2001: A Space Odyssey Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary

Journey By Earthlight

  • Floyd is riding off across the moon with Halvorson and Michaels.
  • He thinks that 3 million years (the age of the slab) is really a really really long time. Really.
  • Michaels and Halvorsen argue about why the aliens left the slab, and then about whether the aliens could be tiny or not.
  • Nobody knows what it is. It's just…a slab.
  • Floyd muses on where the slab came from, and figures most likely from some alien race outside the Solar System.
  • Floyd sees TMA-1 and is wowed.