2061: Odyssey Three by Arthur C. Clarke Page B

the comet. Before long, the scientists were scrambling all over the crater, collecting specimens of its (completely sterile, alas) multi-coloured minerals, and casually thrusting their thermometers and sampling tubes into the soaring water-ice-mist column itself. ‘If it tosses any of you out into space,’ warned the Captain, ‘don’t expect to be rescued in a hurry. In fact, we may just wait until you come back.’
    ‘What does he mean by that?’ a puzzled Dimitri Mihailovich had asked. As usual, Victor Willis was quick with the answer.
    ‘Things don’t always happen the way you’d expect in celestial mechanics. Anything thrown off Halley at a reasonable speed will still be moving in essentially the same orbit - it takes a huge velocity change to make a big differenc. So one revolution later, the two orbits will intersect again - and you’ll be right back where you started. Seventy-six years older, of course.’
    Not far from Old Faithful was another phenomenon which no-one could reasonably have anticipated. When they first observed it, the scientists could scarcely believe their eyes. Spread out across several hectares of Halley, exposed to the vacuum of space, was what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary lake, remarkable only for its extreme blackness.
    Obviously, it could not be water; the only liquids which could be stable in this environment were heavy organic oils or tars. In fact, ‘Lake Tuonela’ turned out to be more like pitch, quite solid except for a sticky surface layer less than a millimetre thick. In this negligible gravity, it must have taken years - perhaps several trips round the warming fires of the Sun - for it to have assumed its present mirror-flatness.
    Until the Captain put a stop to it, the lake became one of the principal tourist attractions on Halley’s Comet. Someone (nobody claimed the dubious honour) discovered that it was possible to walk perfectly normally across it, almost as if on Earth; the surface film had just enough adhesion to hold the foot in place. Before long, most of the crew had got themselves videoed apparently walking on water…
    Then Captain Smith inspected the airlock, discovered the walls liberally stained with tar, and gave the nearest thing to a display of anger that anyone had ever witnessed from him.
    ‘It’s bad enough,’ he said through clenched teeth, ‘having the outside of the ship coated with - soot. Halley’s Comet is about the filthiest place I’ve ever seen…’
    After that, there were no more strolls on Lake Tuonela.

2061: Odissey Three
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2061: Odissey Three
    At the End of the Tunnel
    In a small, self-contained universe where everyone knows everyone else, there can be no greater shock than encountering a total stranger.
    Heywood Floyd was floating gently along the corridor to the main lounge when he had this disturbing experience. He stared in amazement at the interloper, wondering how a stowaway had managed to avoid detection for so long. The other man looked back at him with a combination of embarrassment and bravado, obviously waiting for Floyd to speak first.
    ‘Well, Victor!’ he said at last. ‘Sorry I didn’t recognize you. So you’ve made the supreme sacrifice, for the cause of science - or should I say your public?’
    ‘Yes,’ Willis answered grumpily. ‘I did manage to squeeze into one helmet - but the damn bristles made so many scratching noises no-one could hear a word I said.’
    ‘When are you going out?’
    ‘Just as soon as Cliff comes back - he’s gone caving with Bill Chant.’
    The first flybys of the comet, in 1986, had suggested that it was considerably less dense than water -which could only mean that it was either made of very porous material, or was riddled with cavities. Both explanations turned out to be correct.
    At first, the ever-cautious Captain Smith flatly forbade any cave-exploring. He finally relented when Dr Pendrill reminded him that his chief assistant Dr Chant was an experienced