In the Ocean of Night Read Free

meaning of human action? In other words, can what we do really matter very much?
    I felt intuitively that to measure a man, or mankind, one must have a comparison. How we measure up against the very largest scale, the galactic, drew me to make the attempt. We’ll never know, of course, how well we fare, but it is very human to ask.
    July 2003

PART ONE
     
    2019
     
    From the
Encyclopaedia Britannica,
17th Edition, 2093:
Icarus
()
    Minor planet 1566. Had the most eccentric elliptic orbit of all the known asteroids (e = 0.83), the smallest semimajor axis (a = 1.08) and passed closest to the sun (28,000,000 kilometers). It was discovered by Walter Baade of Mt. Palomar Observatory in 1949. Its orbit extended from beyond Mars’s to within Mercury’s; it could approach to within 6,400,000 kilometers of the Earth. Radar observations showed it to have a diameter of about 0.8 kilometer and a rotation period of about 2.5 hours. The unusual orbit attracted only minor interest until June 2017, when Icarus suddenly began emitting a plume of gas and dust. Since it was presumably a typical rocky Apollo asteroid, this evolution into a cometary object excited the astronomical world. The oddity became of intense concern when calculations in October 2017 showed that the momentum transferred to the escaping cometary tail was altering the orbit of Icarus. This orbital perturbation could, within a few years, cause a portion of the comet to collide with the Earth. Impact of the tenuous gas would be harmless. But the head of the comet Icarus was by then obscured, and some conjectured that a solid core could remain, in which case …
    Icarus
    In Greek legend, the son of Daedalus. After Daedalus, an architect and sculptor, built the labyrinth for King Minos of Crete, he fell out of favor with the king. He fashioned wings of wax and feathers for himself and Icarus, and escaped to Sicily. Icarus, however, flew too near the sun and his wings melted; he fell into the sea and drowned. The island on which his body was washed ashore was later named Icaria. The legend is often invoked as a symbol of man’s quest for knowledge and fresh horizons, whatever the cost. Icarus was invoked in van Hoven’s masterwork, Icarus Descending (2017), as an emblem for the decline of Western cultural eminence …

ONE
     
    H e found the flying mountain by its shadow.
    Ahead the sun was dimmed by a swirling film of dust, and Nigel first saw Icarus at the tip of a lancing finger of shadow in the clouds.
    “The core is here,” he said over the radio. “It’s solid.” “You’re sure?” Len replied. His voice, filtered by sputtering radio noise, was thin and distant, though the
Dragon
module waited only a thousand kilometers away.
    “Yes. Something bloody big is casting a shadow through the dust and coma.”
    “Let me talk to Houston. Back in a sec, boy-o.” A humming blunted the silence. Nigel’s mouth felt soft, full of cotton: the thick-tongued sensation of mingled fear and excitement. He nudged his module toward the cone of shadow that pointed directly ahead, sunward, and adjusted attitude control. A pebble rattled against the aftersection.
    He entered the cone of shadow. The sun paled and then flickered as, ahead, a growing dot passed across its face. Nigel drifted, awash in yellow. Corona streamed and shimmered around a hard nugget of black: Icarus. He was the first man to see the asteroid in over two years. To observers on Earth its newborn cloak of thick dust and gas hid this solid center.
    “Nigel,” Len said quickly, “how fast are you closing?” “Hard to say.” The nugget had grown to the size of a nickel held at arm’s length. “I’m moving to the side, out of the shadow, just in case it comes up too fast.” Two stones rapped hollowly on the hull; the dust seemed thicker here, random fragments bled from Icarus to make the Flare Tail.
    “Yeah, Houston just suggested that. Any magnetic field reading?”
    “Not—wait, I’ve just picked up