2010: Odyssey Two quotes

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS — EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.

Now the long wait was ending. On yet another world, intelligence had been born and was escaping from its planetary cradle. An ancient experiment was about to reach its climax. Those who had begun that experiment, so long ago, had not been men — or even…

The black rectangular slab that suddenly appeared before him was like an old friend. He had seen it on the Moon; he had encountered it in orbit around Jupiter; and he knew, somehow, that his ancestors had met it long ago. Though it held still unfathomed…

He was no longer radiating wastefully, but had almost mastered his control of energy, as once he had mastered lost though not forgotten limbs. He sank like a mist into the earthquake-proof vaults, until he found himself among billions of stored memories, and…

If he wished, he could focus his attention upon any one of its hundred billion stars. *Here* he was, adrift in this great river of suns, halfway between the banked fires of the galactic core and the lonely, scattered sentinel stars of the rim. And *there* was…

But that would never happen. If the heat shield failed, the ship would crumple instantly, hammered flat by a solid wall of gas. There would be no pain; his nervous system would not have time to react before it ceased to exist. He had experienced more…

"One minute to ignition." His mind flashed back to the here and now. This was the minute that counted; for almost a hundred years, on launch pads and in control centers, this was the longest sixty seconds that had ever existed. Countless times it had ended in…

He had almost reached the center of the planet, but Jupiter had one more surprise in store. The thick shell of metallic yet still fluid hydrogen ended abruptly. At last, there was a solid surface, sixty thousand kilometers down. For ages, the carbon baked out…

A whole new chapter of evolution, as alien as that which he had glimpsed on Europa, was opening before him. There were jet-propelled torpedoes like the squids of the terrestrial oceans, hunting and devouring the huge gasbags. But the balloons were no…

But to Vasili, for a moment that would be imprinted on his memory forever, that sharp-edged outline held a completely different, and wholly impossible, scene. It was as if a window had suddenly been opened onto another universe. The vision lasted for less…