And only the most determined individuals, such as Rohan – a trusted navigator, planned as the successor to the commander-in-chief, experienced astrogator Horpach – will be able to answer a simple question: cui bono? Who benefits? Was it worth it to gamble with the life of even one man, not to mention a hundred people irretrievably annihilated, just to return to Earth... with what? With a bitter conviction that the doubtful adventure of a handful of survivors was an exorbitant price to pay?
How ridiculous and maddening at the same time is this ‘conquest no matter the cost’, this ‘heroic endurance of man’, this desire to atone for the deaths of comrades who died because they were sent to this death.... We were simply careless, we put too much trust in our throwers and sensors, we made mistakes and we suffer the consequences. We, we alone are to blame.
However, even Rohan, asked by his superior if he saw a sliver of hope for saving the handful of cosmonauts engulfed by the mechanised swarm – or the so-called ‘necrosphere’ (in Greek nekros – ‘dead’), as it was christened by fluent scholars – or whether the inhospitable planet should be abandoned as soon as possible, he began to consider:
The crew wanted to leave. But he [...] realised that after a certain time they’d begin to think about it, then they’d start talking. They’d say: ‘You see? He took off, leaving four men behind.’ And nothing else would matter. Every man had to know that the others would not abandon him, under any circumstances. That everything could be lost, but you had to have the crew on board—alive or dead. This principle did not appear in the regulations. But without it it wouldn’t have been possible to fly.
And although Rohan risked his life, he voluntarily undertook to participate in the lonely raid to see for himself the fate of the brothers sent there earlier. In the conviction of scientists of the ‘Invincible’ men were for the cloud ‘merely some kind of mobile objects that manifested their presence by the electric potential of the cortex’. Therefore Rohan received a headcover consisting of a suitable ‘cap of invisibility’ – a wire mesh woven into the hair – reducing the transmission of these impulses to the outside almost to zero.
Returning barely alive from his desperate mission, he knew that none of the scientists would be able to share his feelings, and yet he resolved that from now on he would categorically ‘demand that the planet be left alone. Not everything everywhere is for us’, he thought. Because it has been known for a long time that the planet closest to our hearts, the Earth inhabited by us, demands it from us more and more violently.
Lem’s novel also makes us think about many other issues, including manipulation. People in astronaut suits are subject to a strictly observed structure adopted from the military sphere. There are commanders and a whole hierarchy of subordinates, carrying out orders flowing from above. As we know – not only from Joseph Conrad’s books – the captain comes down from the ship last, at least in theory.
Although there should be no deviations from the rules approved by the regulations, the hard reality often forces some flexibility in this matter. Did an experienced commander like Horpach have the right to gamble with the life of his best officer and Rohan’s deputy – even committing emotional blackmail, that is, playing on his ambition – if morally he preferred to throw the difficult decision on the shoulders of his subordinate? Perhaps he wanted to test his suitability in an extreme situation after all?
This does not change the fact that in Stanisław Lem’s prose there is a deep-rooted concern not so much for the cosmos – because it will manage perfectly well without us – as for the Biosphere. It is worth realising that in Lem’s work the cosmos is an earthly cosmos, and against Nature – in the broadest sense of the word – we certainly cannot win, which the author of The Invincible (1962-1963) has always known and wrote about. Another thing we cannot win is the fatal consequences of conquests – any conquests.
Stanisław Lem, The Invincible
English translation: Bill Johnston
Pro Auctore Wojciech Zemek, Kraków 2017
number of pages: 202
ISBN: 978-8363471545
Originally written in Polish by Janusz Kowalczyk, translated into English by P.G. September 2021