Uniting from the Universe, the astronauts buckled to the cable connecting the ships and pushed back from the cladding.
- Have a rest, Walter, - said Brylovsky. - Don't turn on the accelerators, the inertia will do everything for us.
Kurnow, who passed the test for controlling the extreme accelerators hidden in his "legs" on the simulator for a solid three, was, according to him, throwing up, forcing his shell to hesitate in the opposite phase.
All this time they were being watched by the others. Someone prepared and picked up the equipment for their exit, someone ran the ship, and Dr. Floyd had a very important task - to watch.
The fact is that back in 2001, after receiving the Message from the Sphere, he and his colleagues found out that all those present had recorded about the same memory dump. But only a few people could understand something. But then, when they compared visions and discussed them, they understood that it is still possible to pull out an incomprehensible part of the message - by associations. How Floyd managed to understand that the strange figure from his memory meant the form of a radio wave, only after this brainstorming session.
Alas, with the rest of the message, no one got along. Some of the thoughts they expressed led to a number of ideas, but that's all. Psychologists were not discouraged, and from time to time threw up new ground for associations, but never guessed.
Actually, that's why he was here. Perhaps a stranger's ship will push him to another piece of memory. But for now, alas.
Finally, the travelers turned around, touched the "feet" of someone else's metal, sat down, briefly puffed up the orientation engines, extinguishing the desire to push back...
- Nothing special, I've already seen it all, - Walter, who's cheered up, said, grabbing on to someone else's ship. - Let's go inside.
- Smith, Miss Eve, you'd be interested in seeing the structure of the ship's shell and frame. Here, in the cross-section, they even seem strange to me. - He said almost immediately.
For some time, they wandered through the ship's deaf, dark and empty corridors. Even though there were not many of them... But still.
We broke into a few enclosed spaces - the materials used by others to make the interior bulkheads still succumbed to plasma cutters. However, it was dark and deaf there too.
And finally...
- Miss Elizabeth, Miss Rudenko, I don't think there are any materials here for you, - Kurnow said. He stepped into the open hole of the next passageway and silenced the half-word.
Floyd stared into the picture from his cameras.
- But for you, Dr. Floyd, I think there's something.
- I recognize it! - Heywood Floyd whispered amazingly.
There were more of them on their second expedition. Onboard Universe there were only medics and two astronauts - Semyonovich and Tsung. The rest landed on the Artifact.
Heywood Floyd, driven by an obscure desire, got to the room that caused such a reaction in the memory, stood on the ground in front of a certain remote control and put the manipulators on two disks.
Kurnow and Brailowski behind him were following him with interest.
- What happened, Dr. Floyd? - Max asked when Haywood stood still for more than a minute.
- I don't understand. I mean, I know I have to direct something there, but... I can't! Damn it, I have nothing to direct!
- Doctor, you have contacts on the manipulators. Give it electricity, at the worst, - Brailowski said.
- This won't help. Everything was for nothing. - He sighed and took a step back. He sighed and stepped back. He turned to the side and approached the wall.
- It was a bad replacement, but at least something," he said sarcastically, tearing off a piece of interior cladding. Behind him, a flat object almost disappeared unnoticed by others. A frame, a painting, a tablet... It is not clear.
Floyd wiped the top, cloudy and opaque layer off the device, looked at it critically and turned to his comrades.
- Kurnow now looked confused, too. Floyd looked at the plate and realized the reason - now that it was lit on one side of the lantern, it turned out that inside, in the "glass", there was an image. A hologram.
A strange living being. Perhaps even humanoid. It's hard to say when only the head is visible from it, and the image itself is blurred. But it was possible to say from the portrait that the creature looks very... cute. The big, dark, shiny eyes attracted the eye, and the blurry flyer hid the flaws and most of the details.
- Wait a minute, Dr. Floyd, - Kurnow came up and leaned over the picture, looking at it through his visor. - Something reminds me of that... That's right, ha! Holographic memory! You have to make a copy and load computers. Surely there is something interesting.
- Yeah, a farewell message from my beloved, - Floyd joked. - A lot of snot, not a drop of reasonable information, and even in a language that is not available for millions of years.
- Not millions, Doctor, - material scientists responded from the cladding. - The ship, of course, was here for a long time - but it is thousands of years old, not more than a dozen, not millions.
- So it's too new for me to remember anything about it. - He answered with tired sneer. - I think I'll go back to astronomy.
- Of course, Doctor.
