Stanislaw Lem - Solaris

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Solaris
by Stanislaw Lem(1961)
translated from the French by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox(1970)
Version 1.0
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1 The Arrival
CHAPTER 2 The Solarists
CHAPTER 3 The Visitors
CHAPTER 4 Sartorius
CHAPTER 5 Rheya
CHAPTER 6 "The Little Apocrypha"
CHAPTER 7 The Conference
CHAPTER 8 The Monsters
CHAPTER 9 The Liquid Oxygen
CHAPTER 10 Conversation
CHAPTER 11 The Thinkers
CHAPTER 12 The Dreams
CHAPTER 13 Victory
CHAPTER 14 The Old Mimoid
1 THE ARRIVAL
At 19.00 hours, ship's time, I made my way to the launching bay. The men
around the shaft stood aside to let me pass, and I climbed down into the
capsule.
Inside the narrow cockpit, there was scarcely room to move. I attached
the hose to the valve on my spacesuit and it inflated rapidly. From then on,
I was incapable of making the smallest movement. There I stood, or rather
hung suspended, enveloped in my pneumatic suit and yoke to the metal hull.
I looked up; through the transparent canopy I could see a smooth,
polished wall and, far above, Moddard's head leaning over the top of the
shaft. He vanished, and suddenly I was plunged in darkness: the heavy
protective cone had been lowered into place. Eight times I heard the hum of
the electric motors which turned the screws, followed by the hiss of the
shock-absorbers. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, I could see the
luminous circle of the solitary dial.
A voice echoed in my headphones:
"Ready Kelvin?"
"Ready, Moddard," I answered.
"Don't worry about a thing. The Station will pick you up in flight.
Have a good trip!"
There was a grinding noise and the capsule swayed. My muscles tensed in
spite of myself, but there was no further noise or movement.
"When is lift-off?" As I asked, I noticed a rustling outside, like a
shower of fine sand.
"You're on your way, Kelvin. Good luck!" Moddard's voice sounded as
close as before.
A wide slit opened at eye-level, and I could see the stars. The
_Prometheus_ was orbiting in the region of Alpha in Aquarius and I tried in
vain to orient myself; a glittering dust filled my porthole. I could not
recognize a single constellation; in this region of the galaxy the sky was
unfamiliar to me. I waited for the moment when I would pass near the first
distinct star, but I was unable to isolate any one of them. Their brightness
was fading; they receded, merging into a vague, purplish glimmer, the sole
indication of the distance I had already travelled. My body rigid, sealed in
its pneumatic envelope, I was knifing through space with the impression of
standing still in the void, my only distraction the steadily mounting heat.
Suddenly, there was a shrill, grating sound, like a steel blade being
drawn across a sheet of wet glass. This was it, the descent. If I had not
seen the figures racing across the dial, I would not have noticed the change
in direction. The stars having vanished long since, my gaze was swallowed up
on the pale reddish glow of infinity. I could hear my heart thudding heavily.
I could feel the coolness from the air-conditioning on my neck, although my
face seemed to be on fire. I regretted not having caught a glimpse of the
_Prometheus_, but the ship must have been out of sight by the time the
automatic controls had raised the shutter of my porthole.
The capsule was shaken by a sudden jolt, then another. The whole vehicle
began to vibrate. Filtered through the insulating layers of the outer skins,
penetrating my pneumatic cocoon, the vibration reached me, and ran through my
entire body. The image of the dial shivered and multiplied, and its
phosphorescence spread out in all directions. I felt no fear. I had not
undertaken this long voyage only to overshoot my target!
I called into the microphone:
"Station Solaris! Station Solaris! Station Solaris! I think I am
leaving the flight-path, correct my course! Station Solaris, this is the
_Prometheus_ capsule. Over."
I had missed the precious moment when the planet first came into view.
Now it was spread out before my eyes; flat, and already immense.
Nevertheless, from the appearance of its surface, I judged that I was still at
a great height above it, since I had passed that imperceptible frontier after
which we measure the distance that separates us from a celestial body in terms
of altitude. I was falling. Now I had the sensation of falling, even with my
eyes closed. (I quickly reopened them: I did not want to miss anything there
was to be seen.)
I waited a moment in silence before trying once more to make contact. No
response. Successive bursts of static came through the headphones, against a
background of deep, low-pitched murmuring, which seemed to me the very voice
of the planet itself. A veil of mist covered the orange-colored sky,
obscuring the porthole. Instinctively, I hunched myself up as much as my
inflated suit would allow, but almost at once I realized that I was passing
through cloud. Then, as though sucked upwards, the cloud-mass lifted; I was
gliding, half in light, half in shadow, the capsule revolving upon its own
vertical axis. At last, through the porthole, the gigantic ball of the sun
appeared, looming up on the left and disappearing to the right.
A distant voice reached me through the murmuring and crackling.
"Station Solaris calling! Station Solaris calling! The capsule will
land at zero-hour. I repeat, the capsule will land at zero-hour. Stand by
for count-down. Two hundred and fifty, two hundred and forty-nine, two
hundred and forty-eight . . ."
The words were punctuated by sharp screeching sounds; automatic equipment
was intoning the phrases of the reception-drill. This was surprising, to say
the least. As a rule, men on space stations were eager to greet a newcomer,
especially if he was arriving direct from Earth. I did not have long to
ponder this, for the sun's orbit, which had so far encircled me, shifted
unexpectedly, and the incandescent disc appeared now to the right, now to the
left, seeming to dance on the planet's horizon. I was swinging like a giant
pendulum while the planet, its surface wrinkled with purplish-blue and black
furrows, rose up in front of me like a wall. As my head began to spin, I
caught sight of a tiny pattern of green and white dots; it was the station's
positioning-marker. Something detached itself with a snap from the cone of
the capsule; with a fierce jerk, the long parachute collar released its hoops,
and the noise which followed reminded me irresistibly of Earth: for the first
time after so many months, the moaning of the wind.
Everything went quickly after this. So far, I had known that I must be
falling; now I could see it for myself. The green and white checker-board
grew rapidly larger and I could see that it was painted on an elongated
silvery body, shaped like a whale, its flanks bristling with radar antennae.
This metal colossus, which was pierced with several rows of shadowy apertures,
was not resting on the planet itself but suspended above it, casting upon the
inky surface beneath an ellipsoidal shadow of even deeper blackness. I could
make out the slate-colored ripples of the ocean, stirring with a faint motion.
Suddenly, the clouds rose to a great height, rimmed with a blinding crimson
glare; the lurid sky became grey, distant and flat; everything was blotted
out; I was falling in a spin.
A sharp jolt, and the capsule righted itself. Through the porthole, I
could see the ocean once more, the waves like crests of glittering
quicksilver. The hoops of the parachute, their cords snapped, flapped
furiously over the waves, carried on the wind. The capsule gently descended,
swaying with a peculiar slow-motion rhythm imposed on it by the artificial
magnetic field; there was just time to glimpse the launchingpads and the
parabolic reflectors of two radio-telescopes on top of their pierced-steel
towers.
With the clang of steel rebounding against steel, the capsule came to a
stop. A hatch opened, and with a long, harsh sigh, the metal shell which
imprisoned me reached the end of its voyage.
I heard the mechanical voice from the control center:
"Station Solaris. Zero and zero. The capsule has landed. Out."
Feeling a vague pressure on my chest and a disagreeable heaviness in the
pit of my stomach, I seized the control levers with both hands and cut the
contacts. A green indicator lit up: 'ARRIVAL.' The capsule opened, and the
pneumatic padding shoved me gently from behind, so that, in order to keep my
balance, I had to take a step forward.
With a muffled sigh of resignation, the spacesuit expelled its air. I
was free.
I found myself inside a vast, silver funnel, as high as a cathedral nave.
A cluster of colored pipes ran down the sloping walls and disappeared into
rounded orifices. I turned round. The ventilation shafts were roaring,
sucking in the poisonous gases from the planet's atmosphere which had
infiltrated when my capsule had landed inside the Station. Empty, resembling
a burst cocoon, the cigar-shaped capsule stood upright, enfolded by a calyx
mounted on a steel base. The outer casing, scorched during flight, had turned
a dirty brown.
I went down a small stairway. The metal floor below had been coated with
a heavy-duty plastic. In places, the wheels of trolleys carrying rockets had
worn through this plastic covering to expose the bare steel beneath.
The throbbing of the ventilators ceased abruptly and there was total
silence. I looked around me, a little uncertain, waiting for someone to
appear; but there was no sign of life. Only a neon arrow glowed, pointing
towards a moving walkway which was silently unreeling. I allowed myself to be
carried forward.
The ceiling of the hall descended in a fine parabolic arc until it
reached the entrance to a gallery, in whose recesses gas cylinders, gauges,
parachutes, crates and a quantity of other objects were scattered about in
untidy heaps.
The moving walkway set me down at the far end of the gallery, on the
threshold of a dome. Here there was an even greater disorder. A pool of oily
liquid spread out from beneath a pile of oil-drams; a nauseating smell hung in
the air; footprints, in a series of glutinous smears, went off in all
directions. The oil-drums were covered with a tangle of tickertape, torn
paper and other waste.
Another green arrow directed me to the central door. Behind this
stretched a narrow corridor, hardly wide enough for two men to walk side by
side, lit by slabs of glass let into the ceiling. Then another door, painted
in green and white squares, which was ajar; I went in.
The cabin had concave walls and a big panoramic window, which a glowing
mist had tinged with purple. Outside the murky waves slid silently past.
Open cupboards lined the walls, filled with instruments, books, dirty glasses,
vacuum flasks — all covered with dust. Five or six small trolleys and some
collapsible chairs cluttered up the stained floor. One chair alone was
inflated, its back raised. In this armchair there was a little thin man, his
face burnt by the sun, the skin on his nose and cheeks coming away in large
flakes. I recognized him as Snow, a cybernetics expert and Gibarian's deputy.
In his time he had published articles of great originality in the Solarist
Annual. It so happened that I had never had the opportunity of meeting him.
He was wearing a mesh shirt which allowed the grey hairs of his sunken chest
to poke through here and there, and canvas trousers with a great many pockets,
mechanic's trousers, which had once been white but now were stained at the
knees and covered with holes from chemical burns. He was holding one of those
pear-shaped plastic flasks which are used in spaceships not equipped with
internal gravitational systems. Snow's eyes widened in amazement as he looked
up and saw me. The flask dropped from his fingers and bounced several times,
spilling a few drops of transparent liquid. Blood drained from his face. I
was too astonished to speak, and this dumbshow continued for so long that
Snow's terror gradually communicated itself to me. I took a step forward. He
cringed in his chair.
"Snow?"
He quivered as though I had struck him. Gazing at me in indescribable
horror, he gasped out:
"I don't know . . ." His voice croaked. "I don't know you . . . What do
you want?"
The spilt liquid was quickly evaporating; I caught a whiff of alcohol.
Had he been drinking? Was he drunk? What was he so terrified of? I stood in
the middle of the room; my legs were trembling; my ears roared, as though they
were stuffed with cotton wool. I had the impression that the ground was
giving way beneath my feet. Beyond the curved window, the ocean rose and fell
with regularity. Snow's blood-shot eyes never left me. His terror seemed to
have abated, but his expression of invincible disgust remained.
"What's the matter? Are you ill?" I whispered.
"You seem worried," he said, his voice hollow. "You actually seem
worried . . . So it's like that now, is it? But why concern yourself about
me? I don't know you."
"Where's Gibarian?" I asked.
He gave a gasp and his glassy eyes lit up for an instant.
"Gi . . . Giba . . . No! No!"
His whole frame shook with stifled, hysterical laughter; then he seemed
to calm down a little.
"So it's Gibarian you've come for, is it? Poor old Gibarian. What do
you want with him?" His words, or rather his tone of voice, expressed hatred
and defiance; it was as though I had suddenly ceased to represent a threat to
him.
Bewildered, I mumbled: "What . . . Where is he?"
"Don't you know?"
Obviously he was drunk and raving. My anger rose. I should have
controlled myself and left the room, but I had lost patience. I shouted:
"That's enough! How could I know where he is since I've only just
arrived? Snow! What's going on here?" His jaw dropped. Once again he
caught his breath and his eyes gleamed with a different light. He seized the
arms of his chair with both hands and stood up with difficulty. His knees
were trembling.
"What? You've just arrived . . . Where have you come from?" he asked,
almost sober.
"From Earth!" I retorted angrily. "Maybe you've heard of it? Not that
anyone would ever guess it."
"From Earth? Good God! Then you must be Kelvin."
"Of course. Why are you looking at me like that? What's so startling
about me?"
He blinked rapidly.
"Nothing," he said, wiping his forehead, "nothing, Forgive me, Kelvin,
it's nothing, I assure you. I was simply surprised, I didn't expect to see
you."
"What do you mean, you didn't expect to see me? You were notified
months ago, and Moddard radioed only today from the _Prometheus_."
"Yes; yes, indeed. Only, you see, we're a bit disorganized at the
moment."
"So I see," I answered dryly.
Snow walked around me, inspecting my atmosphere suit, which was standard
issue with the usual harness of wires and cables attached to the chest. He
coughed, and rubbed his bony nose:
"Perhaps you would like a bath? It would do you good. It’s the blue
door, on the other side.”
"Thanks — I know the Station lay-out."
"You must be hungry."
"No. Where's Gibarian?"
Without answering, he went over to the window. From behind he looked
considerably older. His close-cropped hair was grey, and deep wrinkles
creased his sunburnt neck.
The wave-crests glinted through the window, the colossal rollers rising
and falling in slow-motion. Watching the ocean like this one had the illusion
— it was surely an illusion — that the Station was moving imperceptibly, as
though teetering on an invisible base; then it would seem to recover its
equilibrium, only to lean the opposite way with the same lazy movement. Thick
foam, the color of blood, gathered in the troughs of the waves. For a
fraction of a second, my throat tightened and I thought longingly of the
_Prometheus_ and its strict discipline; the memory of an existence which
suddenly seemed a happy one, now gone forever.
Snow turned around, nervously rubbing his hands together.
"Listen," he said abruptly, "except for me there's no one around for the
moment. You'll have to make do with my company for today. Call me Ratface;
don't argue. You know me by my photograph, just imagine we're old friends.
Everyone calls me Ratface, there's nothing I can do about it."
Obstinately, I repeated my question:
"Where is Gibarian?"
He blinked again.
"I'm sorry to have received you like that. It's . . . it's not exactly
my fault. I had completely forgotten . . . A lot has been happening here, you
see . . ."
"It's all right. But what about Gibarian? Isn't he on the Station? Is
he on an observation flight?"
Snow was gazing at a tangled mass of cables.
"No, he hasn't left the Station. And he won't be flying. The fact is .
. . ."
My ears were still blocked, and I was finding it more and more difficult
to hear.
"What? What do you mean? Where is he then?"
"I should think you might guess," he answered in a changed voice, looking
me coldly in the eyes. I shivered. He was drunk, but he knew what he was
saying.
"There's been an accident?"
He nodded vigorously, watching my reactions closely.
"When?"
"This morning, at dawn."
By now, my sensations were less violent; this succinct exchange of
questions and answers had calmed me. I was beginning to understand Snow's
strange behavior.
"What kind of accident?"
"Why not go to your cabin and take off your spacesuit? Come back in,
say, an hour's time."
I hesitated.
"All right," I said finally.
As I made to leave, he called me back.
"Wait!" He had an uneasy look, as if he wanted to add something but was
finding it difficult to bring out the words. After a pause, he said:
"There used to be three of us here. Now, with you, there are three of us
again. Do you know Sartorius?"
"In the same way as I knew you — only from his photographs."
"He's up there, in the laboratory, and I doubt if he'll come down before
dark, but . . . In any case, you'll recognize him. If you should see anyone
else — someone who isn't me or Sartorius, you understand, then . . ."
"Then what?"
I must be dreaming. All this could only be a dream! The inky waves,
their crimson gleams under the low-hanging sun, and this little man who had
gone back to his armchair, sitting there as before, hanging his head and
staring at the heap of cables.
"In that case, do nothing."
"Who could I see?" I flared up. "A ghost?"
"You think I'm mad, of course. No, no, I'm not mad. I can't say
anything more for the moment. Perhaps . . . who knows? . . . Nothing will
happen. But don't forget I warned you."
"Don't be so mysterious. What's all this about?"
"Keep a hold on yourself. Be prepared to meet . . . anything. It sounds
impossible I know, but try. It's the only advice I can give you. I can't
think of anything better."
"But what could I possibly meet?" I shouted.
Seeing him sitting there, looking sideways at me, his sunburnt face
drooping with fatigue, I found it difficult to contain myself. I wanted to
grab him by the shoulders and shake him.
Painfully, dragging the words out one by one, he answered:
"I don't know. In a way, it depends on you."
"Hallucinations, you mean?"
"No . . . it's real enough. Don't attack. Whatever you do, remember
that!"
"What are you getting at?" I could hardly recognize the sound of my own
voice.
"We're not on Earth, you know."
"A Polytherian form?" I shouted. "There's nothing human about them!"
I was about to rush at him, to drag him out of the trance, prompted,
apparently, by his crazy theories, when he murmured:
"That's why they're so dangerous. Remember what I've told you, and be on
your guard!"
"What happened to Gibarian?"
He did not answer.
"What is Sartorius doing?"
"Come back in an hour."
I turned and went out. As I closed the door behind me, I took a last
look at him. Tiny, shrunken, his head in his hands and his elbows resting on
his stained knees, he sat there, motionless. It was only then that I noticed
the dried bloodstains on the backs of his hands.
2 THE SOLARISTS
In the empty corridor I stood for a moment in front of the closed door.
I noticed a strip of plaster carelessly stuck on one of the panels. Pencilled
on it was the word "Man!" At the sight of this faintly scribbled word, I had
a sudden longing to return to Snow for company; but I thought better of it.
His crazy warnings still ringing in my ears, I started off down the
narrow, tubular passage which was filled with the moaning of the wind, my
shoulders bowed under the weight of the spacesuit. On tip-toe, half-
consciously fleeing from some invisible watcher, I found two doors on my left
and two more on my right. I read the occupants' names: Dr. Gibarian, Dr.
Snow, Dr. Sartorius. On the fourth, there was no nameplate. I hesitated,
then pressed the handle down gently and slowly opened the door. As I did so,
I had a premonition, amounting almost to a certainty, that there was someone
inside. I went in.
There was no one. Another wide panoramic window, almost as large as the
one in the cabin where I had found Snow, overhung the ocean, which, sunlit on
this side, shone with an oleaginous gleam, as though the waves secreted a
reddish oil. A crimson glow pervaded the whole room, whose lay-out suggested
a ship's cabin. On one side, flanked by book-filled shelves, a retractable
bed stood against the wall. On the other, between the numerous lockers, hung
nickel frames enclosing a series of aerial photographs stuck end to end with
adhesive tape, and racks full of test-tubes and retorts plugged with cotton-
wool. Two tiers of white enamel boxes took up the space beneath the window.
I lifted some of the lids; the boxes were crammed with all kinds of
instruments, intertwined with plastic tubing. The corners of the room were
occupied by a refrigerator, a tap and a demisting device. For lack of space
on the big table by the window, a microscope stood on the floor. Turning
round, I saw a tall locker beside the entrance door. It was half-open, filled
with atmosphere suits, laboratory smocks, insulated aprons, underclothing,
boots for planetary exploration, and aluminum cylinders: portable oxygen gear.
Two sets of this equipment, complete with masks, hung down from one of the
knobs of the vertical bed. Everywhere there was the same chaos, a general
disorder which someone had made a hasty attempt to disguise. I sniffed the
air. I could detect a faint smell of chemical reagents and traces of
something more acrid — chlorine? Instinctively I searched the ceiling for the
grills over the air-vents: strips of paper attached to the bars were
fluttering gently; the air was circulating normally. In order to make a
relatively free space around the bed, between the bookshelves and the locker,
I cleared two chairs of their litter of books, instruments, and tools, which I
piled haphazardly on the other side of the room.
I pulled out a bracket to hang up my spacesuit, took hold of the zip-
fastener, then let go again. Deterred by the confused idea that I was
depriving myself of a shield, I could not bring myself to remove it. Once
more I looked round the room. I checked that the door was shut tight and that
it had no lock, and after a brief hesitation I dragged some of the heaviest
boxes to the doorway. Having built this temporary barricade, I freed myself
from my clanking armor in three quick movements. A narrow looking-glass,
built into the locker door, reflected part of the room, and out of the corner
of my eye I caught sight of something moving. I jumped, but it was only my
own reflection. Underneath the spacesuit, my overalls were drenched with
sweat. I took them off and pulled back a sliding door, revealing the bright-
tiled walls of a small bathroom. A long, flat box lay in the hollow at the
base of the shower; I carried it into the room. As I put it down, the
springlid flew up and disclosed a number of compartments filled with strange
objects: misshapen forms in a dark metal, grotesque replicas of the
instruments in the racks. Not one of the tools was usable; they were blunted,
distorted, melted, as though they had been in a furnace. Strangest of all,
even the porcelain handles, virtually incombustible, were twisted out of
shape. Even at maximum temperature, no laboratory furnace could have melted
them; only, perhaps, an atomic pile. I took a Geiger counter from the pocket
on my spacesuit, but when I held it over the debris, it remained dumb.
By now I was wearing nothing but my underwear. I tore it off, flung it
across the room and dashed under the shower. The shock of the water did me
good. Turning beneath the scalding, needle-sharp jets, I scrubbed myself
vigorously, splashing the walls, expelling, eradicating from my skin the thick
scum of morbid apprehensions which had pervaded me since my arrival.
I rummaged in the locker and found a work-suit which could also be worn
under an atmosphere suit. As I pocketed my few belongings, I felt something
hard tucked between the pages of my notebook: it was a key, the key to my
apartment, down there on Earth. Absently, I turned it over in my fingers.
Finally I put it down on the table. It occurred to me suddenly that I might
need a weapon. An all-purpose pocket-knife was hardly sufficient for my
needs, but I had nothing else, and I was not going to start searching for a
gamma pistol or something else of the kind.
I sat down on a tubular stool in the middle of the clear space, glad to
be alone, and seeing with satisfaction that I had over half an hour to myself.
(By nature, I have always been scrupulous about keeping engagements, whether
important or trivial.) The hands of the clock, its face divided into twenty-
four hours, pointed to seven o'clock. The sun was setting. 07.00 hours here
was 20.00 hours on board the _Prometheus_. On Moddard's screens, Solaris
would be nothing but an indistinct dust-cloud, mingled with the stars. But
what did the _Prometheus_ matter to me now? I closed my eyes. I could hear
no sound except the moaning of the ventilation pipes and a faint trickling of
water from the bathroom.
If I had understood correctly, it was only a short time since Gibarian
had died. What had they done with his body? Had they buried it? No, that
was impossible on this planet. I puzzled over the question for a long time,
concentrating on the fate of the corpse; then, realizing the absurdity of my
thoughts, I began to pace up and down. My toe knocked against a canvas bag
half-buried under a pile of books; I bent down and picked it up. It contained
a small bottle made of colored glass, so light that it might have been blown
out of paper. I held it up to the window in the purplish glow of the somber
twilight, now overhung by a sooty fog. What was I doing, allowing myself to
be distracted by irrelevancies, by the first trifle which came to hand?
I gave a start: the lights had gone on, activated by a photo-electric
relay; the sun had set. What would happen next? I was so tense that the
sensation of an empty space behind me became unbearable. In an attempt to
pull myself together, I took a chair over to the bookshelves and chose a book
familiar to me: the second volume of the early monograph by Hughes and Eugel,
_Historia Solaris_. I rested the thick, solidly bound volume on my knees and
began leafing through the pages.
The discovery of Solaris dated from about 100 years before I was born.
The planet orbits two suns: a red sun and a blue sun. For 45 years after
its discovery, no spacecraft had visited Solaris. At that time, the Gamow-
Shapley theory — that Life was impossible on planets which are satellites of
two solar bodies — was firmly believed. The orbit is constantly being
modified by variations in the gravitational pull in the course of its
revolutions around the two suns.
Due to these fluctuations in gravity, the orbit is either flattened or
distended and the elements of life, if they appear, are inevitably destroyed,
either by intense heat or an extreme drop in temperature. These changes take
place at intervals estimated in millions of years — very short intervals, that
is, according to the laws of astronomy and biology (evolution takes hundreds
of millions of years if not a billion).
According to the earliest calculations, in 500,000 years' time Solaris
would be drawn one half of an astronomic unit nearer to its red sun, and a
million years after that would be engulfed by the incandescent star.
A few decades later, however, observations seemed to suggest that the
planet's orbit was in no way subject to the expected variations: it was
stable, as stable as the orbit of the planets in our own solar system.
The observations and calculations were reworked with great precision;
they simply confirmed the original conclusions: Solaris's orbit was unstable.
A modest item among the hundreds of planets discovered annually — to
which official statistics devoted only a few lines defining the
characteristics of their orbits — Solaris eventually began to attract special
attention and attain a high rank.
Four years after this promotion, overflying the planet with the _Laakon_
and two auxiliary craft, the Ottenskjöld expedition undertook a study of
Solaris. This expedition being in the nature of a preliminary, not to say
improvised, reconnaissance, the scientists were not equipped for a landing.
Ottenskjöld placed a quantity of automatic observation satellites into
equatorial and polar orbit, their principal function being to measure the
gravitational pull. In addition, a study was made of the planet's surface,
which is covered by an ocean dotted with innumerable flat, low-lying islands
whose combined area is less than that of Europe, although the diameter of
Solaris is a fifth greater than Earth's. These expanses of barren, rocky
territory, irregularly distributed, are largely concentrated in the southern
hemisphere. At the same time the composition of the atmosphere — devoid of
oxygen — was analyzed, and precise measurements made of the planet's density,
from which its albedo and other astronomical characteristics were determined.
As was foreseeable, no trace of life was discovered, either on the islands or
in the ocean.
During the following ten years, Solaris became the center of attraction
for all observatories concerned with the study of this region of space, for
the planet had in the meantime shown the astonishing faculty of maintaining an
orbit which ought, without any shadow of doubt, to have been unstable. The
problem almost developed into a scandal: since the results of the observations
could only be inaccurate, attempts were made (in the interests of science) to
denounce and discredit various scientists or else the computers they used.
Lack of funds delayed the departure of a proper Solaris expedition for
three years. Finally Shannahan assembled his team and obtained three C-
tonnage vessels from the Institute, the largest starships of the period. A
year and a half before the arrival of the expedition, which left from the
region of Alpha in Aquarius, a second exploration fleet, acting in the name of
the Institute, placed an automatic satellite — Luna 247 — into orbit around
Solaris. This satellite, after three successive reconstructions at roughly
ten-year intervals, is still functioning today. The data it supplied
confirmed beyond doubt the findings of the Ottenskjöld expedition concerning
the active character of the ocean's movements.
One of Shannahan's ships remained in orbit, while the two others, after
some preliminary attempts, landed in the southern hemisphere, in a rocky area
about 600 miles square. The work of the expedition lasted eighteen months and
was carried out under favorable conditions, apart from an unfortunate accident
brought about by the malfunction of some apparatus. In the meantime, the
scientists had split into two opposing camps; the bone of contention was the
ocean. On the basis of the analyses, it had been accepted that the ocean was
an organic formation (at that time, no one had yet dared to call it living).
But, while the biologists considered it as a primitive formation — a sort of
gigantic entity, a fluid cell, unique and monstrous (which they called
'prebiological'), surrounding the globe with a colloidal envelope several
miles thick in places — the astronomers and physicists asserted that it must
be an organic structure, extraordinarily evolved. According to them, the
ocean possibly exceeded terrestrial organic structures in complexity, since it
was capable of exerting an active influence on the planet's orbital path.
Certainly, no other factor could be found that might explain the behavior of
Solaris; moreover, the planeto-physicists had established a relationship
between certain processes of the plasmic ocean and the local measurements of
gravitational pull, which altered according to the 'matter transformations' of
the ocean.
Consequently it was the physicists, rather than the biologists, who put
forward the paradoxical formulation of a 'plasmic mechanism', implying by this
a structure, possibly without life as we conceive it, but capable of
performing functional activities — on an astronomic scale, it should be
emphasized.
It was during this quarrel, whose reverberations soon reached the ears of
the most eminent authorities, that the Gamow-Shapely doctrine, unchallenged
for eighty years, was shaken for the first time.
There were some who continued to support the Gamow-Shapley contentions,
to the effect that the ocean had nothing to do with life, that it was neither
'parabiological' nor 'prebiological' but a geological formation — of extreme
rarity, it is true — with the unique ability to stabilize the orbit of
Solaris, despite the variations in the forces of attraction. Le Chatelier's
law was enlisted in support of this argument.
To challenge this conservative attitude, new hypotheses were advanced —
of which Civito-Vitta's was one of the most elaborate — proclaiming that the
ocean was the product of a dialectical development: on the basis of its
earliest pre-oceanic form, a solution of slow-reacting chemical elements, and
by the force of circumstances (the threat to its existence from the changes of
orbit), it had reached in a single bound the stage of 'homeostatic ocean,'
without passing through all the stages of terrestrial evolution, by-passing
the unicellular and multicellular phases, the vegetable and the animal, the
development of a nervous and cerebral system. In other words, unlike
terrestrial organisms, it had not taken hundreds of millions of years to adapt
itself to its environment — culminating in the first representatives of a
species endowed with reason — but dominated its environment immediately.
This was an original point of view. Nevertheless, the means whereby this
collodial envelope was able to stabilize the planet's orbit remained unknown.
摘要：

SolarisbyStanislawLem(1961)translatedfromtheFrenchbyJoannaKilmartinandSteveCox(1970)Version1.0CONTENTSCHAPTER1TheArrivalCHAPTER2TheSolaristsCHAPTER3TheVisitorsCHAPTER4SartoriusCHAPTER5RheyaCHAPTER6"TheLittleApocrypha"CHAPTER7TheConferenceCHAPTER8TheMonstersCHAPTER9TheLiquidOxygenCHAPTER10Conversatio...

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