertain processes of the plasmic ocean and the local measurements of gravitational pull, whichaltered according to the 'matter transformations' of the ocean.

Consequently it was the physicists, rather than the biologists, who put forward the paradoxicalformulation of a 'plasmic mechanism', implying by this a structure, possibly without life as weconceive it, but capable of performing functional activities—on an astronomic scale, it shouldbe emphasized.

It was during this quarrel, whose reverberations soon reached the ears of the most eminentauthorities, that the Gamow-Shapely doctrine, unchallenged for eighty years, was shaken forthe first time.

There were some who continued to support the Gamow-Shapley contentions, to the effect thatthe ocean had nothing to do with life, that it was neither 'parabiological' nor 'prebiological' buta geological formation—of extreme rarity, it is true—with the unique ability to stabilize theorbit of Solaris, despite the variations in the forces of attraction. Le Chatelier's law was enlistedin support of this argument.

To challenge this conservative attitude, new hypotheses were advanced—of which CivitoVitta'swas one of the most elaborate—proclaiming that the ocean was the product of adialectical development: on the basis of its earliest pre-oceanic form, a solution of slow-reacting chemical elements, and by the force of circumstances (the threat to its existence fromthe changes of orbit), it had reached in a single bound the stage of 'homeostatic ocean,' withoutpassing through all the stages of terrestrial evolution, by-passing the unicellular andmulticellular phases, the vegetable and the animal, the development of a nervous and cerebralsystem. In other words, unlike terrestrial organisms, it had not taken hundreds of millions ofyears to adapt itself to its environment—culminating in the first representatives of a speciesendowed with reason—but dominated its environment immediately.

This was an original point of view. Nevertheless, the means whereby this collodial envelopewas able to stabilize the planet's orbit remained unknown. For almost a century, devices hadexisted capable of creating artificial magnetic and gravitational fields; they were calledgravitors. But no one could even guess how this formless glue could produce an effect whichthe gravitors achieved by the use of complicated nuclear reactions and enormously hightemperatures. The newspapers of the day, exciting the curiosity of the layman and the anger ofthe scientist, were full of the most improbable embroideries on the theme of the 'SolarisMystery,' one reporter going so far as to suggest that the ocean was, no less, a distant relationto our electric eels!

Just when a measure of success had been achieved in unravelling this problem, it turned out, asoften happened subsequently in the field of Solarist studies, that the explanation replaced oneenigma by another, perhaps even more baffling.

Observations showed, at least, that the ocean did not react according to the same principles asour gravitors (which, in any case, would have been impossible), but succeeded in controllingthe orbital periodicity directly. One result, among others, was the discovery of discrepancies inthe measurement of time along one and the same meridian on Solaris. Thus the ocean was notonly in a sense "aware" of the Einstein-Bo.via theory; it was also capable of exploiting theimplications of the latter (which was more than we could say of ourselves).

With the publication of this hypothesis, the scientific world was torn by one of the most violentcontroversies of the century. Revered and universally accepted theories foundered; thespecialist literature was swamped by outrageous and heretical treatises; 'sentient ocean' or'gravity-controlling colloid'—the debate became a burning issue.

All this happened several years before I was born. When I was a student—new data havingaccumulated in the meantime—it was already generally agreed that there was life on Solaris,even if it was limited to a single inhabitant.

The second volume of Hughes and Eugel, which I was still leafing through mechanically,began with a systematization that was as ingenious as it was amusing. The table ofclassification comprised three definitions: Type: Polythera; Class: Syncytialia; Category:

Metamorph.

It might have been thought that we knew of an infinite number of examples of the species,whereas in reality there was only the one—weighing, it is true, some seven hundred billiontons.

Multicolored illustrations, picturesque graphs, analytical summaries and spectral diagramsflickered through my fingers, explaining the type and rhythm of the fundamentaltransformations as well as chemical reactions. Rapidly, infallibly, the thick tome led the readeron to the solid ground of mathematical certitude. One might have assumed that we kneweverything there was to be known about this representative of the category Metamorph, whichlay some hundreds of metres below the metal hull of the Station, obscured at the moment bythe shadows of the four-hour night.

In fact, by no means everybody was yet convinced that the ocean was actually a living'creature,' and still less, it goes without saying, a rational one. I put the heavy volume back onthe shelf and took up the one next to it, which was in two parts. The first part was devoted to aresumé of the countless attempts to establish contact with the ocean. I could well rememberhow, when I was a student, these attempts were the subject of endless anecdotes, jokes andwitticisms. Compared with the proliferation of speculative ideas which were triggered off bythis problem, medieval scholasticism seemed a model of scientific enlightenment. The secondpart, nearly 1500 pages long, was devoted exclusively to the bibliography of the subject. Therewould not have been enough room for the books themselves in the cabin in which I was sitting.

The first attempts at contact were by means of specially designed electronic apparatus. Theocean itself took an active part in these operations by remodelling the instruments. All this,however, remained somewhat obscure. What exactly did the ocean's 'participation' consist of?

It modified certain elements in the submerged instruments, as a result of which the normaldischarge frequency was completely disrupted and the recording instruments registered aprofusion of signals—fragmentary indications of some outlandish activity, which in factdefeated all attempts at analysis. Did these data point to a momentary condition of stimulation,or to regular impulses correlated with the gigantic structures which the ocean was in theprocess of creating elsewhere, at the antipodes of the region under investigation? Had theelectronic apparatus recorded the cryptic manifestation of the ocean's ancient secrets? Had itrevealed its innermost workings to us? Who could tell? No two reactions to the stimuli werethe same. Sometimes the instruments almost exploded under the violence of the impulses,sometimes there was total silence; it was impossible to obtain a repetition of any previouslyobserved phenomenon. Constantly, it seemed, the experts were on the brink of deciphering theever-growing mass of information. Was it not, after all, with this object in mind that computershad been built of virtually limitless capacity, such as no previous problem had ever demanded?

And, indeed, some results were obtained. The ocean as a source of electric and magneticimpulses and of gravitation expressed itself in a more or less mathematical language. Also, bycalling on the most abstruse branches of statistical analysis, it was possible to classify certainfrequencies in the discharges of current. Structural homologues were discovered, not unlikethose already observed by physicists in that sector of science which deals with the reciprocalinteraction of energy and matter, elements and compounds, the finite and the infinite. Thiscorrespondence convinced the scientists that they were confronted with a monstrous entityendowed with reason, a protoplasmic ocean-brain enveloping the entire planet and idling itstime away in extravagant theoretical cognitation about the nature of the universe. Ourinstruments had intercepted minute random fragments of a prodigious and everlastingmonologue unfolding in the depths of this colossal brain, which was inevitably beyond ourunderstanding.

So much for the mathematicians. These hypotheses, according to some people, underestimatedthe resources of the human mind; they bowed to the unknown, proclaiming the ancientdoctrine, arrogantly resurrected, of ignoramus et ignorabimus. Others regarded themathematicians' hypotheses as sterile and dangerous nonsense, contributing towards thecreation of a modern mythology based on the notion of this giant brain—whether plasmic orelectronic was immaterial—as the ultimate objective of existence, the very synthesis of life.

Yet others…but the would-be experts were legion and each had his own theory. A comparisonof the 'contact' school of thought with other branches of Solarist studies, in whichspecialization had rapidly developed, especially during the last quarter of a century, made itclear that a Solarist-cybernetician had difficulty in making himself understood to a Solaristsymmetriadologist.

Veubeke, director of the Institute when I was studying there, had askedjokingly one day: "How do you expect to communicate with the ocean, when you can't evenunderstand one another?" The jest contained more than a grain of truth.

The decision to categorize the ocean as a metamorph was not an arbitrary one. Its undulatingsurface was capable of generating extremely diverse formations which resembled nothing everseen on Earth, and the function of these sudden eruptions of plasmic 'creativity,' whetheradaptive, explorative or what, remained an enigma.

Lifting the heavy volume with both hands, I replaced it on the shelf, and thought to myself thatour scholarship, all the information accumulated in the libraries, amounted to a useless jumbleof words, a sludge of statements and suppositions, and that we had not progressed an inch inthe 78 years since researches had begun. The situation seemed much worse now than in thetime of the pioneers, since the assiduous efforts of so many years had not resulted in a singleindisputable conclusion.

The sum total of known facts was strictly negative. The ocean did not use machines, eventhough in certain circumstances it seemed capable of creating them. During the first two yearsof exploratory work, it had reproduced elements of some of the submerged instruments.

Thereafter, it simply ignored the experiments we went on pursuing, as though it had lost allinterest in our instruments and our activities—as though, indeed, it was no longer interested inus. It did not possess a nervous system (to go on with the inventory of 'negative knowledge') orcells, and its structure was not proteiform. It did not always react even to the most powerfulstimuli (it ignored completely, for example, the catastrophic accident which occurred duringthe second Giese expedition: an auxiliary rocket, falling from a height of 300,000 metres,crashed on the planet's surface and the radioactive explosion of its nuclear reserves destroyedthe plasma within a radius of 2500 metres).

Gradually, in scientific circles, the 'Solaris Affair' came to be regarded as a lost cause, notablyamong the administrators of the Institute, where voices had recently been raised suggesting thatfinancial support should be withdrawn and research suspended. No one, until then, had dared tosuggest the final liquidation of the Station; such a decision would have smacked too obviouslyof defeat. But in the course of semi-official discussions a number of scientists recommended an'honorable' withdrawal from Solaris.

Many people in the world of science, however, especially among the young, had unconsciouslycome to regard the 'affair' as a touchstone of individual values. All things considered, theyclaimed, it was not simply a question of penetrating Solarist civilization; it was essentially atest of ourselves, of the limitations of human knowledge. For some time, there was a widelyheld notion (zealously fostered by the daily press) to the effect that the 'thinking ocean' ofSolaris was a gigantic brain, prodigiously well-developed and several million years in advanceof our own civilization, a sort of 'cosmic yogi,' a sage, a symbol of omniscience, which hadlong ago understood the vanity of all action and for this reason had retreated into anunbreakable silence. The notion was incorrect, for the living ocean was active. Not, it is true,according to human ideas—it did not build cities or bridges, nor did it manufacture flyingmachines. It did not try to reduce distances, nor was it concerned with the conquest of Space(the ultimate criterion, some people thought, of man's superiority). But it was engaged in anever-ending process of transformation, an 'ontological autometamorphosis.' (There were anyamount of scientific neologisms in accounts of Solarist activities.) Moreover, any scientist whodevotes himself to the study of Solariana has the indelible impression that he can discernfragments of an intelligent structure, perhaps endowed with genius, haphazardly mingled withoutlandish phenomena, apparently the product of an unhinged mind. Thus was born theconception of the 'autistic ocean' as opposed to the 'ocean-yogi.'

These hypotheses resurrected one of the most ancient of philosophical problems: the relationbetween matter and mind, and between mind and consciousness. Du Haart was the first to havethe audacity to maintain that the ocean possessed a consciousness. The problem, which themethodologists hastened to dub metaphysical, provoked all kinds of arguments anddiscussions. Was it possible for thought to exist without consciousness? Could one, in anycase, apply the word thought to the processes observed in the ocean? Is a mountain only a hugestone? Is a planet an enormous mountain? Whatever the terminology, the new scale of sizeintroduced new norms and new phenomena.

The question appeared as a contemporary version of the problem of squaring the circle. Everyindependent thinker endeavored to register his personal contribution to the hoard of Solariststudies. New theories proliferated: the ocean was evidence of a state of degeneration, ofregression, following a phase of 'intellectual repletion'; it was a deviant neoplasm, the productof the bodies of former inhabitants of the planet, whom it had devoured, swallowed up,dissolving and blending the residue into this unchanging, self-propagating form, supracellularin structure.

By the white light of the fluorescent tubes—a pale imitation of terrestrial daylight—I clearedthe table of its clutter of apparatus and books. Arms outstretched and my hands gripping thechromium edging, I unrolled a map of Solaris on the plastic surface and studied it at length.

The living ocean had its peaks and its canyons. Its islands, which were covered with adecomposing mineral deposit, were certainly related to the nature of the ocean bed. But did itcontrol the eruption and subsidence of the rocky formations buried in its depths? No one knew.

Gazing at the big flat projection of the two hemispheres, colored in various tones of blue andpurple, I experienced once again that thrill of wonder which had so often gripped me, andwhich I had felt as a schoolboy on learning of the existence of Solaris for the first time.

Lost in contemplation of this bewildering map, my mind in a daze, I temporarily forgot themystery surrounding Gibarian's death and the uncertainty of my own future.

The different sections of the ocean were named after the scientists who had explored them. Iwas examining Thexall's swell, which surrounded the equatorial archipelagos, when I had asudden sensation of being watched.

I was still leaning over the map, but I no longer saw it; my limbs were in the grip of a sort ofparalysis. The crates and a small locker still barricaded the door, which was in front of me. It'sonly a robot, I told myself—yet I had not discovered any in the room and none could haveentered without my knowledge. My back and my neck seemed to be on fire; the sensation ofthis relentless, fixed stare was becoming unbearable. With my head shrinking between myhunched shoulders, I leant harder and harder against the table, until it began slowly to slideaway. The movement released me; I spun round.

The room was empty. There was nothing in front of me except the wide convex window and,beyond it, the night. But the same sensation persisted. The night stared me in the face,amorphous, blind, infinite, without frontiers. Not a single star relieved the darkness behind theglass. I pulled the thick curtains. I had been in the Station less than an hour, yet already I wasshowing signs of morbidity. Was it the effect of Gibarian's death? In so far as I knew him, Ihad imagined that nothing could shake his nerve: now, I was no longer so sure.

I stood in the middle of the room, beside the table. My breathing became more regular, I feltthe sweat chill on my forehead. What was it I had been thinking about a moment ago? Ah, yes,robots! It was surprising that I had not come across one anywhere on the Station. What couldhave become of them all? The only one with which I had been in contact—at a distance—belonged to the vehicle reception services. But what about the others?

I looked at my watch. It was time to rejoin Snow.

I left the room. The dome was feebly lit by luminous filaments running the length of theceiling. I went up to Gibarian's door and stood there, motionless. There was total silence. Igripped the handle. I had in fact no intention of going in, but the handle went down and thedoor opened, disclosing a chink of darkness. The lights went on. In one quick movement, Ientered and silently closed the door behind me. Then I turned round.

My shoulders brushed against the door panels. The room was larger than mine. A curtaindecorated with little pink and blue flowers (not regulation Station equipment, but no doubtbrought from Earth with his personal belongings) covered three-quarters of the panoramicwindow. Around the walls were bookshelves and cupboards, painted pale green with silveryhighlights. Both shelves and cupboards had been emptied of their contents, which were piledinto heaps, amongst the furniture. At my feet, blocking the way, were two overturned trolleysburied beneath a heap of periodicals spilling out of bulging brief cases which had burst open.

Books with their pages splayed out fanwise were stained with colored liquids which had spiltfrom broken retorts and bottles with corroded stoppers, receptacles made of such thick glassthat a single fall, even from a considerable height, could not have shattered them in such a way.

Beneath the window lay an overturned desk, an anglepoise lamp crumpled underneath it; twolegs of an upturned stool were stuck in the half-open drawers. A flood of papers of everyconceivable size swamped the floor. My interest quickened as I recognized Gibarian's handwriting.

As I stooped to gather together the loose sheets, I noticed that my hand was casting adouble shadow.

I straightened up. The pink curtain glowed brightly, traversed by a streak of incandescent,steely-blue light which was gradually widening. I pulled the curtain aside. An unbearable glareextended along the horizon, chasing before it an army of spectral shadows, which rose up fromamong the waves and dispersed in the direction of the Station. It was the dawn. After an hourof darkness the planet's second sun—the blue sun—was rising in the sky.

The automatic switch cut off the lights as I returned to the heap of papers. The first thing Icame across was a detailed description of an experiment, evidently decided upon three weeksbefore. Gibarian had planned to expose the plasma to an intensive bombardment of X-rays. Igathered from the context that the paper was addressed to Sartorius, whose job it was toorganize operations. What I was holding in my hand was a copy of the plan.

The whiteness of the paper hurt my eyes. This new day was different from the previous one. Inthe warm glow of the red sun, mists overhung a black ocean with blood-red reflections, andwaves, clouds and sky were almost constantly veiled in a crimson haze. Now, the blue sunpierced the flower-printed curtain with a crystalline light. My suntanned hands looked grey.

The room had changed; all the red-reflecting objects had lost their luster and had turned agreyish-brown, whereas those which were white, green and yellow had acquired a vividbrilliance and seemed to give off their own light. Screwing up my eyes, I risked another glancethrough a chink in the curtain: an expanse of molten metal trembled and shimmered under awhite-hot sky, I shut my eyes and drew back. On the shelf above the wash-basin (which hadrecently been badly chipped) I found a pair of dark glasses, so big that when I put them on theycovered half my face. The curtain appeared to glow with a sodium light. I went on reading,picking up the sheets of paper and arranging them on the only usable table. There were gaps inthe text, and I searched in vain for the missing pages.

I came across a report of experiments already carried out, and learned that, for four daysrunning, Gibarian and Sartorius had submitted the ocean to radiation at a point 1400 milesfrom the present position of the Station. The use of X-rays was banned by a UN convention,because of their harmful effects, and I was certain that no one had sent a request to Earth forauthorization to proceed with such experiments.

Looking up, I caught sight of my face in the mirror of a half-open locker door: masked by thedark glasses, it was deathly pale. The room, too, glinting with blue and white reflections,looked equally bizarre; but soon there came a prolonged screech of metal as the air-tight outershutters slid across the window. There was an instant of darkness, and then the lights came on;they seemed to me to be curiously dim. It grew hotter and hotter. The regular drone of the air-conditioning was now a high-pitched whine: the Station's refrigeration plant was running at fullcapacity. Nevertheless, the overpowering heat grew more and more intense.

I heard footsteps. Someone was walking through the dome. In two silent strides, I reached thedoor. The footsteps slowed down; whoever it was was behind it. The handle moved.

Automatically, without thinking, I gripped it. The pressure did not increase, but nor did it relax.

Neither of us, on either side of the door, said a word. We remained there, motionless, each ofus holding the handle. Suddenly it straightened up again, freeing itself from my grasp. Themuffled footsteps receded. With my ear glued to the panel, I went on listening. I heard nothingmore.