Arthur C Clarke - 2061: A treia odisee spatiala

Arthur C Clarke - 2061: A treia odisee spatiala
(2061: Odyssey Three)

(1987, 168pg, ro)

In 2061, at the age of 103, Floyd is chosen as one of several "celebrity guests" to come aboard the spaceliner Universe for the first-ever human landing on the surface of Halley's Comet, when it makes its periodic pass through the solar system. Meanwhile, a team of scientists on Ganymede are terraforming the moon. Scientist Rolf van der Berg, a second-generation Afrikaner refugee, studies pictures of Mount Zeus and determines that it is in fact one enormous diamond. He communicates his discovery to his uncle Paul Kreuger and decide that van der Berg will get aboard the Galaxy on its flyby of Europa to investigate.

As Galaxy nears Europa, a militant anti-Afrikaner USSA operative hijacks the ship forcing Galaxy to crash into Europa's ocean. She commits suicide and the rest of the crew lives stranded in their ship unable to forage, after they discover that Earth and Europan biology are incompatible. Universe receives the news that Galaxy needs rescue from Europa.

Van der Berg and Chris take the shuttle William Tsung (nicknamed Bill Tee) to study Mount Zeus, the wreck of the Chinese spacecraft Tsien, and the enormous monolith lying on its side at the border between the dayside and nightside, dubbed the Great Wall. Near Mount Zeus, van der Berg relays the message "LUCY IS HERE" to his uncle Paul, verifying that Mount Zeus is indeed one large diamond. The code word "Lucy" was chosen both in reference to the mini-sun Lucifer and to an article in the journal Nature in 1981 hypothesizing that the cores of Uranus and Neptune were in fact diamonds the size of Earth (caused by the compression of carbon), with the hypothesis making a logical extension to Jupiter. The article was subtitled "Diamonds in the Sky?" in reference to the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". Mount Zeus is a fragment of Jupiter's core which survived the creation of Lucifer and later struck Europa.