Part 4, Chapters 22-25 Summary

In chapter twenty-two, Floyd sends another message back to his wife on Earth. He tells her the captain has them working and barely allows them time to sleep. Both ships are operational. They are trying to determine is Hal can send Discovery back to Earth, and readying the next stage of their mission, which involves exploring the monolith, which Floyd has taken to calling Big Brother. They've found no new information onboard the ship about what happened to its crew, however. They did manage to find a message from Bowman intended to reach his mother.

In chapter twenty-three, Nikolai Ternovsky is the control and cybernetics expert for Leonov, and he has taken to helping Chandra with Hal. Chandra reports that Hal is ready to transfer orbits to bring them closer to the monolith. Both vessels approach the alien artifact...