Already, he had fantasies of standing on the rim of that crater, waiting for the Sun to rise above the dark, contorted landscape which he already knew well through the images from space. True, the contract said nothing about passengers – as opposed to crew and scientific personnel – going outside the ship when it landed on Halley.
On the other hand, there was also nothing in the small print that specifically forbade it.
They'll have a job to stop me, thought Heywood Floyd. I'm sure I can still handle a spacesuit. And if I'm wrong...
He remembered reading that a visitor to the Taj Mahal had once remarked: 'I'd die tomorrow for a monument like this.'
He would gladly settle for Halley's Comet.
3 – Re-entry
Even apart from that embarrassing accident, the return to Earth had not been easy.
The first shock had come soon after revival, when Dr Rudenko had woken him from his long sleep. Walter Curnow was hovering beside her, and even in his semi-conscious state he could tell that something was wrong; their pleasure at seeing him awake was a little too exaggerated, and failed to conceal a sense of strain. Not until he was fully recovered did they let him know that Dr Chandra was no longer with them.
Somewhere beyond Mars, so imperceptibly that the monitors could not pinpoint the time, he had simply ceased to live. His body, set adrift in space, had continued unchecked along Leonov's orbit, and had long since been consumed by the fires of the Sun.