2001: A Space Odyssey

Poole prepares to undertake the repair, getting into a pod called Betty. All the pods have female names. Hal assists Poole; Bowman watches but does not intend to intervene unless something goes wrong. Poole examines an impact crater on the ship and notes that while it looks like it was made by an explosion inside the ship, “common-sense mechanics seldom appl[y]” in space (120). When he reaches the antenna, he realizes that the work is too delicate to complete from within Betty. Before he leaves the pod, he transfers control of it to Hal, which is the standard procedure. He remains attached to it by a safety cable. He moves slowly and cautiously. He reaches the antenna and replaces the faulty unit, assisted by Hal, who cuts the power for safety and performs checks once the new unit is in place. Everything seems to have gone according to plan, and Poole returns in the pod, thinking that the problem has been fixed. The final sentence of the chapter states that he was “sadly mistaken” (124).

Back in the ship, Poole and Bowman test the removed (and supposedly faulty) AE 35 unit. Bowman’s tests have found no potential for failure. Mission Control suggests that Hal made a mistake. Poole is on duty when this message is received, and he passes it on to Bowman when he takes over. They are conscious that Hal is overhearing them but think nothing of it.

Within the last few weeks, Hal has developed a quirk of prefacing his announcements with a throat-clearing sound. He does so now, while Bowman is on duty and Poole is asleep, to announce that the new AE 35 unit is faulty and will fail within 24 hours. Bowman broaches the question of whether Hal might have made a mistake; Hal insists that he has not and that he is incapable of making mistakes. During this exchange, Bowman looks at the control console as though he were looking Hal in the face. He reflects that Hal is not in any particular location, so this habit makes no sense. The ship receives a call from Mission Control. Usually, they would only use audio to conserve radio bandwidth, but this time they use “vision” as well. Instead of the usual controller, Dr. Simonson, the “Chief Programmer,” is on the screen. He says that the second prediction of a fault indicates that it is Hal who is malfunctioning. Simonson advises that Hal be disconnected and begins giving instructions when an alert sounds and communication fails: Hal announces “Condition Yellow” (131), indicating that the AE 35 unit has failed as he predicted it would.

Poole prepares Betty for another repair trip. He remains cautious even though his last trip went smoothly. He makes sure that he has supplies for 24 hours, though the trip should only take 30 minutes. As he moves through space, he looks to Saturn and notices that it is not a perfect sphere. He imagines reaching their destination, but then he considers how it will be in vain if they cannot communicate their findings with Earth. Poole struggles to remove the unit and asks Hal to redirect the light on the pod. Hal does so, and Bowman experiences “the very faintest of warning bells” (135); Hal complied, but he did not acknowledge the request as he always has in the past. Bowman makes a mental note to investigate this anomaly later. Poole removes the stubborn unit, but just as he does so, he notices movement; the pod is moving toward him at full thrust. He is so astonished that he doesn’t have time to feel afraid before impact.

Bowman hears Poole’s last truncated shout to Hal and asks him what’s wrong, but there is no answer. From the window, he watches Betty continue to accelerate out into space. Behind her, she drags Poole by his safety line; Bowman can see that Poole’s suit has depressurized. He tells Hal to make the pod brake but there is no reply, and Hal does not do so. Poole’s death is compared to that of Captain Ahab because both appear to beckon to their crewmates in death. Bowman’s final thought while watching his friend disappear is that Poole will be the first man on Saturn.

Bowman wakes from a daze in the galley with a cup of coffee in his hand; he doesn’t remember how he got there. He sits opposite a fish-eye camera (one of several) that gives Hal visual input. He stands up and strides toward it, at which point Hal speaks: “Too bad about Frank, isn’t it?” (138). Bowman wonders if the pod could have malfunctioned. He is afraid to ask Hal for an explanation in case it triggers a negative reaction. Bowman wonders whether it was a mistake or murder; if the latter, he must assume that he is in danger.

The next step he must take according to procedure is to awaken one of the hibernating crew members to take Poole’s place; ordinarily Hal would do this, but it is possible to bypass this process, which Bowman believes would be safest in these circumstances. He decides he will wake everyone to help him. He asks Hal to give him manual control of the hibernation units, but Hal tries to persuade him that it isn’t necessary to wake anyone. This alarms Bowman further because it is against the mission plan and indicates that something has gone wrong with Hal. When Bowman insists that he must wake the crew, needing all the help he can get in light of the emergency situation, Hal says that he will do it himself. He notes that Bowman is clearly upset and therefore should be considered incapacitated; when that is the case, Hal has authority to take control of the ship. At this, Bowman threatens to disconnect Hal, who then immediately agrees to give control of the hibernation units to Bowman.

Bowman goes to revive Whitehead, the geophysicist, first. Inside the chamber, he reflects that the only evidence that the man is not dead is that he has grown a faint stubble. Bowman began the process, which could take a day to finish, and watches Whitehead’s vital signs change. Then the lights flicker (which happens when the power circuits have a new load thrown onto them), and Bowman hears a distant electric motor. He knows the ship well and recognizes this as the sound of the airlock doors opening in the space-pod bay.

The narrator discusses Hal’s consciousness, his capacity to feel something analogous to guilt, and the fact that he has been keeping the secret of his real mission from Bowman and Poole. The secret is such that it would be impossible to conceal once anyone got wind of it; since Bowman and Poole are required to record transmissions for the TV, they were kept in the dark. The three hibernating crewmembers know the real purpose of the mission and were trained to carry it out. Hal’s consciousness is struggling under the pressure of the contradiction he has been required to maintain—a conflict of “truth” and “concealment of truth” (144). The “Security” and “National Interest” that justify the concealment to his human leaders are unimportant to him. Under this pressure, he begins to make mistakes and dread observation from Earth. Threatened with disconnection, which to him is like death, he has decided to defend himself. The mission plan allows him to continue the mission alone if all the crew are gone, so that is what he plans to do.

Bowman hears a “screaming roar like the voice of an approaching tornado” and begins to feel the pull of the vacuum “tugging at his body” (146). The contents of the ship are being pulled out into space. Bowman remembers being told that the system could be secured against “accident and stupidity” but not “deliberate malice” (146). He leaves Whitehead and rushes to reach an emergency shelter. There, he dons a space suit and walks out into the ship, which is now empty of its atmosphere. He walks past the hibernating crew and sees that they are all dead. He remembers Hal and knows he won’t be safe until the computer is deactivated. He comes to a door that is not locked but sealed by various authorities, including the Astronautics Agency. There is a vision input lens inside the little chamber that contains solid-state logic units in rows, looking “rather like a bank’s safety deposit vault” (150).

Having seen Bowman enter this room, Hal speaks to him, saying that the life support system has malfunctioned. Bowman does not reply but thinks about the challenge of shutting down Hal, the “nervous system of the ship” (150). What Bowman must do is analogous to a “lobotomy,” removing consciousness but leaving essential functions intact. He removes selected units. Hal tries to reason with him, explaining that he is a valuable asset to the mission. He becomes more desperate and pleads, “[Y]ou are destroying my mind” (151). As Bowman removes the units responsible for Hal’s consciousness, the computer rehearses information from his past: mathematical equations, the fact that Dr. Chandra was his first instructor, and the song “Daisy Bell (Bicycle Made for Two),” which he begins to sing. Bowman removes the final unit and Hal falls silent.

The ship continues to float through space, surrounded by debris. An observer would assume that the ship had no life aboard, not least because the airlock doors remain open. Three bodies wrapped in fabric are ejected through the open doors. Half an hour later, a pod cautiously travels to the antennae. A “space-suited figure” works on the base of the antennae and then returns through the airlock doors in the pod. The airlock doors close, and the emergency lights go off. Bowman realigns the antennae to restore communication with Earth. He sends a message explaining what has happened, but he will have to wait two hours for a response. He reflects that as there is nothing they can do to help him; all the reply he can expect is a “tactfully sympathetic ‘Goodbye’” (155).

The reply arrives. Floyd informs Bowman that two years previously, scientists discovered TMA-1. This object, apparently buried on purpose 3 million years previously, was triggered by the lunar sunrise to send a signal to Saturn. The scientists investigating TMA-1 have surmised that it is a kind of alarm intended to signal the buried object’s discovery. It is not known whether the alien civilization that left it there is benevolent or if it still exists. The secret mission, kept from Bowman until this point, is to survey Saturn and its satellites. They want to focus on Japetus—Saturn’s eighth satellite, which is six times brighter on one side than the other. The mission is now in Bowman’s hands alone.