“At last the planned organization of life put an end to the murderous race for higher speeds, the construction of faster and faster vehicles. Trains on the Spiral Way proceed at 200 kilometres an hour. Only on rare occasions do we use aircraft with a speed of thousands of kilometres an hour.
“A few centuries ago we made extensive improvements to the surface of our planet. The energy of the atomic nucleus had been discovered long before, in the Fission Age, when man learned to liberate a tiny part of its energy to produce a burst of heat but with the harmful radiation of the fall-out. It was soon realized that this meant danger to life on the planet and nuclear power possibilities were greatly curtailed. Almost at the same time astronomers studying the physics of distant stars discovered two new ways of obtaining nuclear energy, Q and F, that were more effective than the old methods and involved no harmful radiation.
“These two methods are now in use on Earth although our spaceships use another form of nuclear energy, the anameson fuel, that became known to us from our observations of the great stars of the Galaxy through the Great Circle.
“It was decided to destroy all the stocks of thermo-’nuclear materials that had been accumulating a long time — radioactive isotopes of uranium, thorium, hydrogen, cobalt and lithium — as soon as a method of ejecting them beyond Earth’s atmosphere had been devised.
“In the Age of Realignment artificial suns were made and ‘hung’ over the north and south polar regions. These greatly reduced the size of the polar ice-caps that had been formed during the ice ages of the Quaternary Period and brought about extensive climatic changes. The level of the oceans was raised by seven metres, the cold fronts receded sharply and the ring of trade winds that had dried up the deserts on the outskirts of the tropic zone became much weaker. Hurricanes and, in general, stormy weather manifestations ceased almost completely.
“The warm steppelands spread almost as far as the sixtieth parallels north and south and beyond them the grasslands and forests of the temperate zone passed the seventieth parallels.
“Three-quarters of the Antarctic Continent was freed from ice and proved a treasure-house of minerals that were invaluable because resources on the other continents had been almost completely exhausted by the reckless destruction of metals in the universal wars of the past. The Spiral Way was completed by carrying it across the Antarctic.
“Before this radical change in climate had been achieved canals had been dug and mountain chains had had passages cut through them to balance out the circulation of air and water on the planet. Even the high mountain deserts of Asia had been irrigated by constantly operating dielectric pumps.
“The potential output of foodstuffs had grown very considerably and new lands had become habitable.
“The frail and dangerous old planetships, poor as they were, enabled us to reach the other planets of our system. Earth was encircled by a belt of artificial satellites from which scientists were able to make a close study of the Cosmos. And then, eight hundred and eight years ago, there occurred an event of such great importance that it marked a new era in the history of mankind — the Era of the Great Circle.
“For a long time the human intellect had laboured over the transmission of images, sounds and energy over great distances. Hundreds of thousands of the most talented scientists worked in a special organization that still bears the name of the Academy of Direct Radiation. They evolved methods for the directed transmission of energy over great distances without any form of conductor. This became possible when ways were found to concentrate the stream of energy in non-divergent rays. The clusters of parallel rays then transmitted provided constant communication with the artificial satellites, and, therefore, with the Cosmos. Long, long ago, towards the end of the Era of Disunity, our scientists established the fact that powerful radiation streams were pouring on to Earth from the Cosmos. Calls from the Cosmos and the transmission round the Great Circle of the Universe were reaching us together with radiation from the other constellations and galaxies. At that time we did not understand them although we had learned to receive the mysterious signals which we, at that time, thought to be natural radiation.
“Kam Amat, an Indian scientist, got the idea of conducting experiments from the satellites with television receivers and with infinite patience tried all possible wavelength combinations over a period of dozens of years.
“Kam Amat caught a transmission from the planetary system of the binary star that had long been known as 61 Cygni. There appeared on the screen a man, who was not like us but was undoubtedly a man, and he pointed to an inscription made in the symbols of the Great Circle. Another ninety years passed before the inscription was read and today it is inscribed in our language, the language of Earth, on a monument to Kam Amat: ‘Greetings to you, our brothers, who are joining our family. Separated by space and time we are united by intellect in the Circle of Great Power.’1
“The language of symbols, drawings and maps used by the Great Circle proved easy to assimilate at the level of development then reached by man. In two hundred years we were able to use translation machines to converse with the planetary systems of the nearest stars and to receive and transmit whole pictures of the varied life of different worlds. We recently received an answer from the fourteen planets of Deneb, a first magnitude star and tremendous centre of life in the Cygnus; it is 122 parsecs distant from us and radiates as much light as 4,800 of our suns. Intellectual development there has proceeded on different lines but has reached a very high level.
“Strange pictures and symbols come from immeasurable distances, from the ancient worlds, from the globular clusters of our Galaxy and from the huge inhabited area around the Galactic Centre, but we do not understand them, and have not yet deciphered them. They have been recorded by the memory machines and passed on to the Academy of the Bounds of Knowledge, an institution that works on problems that our science can as yet only hint at. We are trying to understand ideas that are far from us, millions of years ahead of us, ideas that differ very greatly from ours due to life there having followed different paths of development.”
Veda Kong turned away from the screen into which she had been staring as though hypnotized and cast an inquiring glance at Darr Veter. He smiled and nodded his head in approval. Veda proudly raised her head, stretched out her arms to those invisible and unknown beings who would receive her words and her image thirteen years later.
“Such is our history, such is the difficult, devious and lengthy ascent we have made to the heights of knowledge. We appeal to you — join us in the Great Circle to carry to the ends of the tremendous Universe the gigantic power of the intellect!”
Veda’s voice had a triumphant sound to it, as though it were filled with the strength of all the generations of the people of Earth who had reached such heights that they now aspired to send their thoughts beyond the bounds of their own Galaxy to other stellar islands in the Universe….
The bronze gong sounded as Darr Veter turned over the lever that switched off the stream of transmitted energy. The screen went dark. The luminescent column of the conductor channel remained on the transparent panel on the right.
Veda, tired and subdued, curled up in the depths of her armchair. Darr Veter turned the control desk over to Mven Mass and leaned over his shoulder to watch him at work. The absolute silence was broken only by the faint clicks of switches opening and closing.
Suddenly the screen in the gold frame disappeared and its place was taken by unbelievable depths of space. It was the first time that Veda Kong had seen this marvel and she gasped loudly. Even those well acquainted with the method of the complex interference of light waves by means of which this exceptional expanse and depth of vision was achieved, found the spectacle amazing.