In the Ocean of Night

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In the Ocean of Night
Cover of first edition (hardcover)
Author	Gregory Benford
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Galactic Center Saga
Genre(s)	Hard, science fiction novel
Publisher	Dial Press/Quantum
Publication date	1977
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages	276 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0-803-74218-5
Followed by	Across the Sea of Suns

In the Ocean of Night is a 1977 hard science fiction novel by Gregory Benford. It is the first novel in his Galactic Center Saga. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1977.

In the Ocean of Night was first published as a novelette in the May/June 1972 edition of Worlds of If Science Fiction.

[edit] Plot summary

Quickly introduced is Nigel Walmsley, British scientist and astronaut for NASA. He has been sent to attach a thermonuclear bomb to an asteroid or comet named Icarus which was on a direct collision course for India - if it is a rocky asteroid and not a slush ice core style comet.

Icarus turns out to be a large, solid, and very nickel-irony. Nigel is instructed to plant the 50 megaton and leave (so it can be detonated). He persuades them to let him put it in a large fissure he discovered, so it would be even more effective. They let him.

In the fissure, Nigel discovers strips of metal worked in obviously artificial patterns. Awestruck at this evidence of extraterrestrial intelligent life, Nigel begins exploring. Icarus is made up of a number of hollow shells, making the asteroid's mass far less than predicted. Presumably this makes Icarus less dangerous, allowing Nigel to spend time exploring this historic artifact. However, NASA claims that the demolition has to go forward, that Icarus would somehow skip off the atmosphere and land in the Indian Ocean and cause even more damage through the resultant tsunami. This of course is an obvious lie, and Nigel convinces his partner of that. They hide the nuke and spend the next week retrieving artifacts and materials before they finally set the nuclear bomb off and turn Icarus into rubble.

15 years later, the Icarus artifacts have yielded little. Nigel's partner, Alexandria, has developed systemic lupus erythematosus, an oft-fatal disease. An anomaly over by Jupiter distracts Nigel: something is repeating radio broadcasts. Alexandria is distracted by the mechanics of selling American Airlines to some Brazilians.

The anomaly fires its fusion engines and reveals itself to the satellites around Jupiter. As a probe vessel, the directing computer could not afford to ignore the satellites' radio emissions before it moved on to Earth.

Eventually the JPL teams locates it around Venus. Nigel arranges to hijack the communications, transmitting his own signal (a binary sequence of prime numbers relating the Snark's trajectory). The Snark receives the signal as a sign of non-hostile intentions and transmits back. It also reaches out through Nigel's medical implants to his dead partner's more elaborate ones, and commandeers her body to explore and learn about Earth. The initial tentative transmissions blossom into a largely one-way torrent of information for the Snark. One day, it asks to visit Earth. A compromise is worked out: the Snark will orbit the Moon until trust is built up. As Nigel is already fully informed, and everything about the Snark is being kept a state secret, he is assigned to pilot the space ship meeting the Snark - which will be armed with another nuclear weapon.

Nigel meets the Snark; he is under orders to attack it. The Snark disables the chemical weapons and begins talking to Nigel. It says that organic civilizations and species are inherently unstable; they flash brilliantly and commit suicide sooner or later. The autonomous machines they craft live on long after them, going on and evolving. But they cannot truly compete with the organics, who live "in the universe of essences". That is the reason for the Great Silence.

Nigel's superiors order him to use the nuclear weapon. He refuses. They override him and fire it anyway, knowing that its detonation will inevitably kill Nigel. If it hit the Snark, it would be badly disabled, so it flees the Solar System faster than the missile can follow.

The decision to fire is covered up, and the version of the Snark's visit fed to the public markedly different from what Nigel actually experienced. Nigel blackmails NASA into letting him go to the projects on the Moon; the Snark had directed a transmission at the Mare Marginis for unknown parties, and Nigel wanted to find those parties.