Rendezvous With Rama
by
Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C.  Clarke is without question the world's best-known and
bestselling science fiction writer; his seventieth birthday in December
1987 was marked by the unveiling of a plaque at his birthplace in
Somerset.  He has won innumerable international awards for his fiction,
for his scientific writing, and for his inspirational role as one of the
chief prophets of the space age.  His collaboration with Stanley Kubrick
on 2ooi: A Space Odyssey set new standards for SF films.  As the
presenter of the TV series Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World and its
successors, Clarke has become a household name.  He lives in Sri Lanka.

Also in Orbit: THE GHOST FROM THE GRAND BANKS

THE HAMMER OF GOD by Arthur C.  Clarke and Gentry Lee

Rama 2

GARDEN OF RAMA

RAMA REVEALED

CRADLE by Arthur C.  Clarke and Gregory Benford

AGAINST THE FALL OF NIGHT

BEYOND THE FALL OF NIGHT Arthur C.  Clarke

Rendezvous With Rama

ORBIT  An Orbit Book First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz
Ltd 1975 This edition published in 1991 by Orbit Reprinted 1992, 1993
(twice), 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 Copyright (C) Arthur C.  Clarke 1973

The right ofArthur C.  Clarke to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988 All characters in this publication are fictitious and
any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

to Sri Lanka where I climbed the Stairway of the Gods

All rights reserved.

No part of  this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior
permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in
any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published
and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed
on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 1 85723 158 9

Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc Orbit A Division of Little,
Brown and Company (UK) Brettenham House Lancaster Place London we2E 7EN


CHAPTER ONE

Spaceguard

Sooner or later, it was bound to happen.  On 10 June 19o8, Moscow
escaped destruction by three hours and four thousand kilometres - a
margin invisibly small by the standards of the universe. Again, on
February 1947, yet another Russian city had a still narrower escape,
when the second great meteorite of the twentieth century detonated less
than four hundred kilometres from Vladivostok, with an explosion
rivalling that of the newly invented uranium bomb.

In those days, there was nothing that men could do to protect themselves
against the last random shots in the cosmic bombardment that had once
scarred the face of the Moon.  The meteorites of 19o8 1947 had struck
uninhabited wilderness; but by the end of the twenty-first century,
there was no region left on Earth that could be safely used for
celestial target practice.  The human race had spread from pole to pole.
And so, inevitably ...

At 09-46 GMT on the morning of 11 September, in the exceptionally
beautiful summer of the year 2077, most Of the inhabitants of Europe saw
a dazzling fireball appear in the eastern sky.  Within seconds it was
brighter than the sun, and as it moved across the heavens - at first in
utter silence - it left behind it a churning column of dust and smoke.

Somewhere above Austria it began to disintegrate, producing a series of
concussions so violent that more than a million people had their hearing
permanently damaged.  They were the lucky ones.

Moving at fifty kilometers a second, a thousand tons of rock and metal
impacted on the plains of northern Italy, destroying in a few flaming
moments the labour of centuries.  The cities of Padua and Verona were
wiped from the face of the earth; and the last glories of Venice sank
for ever beneath the sea as the waters of the Adriatic came thundering
landwards after the hammer-blow from space.

Six hundred thousand people died, and the total damage was more than a
trillion dollars.  But the loss to art, to history, to science - to the
whole human race, for the rest of time - was beyond all computation.  It
was as if a great war had been fought and lost in a single morning; and
few could draw much pleasure from the fact that, as the dust of
destruction slowly settled, for months the whole world witnessed the
most splendid dawns and sunsets since Krakatoa.

After the initial shock, mankind reacted with a determination and a
unity that no earlier age could have shown.  Such a disaster, it was
realized, might not occur again for a thousand years - but it might
occur tomorrow.  And the next time, the consequences could be even
worse.

Very well; there would be no next time.

A hundred years earlier a much poorer world, with far feebler resources,
had squandered its wealth attempting to destroy weapons launched,
suicidally, by mankind against itself.  The effort had never been
successful, but the skills acquired then had not been forgotten.  Now
they could be used for a far nobler purpose, and on an infinitely vaster
stage.  No meteorite large enough to cause catastrophe would ever again
be allowed to breach the defences of Earth.

So began Project SPACEGUARD.  Fifty years later - and in a way that none
of its designers could ever have anticipated - it justified its
existence.

CHAPTER TWO

Intruder

By the year 2130, the Mars-based radars were discovering new asteroids
at the rate of a dozen a day.  The SPACEGUARD computers automatically
calculated their orbits, and stored away the information in their
enormous memories, so that every few months any interested astronomer
could have a look at the accumulated statistics. These were now quite
impressive.

It had taken more than a hundred and twenty years to collect the first
thousand asteroids, since the discovery of Ceres, largest of these tiny
worlds, on the very first day of the nineteenth century.  Hundreds had
been found and lost and found again; they existed in such swarms that
one exasperated astronomer had christened them 'vermin of the skies'. He
would have been appalled to know that SPACEGUARD was now keeping track
of half a million.

Only the five giants - Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Eunomia and Vesta - were
more than two hundred kilometres in diameter; the vast majority were
merely oversized boulders that would fit into a small park.  Almost all
moved in orbits that lay beyond Mars; only the few that came far enough
sunwards to be a possible danger to Earth were the concern Of
SPACEGUARD.  And not one in a thousand of these, during the entire
future history of the solar system, would pass within a million
kilometres of Earth.

The object first catalogued as 31/439, according to the year and the
order of its discovery, was detected while still outside the orbit of
Jupiter.  There was nothing unusual about its location; many asteroids
went beyond is Saturn before turning once more towards their distant
master, the sun.  And Thule II, most far-ranging of all, travelled so
close to Uranus that it might well have been a lost moon of that planet.

But a first radar contact at such a distance was unprecedented; clearly,
31/439 must be of exceptional size.  From the strength of the echo, the
computers deduced a diameter of at least forty kilometres; such a giant
had not been discovered for a hundred years.  That it had been
overlooked for so long seemed incredible.

Then the orbit was calculated, and the mystery was resolved - to be
replaced by a greater one- 31/439 was not travelling on a normal
asteroidal path, along an ellipse which it retraced with clockwork
precision every few years.  It was a lonely wanderer between the stars,
making its first and last visit to the solar system -- for it was moving
so swiftly that the gravitational field of the sun could never capture
it.  It would flash inwards past the orbits of Jupiter, Mars, Earth,
Venus and Mercury, gaining speed as it did so, until it rounded the sun
and headed out once again into the unknown.

It was at this point that the computers started flashing their 'Hi there
I We have something interesting' sign, and for the first time 31/439
came to the attention of human beings.  There was a brief flurry of
excitement at SPACEGUARD Headquarters, and the interstellar vagabond was
quickly dignified by a name instead of a mere number.  Long ago, the
astronomers had exhausted Greek and Raman mythology; now they were
working through the Hindu pantheon.  And so 31/439 was christened Rama.

For a few days, the news media made a fuss of the visitor, but they were
badly handicapped by the sparsity of information.  Only two facts were
known about Rama - its unusual orbit, and its approximate size.  Even
this was merely an educated guess, based upon the strength of the radar
echo.  Through the telescope, Rama still appeared as a faint, fifteenth
magnitude star much too INTRUDER, 13 small to show a visible disc.  But
as it plunged in towards the heart of the solar system, it would grow
brighter and larger, month by month; before it vanished for ever, the
orbiting observatories would be able to gather more precise information
about its shape and size.  There was plenty of time, and perhaps during
the next few years some spaceship on its ordinary business might be
routed close enough to get good photographs.  An actual rendezvous was
most unlikely; the energy cost would be far too great to permit physical
contact with an object cutting across the orbits of the planets at more
than a hundred thousand kilometers an hour.

So the world soon forgot about Rama; but the astronomers did not.  Their
excitement grew with the passing months, as the new asteroid presented
them with more and more puzzles.

First of all, there was the problem of Rama's light curve.  It didn't
have one.

All known asteroids, without exception, showed a slow variation in their
brilliance, waxing and waning within a period of a few hours.  It had
been recognized for more than two centuries that this was an inevitable
result of their spin, and their irregular shape.  As they toppled end
over end along their orbits the reflecting surfaces they presented to
the sun were continually changing, and their brightness varied
accordingly.

Rama showed no such changes.  Either it was not spinning at all or it
was perfectly symmetrical.  Both explanations seemed equally unlikely.

There the matter rested for several months, because none of the big
orbiting telescopes could be spared from their regular job of peering
into the remote depths of the universe.  Space astronomy was an
expensive hobby, and time on a large instrument could easily cost a
thousand dollars a minute.  Dr. William Stenton would never have been
able to grab the Farside two-hundred-metre reflector for a full quarter
of an hour' if a more important programme had not been temporarily
derailed by the failure of a fifty cent capacitor.  One astronomer's bad
luck was his good fortune.

Bill Stenton did not know what he had caught until the next day, when he
was able to get computer time to process his results.  Even when they
were finally flashed on his display screen, it took him several minutes
to understand what they meant.

The sunlight reflected from Rama was not, after all, absolutely constant
in its intensity.  There was a very small variation - hard to detect,
but quite unmistakable, and extremely regular.  Like all the other
asteroids, Rama was indeed spinning.  But whereas the normal 'day' for
an asteroid was several hours, Rama's was only four minutes.

Dr. Stenton did some quick calculations, and found it hard to believe
the results.  At its equator, this tiny world must be spinning at more
than a thousand kilometres an hour; it would be rather unhealthy to
attempt a landing anywhere except at the poles.  The centrifugal force
at Rama's equator must be powerful enough to flick any loose objects
away from it at an acceleration of almost one gravity.  Rama was a
rolling stone that could never have gathered any cosmic moss; it was
surprising that such a body had managed to hold itself together, and had
not long ago shattered into a million fragments.

An object forty kilometres across, with a rotation period of only four
minutes - where did that fit into the astronomical scheme of things? Dr.
Stenton was a somewhat imaginative man, a little too prone to jump to
conclusions.  He now jumpd to one which gave him a very uncomfortable
few minutes indeed.

The only specimen of the celestial zoo that fitted this description was
a collapsed star.  Perhaps Rama was a dead sun - a madly spinning sphere
of neutronium, every cubic centimetre weighing billions of tons ...

At this point, there flashed briefly through Dr. Stenton's horrified
mind the memory of that timeless classic, H.  G.  Wells's The Star.  He
had first read it as a very small boy, and it had helped to spark his
interest in astronomy.

Across more than two centuries of time, it had lost none of its magic
and terror.

He would never forget the images of hurricanes and tidal waves, of
cities sliding into the sea, as that other visitor from the stars
smashed into Jupiter and then fell sunwards past the Earth.  True, the
star that old Wells described was not cold, but incandescent, and
wrought much of its destruction by heat.  That scarcely mattered; even
if Rama was a cold body, reflecting only the.light of the sun, it could
kill by gravity as easily as by fire.

Any stellar mass intruding into the solar system would completely
distort the orbits of the planets.  The Earth had only to move a few
million kilometres sunwards - or starwards - for the delicate balance of
climate to be destroyed.

The Antarctic icecap could melt and flood all low-lying land; or the
oceans could freeze and the whole world be locked in an eternal winter.
just a nudge in either direction would be enough ...

Then Dr. Stenton relaxed and breathed a sigh of relief.  This was all
nonsense; he should be ashamed of himself.

Rama could not possibly be made of condensed matter.  No star-sized mass
could penetrate so deeply into the solar system without producing
disturbances which would have betrayed it long ago.  The orbits of all
the planets would have been affected; that, after all, was how Neptune,
Pluto and Persephone had been discovered.  No, it was utterly impossible
for an object as massive as a dead sun to sneak up unobserved.

In a way, it was a pity.  An encounter with a dark star would have been
quite exciting. While it lasted ...

CHAPTER THREE

Rama and Sita

The extraordinary meeting of the Space Advisory Council was brief and
stormy.  Even in the twenty-second century, no way had yet been
discovered of keeping elderly and conservative scientists from occupying
crucial administrative positions. Indeed, it was doubted if the problem
ever would be solved.

To make matters worse, the current Chairman of the SAC was Professor
(Emeritus) Olaf Davidson, the distinguished astrophysicist.  Professor
Davidson was not very much interested in objects smaller than galaxies,
and never bothered to conceal his prejudices.  And though he had to
admit that ninety percent of his science was now based upon observations
from space-borne instruments, he was not at all happy about it.  No less
than three times during his distinguished career, satellites specially
launched to prove one of his pet theories had done precisely the
opposite.

The question before the Council was straightforward enough.  There was
no doubt that Rama was an unusual object - but was it an important one?
In a few months it would be gone for ever, so there was little time in
which to act.  Opportunities missed now would never recur.

At rather a horrifying cost, a space-probe soon to be launched from Mars
to beyond Neptune could be modified and sent on a high-speed trajectory
to meet Rama.  There was no hope of a rendezvous; it would be the
fastest fly-by on record, for the two bodies would pass each other at
two hundred thousand kilometres an hour.

ki RAMA AND SITA Rama would be observed intensively for only a few
minutes - and in real closeup for less than a second.  But with the
right instrumentation, that would be long enough to settle many
questions.

Although Professor Davidson took a very jaundiced view of the Neptune
probe, it had already been approved and he saw no point in sending more
good money after bad.  He spoke eloquently on the follies of
asteroid-chasing, and the urgent need for a new high-resolution
interferometer on the Moon to prove the newly-revived Big Bang theory of
creation, once and for all.

That was a grave tactical error, because the three most ardent
supporters of the Modified Steady State Theory were also members of the
Council.  They secretly agreed with Professor Davidson that
asteroidchasing was a waste of money; nevertheless ...

He lost by one vote.

Three months later the space-probe, rechristened Sita, was launched from
Phobos, the inner moon of Mars."The flight time was seven weeks, and the
instrument was switched to full power only five minutes before
interception.  Simultaneously, a cluster of camera pods was released, to
sail past Rama so that it could be photographed from all sides.

The first images, from ten thousand kilometres away, brought to a halt
the activities of all mankind.  On a billion television screens, there
appeared a tiny, featureless cylinder, growing rapidly second by second.
By the time it had doubled its size, no one could pretend any longer
that Rama was a natural object.

Its body was a cylinder so geometrically perfect that it might have been
turned on a lathe - one with centres fifty kilometres apart.  The two
ends were quite flat, apart from some small structures at the centre of
one face, and were twenty kilometres across; from a distance, when there
was no sense of scale, Rama looked almost comically like an ordinary
domestic boiler.

Rama grew until it filled the screen.  Its surface was a dull, drab
grey, as colourless as the Moon, and completely devoid of markings
except at one point.

Halfway along the cylinder there was a kilornem-wide stain or smear, as
if something had once hit and splattered, ages ago.

There was no sign that the impact had done the slightest damage to
Rama's spinning walls; but this mark had produced the slight fluctuation
in brightness that had led to Stenton's discovery.

The images from the other cameras added nothing new.  However, the
trajectories their pods traced through Rama's minute gravitational field
gave one other vital piece of information - the mass of the cylinder.

It was far too light to be a solid body.  To nobody's great surprise, it
was clear that Rama must be hollow.

The long-hoped-for, long-feared encounter had come at last.  Mankind was
about to receive its first visitor from the stars.

CHAPTER FOUR

Rendezvous

Commander Norton remembered those first TV transmissions, which he had
replayed so many times, during the final minutes of the rendezvous.  But
there was one thing no electronic image could possibly convey - and that
was Rama's overwhelming size.

He had never received such an impression when landing on a natural body
like the Moon or Mars.  Those were worlds, and one expected them to be
big.  Yet he had also landed on Jupiter VIII, which was slightly larger
than Rama - and that had seemed quite a small object.

It was very easy to resolve the paradox.  His judgement was wholly
altered by the fact that this was an artifact, millions of times heavier
than anything that Man had ever put into space.  The mass of Rama was at
least ten million million tons; to any spaceman, that was not only
-inspir an awe ing, but a terrifying thought.  No wonder that he
sometimes felt a sense of insignificance, and even depression, as that
cylinder of sculptured, ageless metal filled more and more of the sky.

There was also a sense of dan er here, that was wholly 9 novel to his
experience.  In every earlier landing he had known what to expect; there
was always the possibility of accident, but never of surprise.  With
Rama, surprise was the only certainty.

Now Endeavour was hovering less than a thousand metres above the North
Pole of the cylinder, at the very centre of the slowly turning disc.
This end has been chosen because it was the one in sunlight; as Rama  so
rotated, the shadows of the short enigmatic structures near the axis
swept steadily across the metal plain.  The northern face of Rama was a
gigantic sundial, measuring out the swift passage of its four-minute
day.

Landing a five-thousand-ton spaceship at the centre of a spinning disc
was the least of Commander Norton's worries.  It was no different from
docking at the axis of a large space-station; Endeavour's lateral jets
had already given her a matching spin, and he could trust Lieutenant Joe
Calvert to put her down as gently as a snowflake, with or without the
aid of the nav computer.

In three minutes,' said Joe, without taking his eyes from the display,
'we'll know if it's made of anti-matter." Norton grinned, as he recalled
some of the more hairraising theories about Rama's origin.  If that
unlikely speculation was true, in a few seconds there would be the
biggest bang since the solar system was formed.  The total annihilation
of ten thousand tons would, briefly, provide the planets with a second
sun.

Yet the mission profile had allowed even for this remote contingency;
Endeavour had squirted Rama with one of her jets from a safe thousand
kilometres away.  Nothing whatsoever had happened when the expanding
cloud of vapour arrived on target - and a matter-antimatter reaction
involving even a few milligrams would have produced an awesome firework
display.

Norton, like all space commanders, was a cautious man.  He had looked
long and hard at the northern face of Rama, choosing the point of
touchdown.  After much thought, he had decided to avoid the obvious spot
- the exact centre, on the axis itself.  A clearly marked circular disc,
a hundred metres in diameter, was centred on the Pole, and Norton had a
strong suspicion that this must be the outer seal of an enormous
airlock.  The creatures who had built this hollow world must have had
some way of taking their ships inside.  This was the logical place for
the main entrance, and Norton thought it might be unwise to block the
front door with his own vessel.

RENDEZVOUS But this decision generated other problems.  If Endeavour
touched down even a few metres from the axis, Rama's rapid spin would
start her sliding away from the poIe.  At first, the centrifugal force
would be very weak, but it would be continuous and inexorable. Commander
Norton did not relish the thought of his ship slithering across the
polar plain, gaining speed minute by minute until it was slung off into
space at a thousand kilometres an hour when it reached the edge of the
disc.

It was possible that Rama's minute gravitational field about one
thousandth of Earth's - might prevent this from happening.  It would
hold Endeavour against the plain with a force of several tons, and if
the surface was sufficiently rough the ship might stay near the Pole.
But Commander Norton had no intention of balancing an unknown frictional
force against a quite certain centrifugal one.

Fortunately, Rama's designers had provided an answer.  Equally spaced
around the polar axis were three low, pillbox shaped structures, about
ten metres in diameter.  If Endeavour touched down between any two of
these, the centrifugal drift would fetch her up against them and she
would be held firmly in place, like a ship glued against a quayside by
the incoming waves.

'Contact in fifteen seconds,' said Joe.  As he tensed himself above the
duplicate controls, which he hoped he would not have to touch, Commander
Norton became acutely aware of all that had come to focus on this
instant of time.

This, surely, was the most momentous landing since the first touchdown
on the Moon, a century and a half ago.

The grey pill-boxes drifted slowly upwards outside the control port.
There was the last hiss of a reaction jet, and a barely perceptible jar.

In the weeks that had passed, Commander Norton had often wondered what
he would say at this moment.  But now that it was upon him, History
chose his words, and he spoke almost automatically, barely aware of the
echo from the past: 'Rama Base.  Endeavour has landed." As recently as a
month ago, he would never have believed it possible.  The ship had been
on a routine mission, checking and emplacing asteroid warning beacons,
when the order had come.  Endeavour was the only spacecraft in the solar
system which could possibly make a rendezvous with the intruder before
it whipped round the sun and hurled itself back towards the stars.  Even
so, it had been necessary to rob three other ships of the Solar Survey,
which were now drifting helplessly until tankers could refuel them.
Norton feared that it would be a long time before the skippers of
Calypso, Beagle and Challenger would speak to him again.

Even with all this extra propellant, it had been a long hard chase; Rama
was already inside the orbit of Venus when Endeavour caught up with her.
No other ship could ever do so; this privilege was unique, and not a
moment of the weeks ahead was to be wasted.  A thousand scientists on
Earth would have cheerfully mortgaged their souls for this opportunity;
now they could only watch over the TV circuits, biting their lips and
thinking how much better they could do the job.  They were probably
right, but there was no alternative.  The inexorable laws of celestial
mechanics had decreed that Endeavour was the first, and the last, of all
Man's ships that would ever make contact with Rama.

The advice he was Continually receiving from Earth did little to
alleviate Norton's responsibility.  If split-second decisions had to be
made, no one could help him; the radio time-lag to Mission Control was
already ten minutes, and increasing.  He often envied the great
navigators of the past, before the days of electronic communications,
who could interpret their sealed orders without continual monitoring
from headquarters.  Why they made mistakes, no one ever knew.

RENDEZVOVS.  Yet at the same time, he was glad that some decisions could
be delegated to Earth.  Now that Endeavour's orbit had coalesced with
Rama's they were heading sunwards like a single body; in forty days they
would reach perihelion, and pass within twenty million kilometres of the
sun.  That was far too close for comfort; long before then, Endeavour
would have to use her remaining fuel to nudge herself into a safer
orbit.  They would have perhaps three weeks of exploring time, before
they parted from Rama for ever.

After that, the problem would be Earth's.  Endeavour would be virtually
helpless, speeding on an orbit which could make her the first ship to
reach the stars - in approximately fifty thousand years.  There was no
need to worry, Mission Control had promised.  Somehow, regardless of
cost, Endeavour would be refuelled - even if it proved necessary to send
tankers after her, and abandon them in space once they had transferred
every gramme of propellant.  Rama was a prize worth any risk, short of a
suicide mission.

And, of course, it might even come to that.  Commander Norton had no
illusions on this score.  For the first time in a hundred years an
element of total uncertainty had entered human affairs.  Uncertainty was
one thing that neither scientists nor politicians could tolerate.  If
that was the price of resolving it, Endeavour and her crew would be
expendable.

CHAPTER FIVE

First EVA

Rama was as silent as a tomb - which, perhaps, it was.  No radio
signals, on any frequency; no vibrations that the seismographs could
pick up, apart from the micro-tremors undoubtedly caused by the sun's
increasing heat; no electrical currents; no radioactivity.  It was
almost ominously quiet; one might have expected that even an asteroid
would be noisier.

What did we expect?  Norton asked himself.  A committee of welcome?  He
was not sure whether to be disappointed or relieved.  The initiative, at
any rate, appeared up to him.

His orders were to wait for twenty-four hours, then to go out and
explore.

Nobody slept much that first day; even the crew members not on duty
spent their time monitoring the ineffectually probing instruments, or
simply looking out of the observation ports at the starkly geometrical
landscape.  Is this world alive?

they asked themselves, over and over again.  Is it dead?  Or is it
merely sleeping?

On the first EVA, Norton took only one companion Lieut-Commander Karl
Mercer, his tough and resourceful life-support officer.  He had no
intention of getting out of sight of the ship, and if there was any
trouble, it was unlikely that a larger party would be safe.  As a
precaution, however, he had two more crew members, already suited up,
standing by in the airlock.

The few grammes of weight that Rama's combined gravitational and
centrifugal fields gave them were all'.  4, FIRST EVA 25 neither help
nor hindrance; they had to rely entirely on their jets.  As soon as
possible, Norton told himself, he would string a cat's-cradle of guide
ropes between the ship and the pill-boxes, so that they could move
around without wasting propellants.

The nearest pill-box was only ten Inctres from the airlock, and Norton's
first concern was to check that the contact had caused no damage to the
ship.

Endeavour's hull was resting against the curving wall with a thrust of
several tons, but the pressure was evenly distributed.  Reassured, he
began to drift around the circular structure, trying to determine its
purpose.

Norton had travelled only a few metres when he came across an
interruption in the smooth, apparently metallic wall.  At first, he
thought it was some peculiar decoration, for it seemed to serve no
useful function.  Six radial grooves, or slots, were deeply recessed in
the metal, and lying in them were six crossed bars like the spokes of a
rimless wheel, with a small hub at the centre.

But there was no way in which the wheel could be turned, as it was
embedded in the wall.

Then he noticed, with growing excitement, that there were deeper
recesses at the ends of the spokes, nicely shaped to accept a clutching
hand (claw?

tentacle?).  If one stood so, bracing against the wall, and pulled on
the spokeso ...

Smooth as silk, the wheel slid out of the wall.  To his utter
astonishment for he had been virtually certain that any moving parts
would have become vacuumwelded ages ago - Norton found himself holding a
spoked wheel.  He might have been the captain of some old windjammer
standing at the helm of his ship.

He was glad that his helmet sunshade did not allow Mercer to read his
expression.

He was startled, but also angry with himself; perhaps he had already
made his first mistake.  Were alarms now sounding inside Rama, and had
his thoughtless action already triggered some implacable mechanism?

OILs6 But Endeavour reported no change; its sensors still detected
nothing but faint thermal crepitations and his own movements.

'Well, Skipper - are you going to turn it?" Norton thought once more of
his instructions.  'Use your own discretion, but proceed with caution."
If he checked every single move with Mission Control, he would never get
anywhere.

'What's your diagnosis, Karl?" he asked Mercer.

'It's obviously a manual control for an airlock - probably an emergency
back-up system in case of power failure.  I can't imagine any
technology, however advanced, that wouldn't take such precautions." 'And
it would be fail-safe,' Norton told himself.  'It 7L could only be
operated if there was no possible danger to the system .  .  ." He
grasped two opposing spokes of the windlass, braced his feet against the
ground, and tested the wheel.  It did not budge.

'Give me a hand,' he asked Mercer.  Each took a spoke; exerting their
utmost strength, they were unable to produce the slightest movement.

Of course, there was no reason to suppose that clocks and corkscrews on
Rama turned in the same direction as they did on Earth ...

'Let's try the other way,' suggested Mercer.

This time, there was no resistance.  The wheel rotated almost
effortlessly through a full circle.  Then, very smoothly, it took up the
load.

Half a metre away, the curving wall of the pill -box started to move,
like a slowly opening clamshell.  A few particles of dust, driven by
wisps of escaping air, streamed outwards like dazzling diamonds as the
brilliant sunlight caught them.

The road to Rama lay open.

CHAPTER SIX

Committee

It had been a serious mistake, Dr. Bose often thought, to put the United
Planets Headquarters on the Moon. Inevitably, Earth tended to dominate
the proceedings as it dominated the landscape beyond the dome. If they
had to build here, perhaps they should have gone to the Farside, where
that hypnotic disc never shed its rays ...

But, of course, it was much too late to change, and in any case there
was no real alternative.  Whether the colonies liked it or not, Earth
would be the cultural and economic overlord of the solar system for
centuries to come.

Dr. Bose had been born on Earth, and had not emigrated to Mars until he
was thirty, so he felt that he could view the political situation fairly
dispassionately.  He knew now that he would never return to his home
planet, even though it was only five hours away by shuttle.  At 115, he
was in perfect health, but he could not face the reconditioning needed
to accustom him to three times the gravity he had enjoyed for most of
his life.  He was exiled for ever from the world of his birth; not being
a sentimental man, this had never depressed him unduly.

What did depress him sometimes was the need for dealing, year after
year, with the same familiar faces.  The marvels of medicine were all
very well, and certainly he had no desire to put back the clock - but
there were men around this conference table with whom he had worked for
more than half a century.  He knew exactly what they would say and how
they would vote on any given subject.

x8 He wished that, some day, one of them would do something totally
unexpected even something quite crazy.

And probably they felt exactly the same way about him ...

The Rama Committee was still manageably small, though doubtless that
would soon be rectified.  His six colleagues - the UP representatives
for Mercury, Earth, Luna, Ganymede, Titan and Triton - were all present
in the flesh.  They had to be; electronic diplomacy was not possible
over solar system distances.

Some elder statesmen, accustomed to the instantaneous communications
which Earth had long taken for granted, had never reconciled themselves
to the fact that radio waves took minutes, or even hours, to journey
across the gulfs between the planets.  'Can't you scientists do
something about it?" they had been heard to complain bitterly, when told
that face-to-face conversation was impossible between Earth and any of
its remoter children.  Only the Moon had that barely acceptable
one-and-a-half-second delay - with all the political and psychological
consequences which it implied.  Because of this fact of astronomical
life, the Moon - and only the Moon - would always be a suburb of Earth.

Also present in person were three of the specialists who had been
co-opted to the Committee.  Professor Davidson, the astronomer, was an
old acquaintance; today, he did not seem his usual irascible self.  Dr
Bose knew nothing of the infighting that had preceded the launch of the
first probe to Rama, but the Professor's colleagues had not let him
forget it.

Dr. Thelma Price was familiar through her numerous television
appearances, though she had first made her reputation fifty years ago
during the archaeological explosion that had followed the draining of
that vast marine museum, the Mediterranean.

Dr. Bose could still recall the excitement of that time, when the lost
treasures of the Greeks, Ramans and a dozen other civilizations were
restored to the light of day.

A COMMITTEE 29 That was one of the few occasions when he was sorry to be
living on Mars.

The exobiologist, Carlisle Perera, was another obvious choice; so was
Dennis Solomons, the science historian.  Dr. Bose was slightly less
happy about the presence of Conrad Taylor, the celebrated
anthropologist, who had made his reputation by uniquely combining
scholarship and eroticism in his study of puberty rites in late
twentieth-century Beverley Hills.

No one, however, could possibly have disputed the right of Sir Lewis
Sands to be on the Committee.  A man whose knowledge was matched only by
his urbanity, Sir Lewis was reputed to lose his composure only when
called the Arnold Toynbee of his age.

The great historian was not present in person; he stubbornly refused to
leave Earth, even for so momentous a meeting as this.  His stereo image,
indistinguishable from reality, apparently occupied the chair to Dr
Bose's rightas if to complete the illusion, someone had placed a glos's
of water in front of him.  Dr. Bose considered that this sort of
technological tour deforce was an unnecessary gimmick, but it was
surprising how many undeniably great men were childishly delighted to be
in two places at once.  Sometimes this electronic miracle produced comic
disasters; he had been at one diplomatic reception where somebody had
tried to walk through a stereogram - and discovered, too late, that it
was the real person.  And it was even funnier to watch projections
trying to shake hands ...

His Excellency the Ambassador for Mars to the United Planets called his
wandering thoughts to order, cleared his throat, and said: 'Gentlemen,
the Committee is now in session.  I think I am correct in saying that
this is a gathering of unique talents, assembled to deal with a unique
situation.  The directive that the Secretary-General has given us is to
evaluate that situation, and to advise Commander Norton when necessary."
This was a miracle of over-simplification, and everyone knew it.  Unless
there was a real emergency, the Committee might never be in direct
contact with Commander Norton - if, indeed, he ever heard of its
existence.  For the Committee was a temporary creation of the United
Planets' Science Organization, reporting through its Director to the
Secretary-General.

It was true that the Space Survey was part of the UP - but on the
Operations, not the Science side.  In theory, this should not make much
difference; there was no reason why the Rama Committee - or anyone else
for that matter - should not call up Commander Norton and offer helpful
advice.

But Deep Space Communications are expensive.  Endeavour could be
contacted only through PLANETCOM, which was an autonomous corporation,
famous for the strictness and efficiency of its accounting.  It took a
IODg time to establish a line of credit with PLANETCOM; Somewhere,
someone was working on this; but at the moment, PLANETCOM's hard-hearted
computers did not recognize the existence of the Rama Committee.

'This Commander Norton,' said Sir Robert Mackay, the Ambassador for
Earth.

'He has a tremendous responsibility.  What sort of person is he?" 'I can
answer that,' said Professor Davidson, his fingers flying over the
keyboard of his memory pad.  He frowned or the screenful of information,
and started to make an instant synopsis.

'William Tsien Norton, Born 2077, Brisbane, Oceana.  Educated Sydney,
Bombay, Houston.  Then five years at Astrograd, specializing in
propulsion.

Commissioned 2io.-.  Rose through usual ranks - Lieutenant on the Third
Persephone expedition, distinguished himself during fifteenth attempt to
establish base on Venus ...  Um ...  um...  exemplary record ...  dual
citizenship, Earth and Mars...

wife and one child in Brisbane, wife and two in Port Lowell, with option
on third..." 'Wife?" asked Taylor innocently.

'No, child of course,' snapped the Professor, before he caught the grin
on the other's face.  Mild laughter rippled COMMITTEE round the table,
though the overcrowded terrestrials looked more envious than amused.
After a century of determined effort, Earth had still failed to get its
population below the target of one billion ...

'...  appointed commanding officer Solar Survey Research Vessel
Endeavour.

First voyage to retrograde satellites of Jupiter ...  um, that was a
tricky one .  .  .  on asteroid mission when ordered to prepare for this
operation ...  managed to beat deadline..." The Professor cleared the
display and looked up at his colleagues.

'I think we were extremely lucky, considering that he was the only man
available at such short notice.  We might have had the usual
run-of-the-mill captain." He sounded as if he was referring to the
typical peg-legged scourge of the spaceways, pistol in one hand and
cutlass in the other.

'The record only proves that he's competent,' objected the Ambassador
from Mercury (population: 112,500 but growing).  'How will he react in a
wholly novel situation like this?" On Earth, Sir Lewis Sands cleared his
throat.  A second and a half later, he did so on the Moon.

'Not exactly a novel situation,' he reminded the Hermian, 'even though
it's three centuries since it last occurred.  If Rama is dead, or
unoccupied - and so far all the evidence suggests that it is - Norton is
in the position of an archaeologist discovering the ruins of an extinct
culture." He bowed politely to Dr. Price, who nodded in agreement.
'Obvious examples are Schliemann at Troy or Mouhot at Angkor Vat.  The
danger is minimal, though of course accident can never be completely
ruled out." 'But what about the booby-traps and trigger mechanisms these
Pandora people have been talking about?" asked Dr. Price.

'Pandora?" asked the Hermian Ambassador quickly.

'What's that?" 'It's a crackpot movement,' explained Sir Robert, with as
much embarrassment as a diplomat was ever likely to show, 'which is
convinced that Rama is a grave potential danger.  A box that shouldn't
be opened, you know." He doubted if the Hermian did know: classical
studies were not encouraged on Mercury.

'Pandora - paranoia,' snorted Conrad Taylor.  'Oh, of course, such
things are conceivable, but why should any intelligent race want to play
childish tricks?" 'Well, even ruling out such unpleasantness,' Sir
Robert continued, 'we still have the much more ominous possibility of an
active, inhabited Rama.  Then the situation is one of an encounter
between two cultures - at very different technological levels.  Pizzaro
and the Incas.  Peary and the Japanese.  Europe and Africa.  Almost
invariably, the consequences have been disastrous - for one or both
parties.  I'm not making any recommendations: I'm merely pointing out
precedents." 'Thank you, Sir Robert,' replied Dr. Bose.  It was a mild
nuisance, he thought, having two 'Sirs' on one small committee; in these
latter days, knighthood was an honour which few Englishmen escaped. 'I'm
sure we've all thought of these alarming possibilities.  But if the
creatures inside Rama are er - malevolent - will it really make the
slightest difference what we do?" 'They might ignore us if we go away."
'What - after they've travelled billions of miles and thousands of
years?" The argument had reached the take-off point, and was now
self-sustaining.

Dr. Bose sat back in his chair, said very little, and waited for the
consensus to emerge.

It was just as he had predicted.  Everyone agreed that, once he had
opened the first door, it was inconceivable that Commander Norton should
not open the second.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Wives

If his wives ever compared his videograins, Commander Norton thought
with more amusement than concern, it would involve him in a lot of extra
work.  Now, he could make one long 'gram and dupe it, adding only brief
personal messages and endearments before shooting the almost identical
copies off to Mars and Earth.

Of course' it was highly unlikely that his wives ever would do such a
thing; even at the concessionary rates allowed to spacemen's families,
it would be expensive.  And there would be no point in it; his families
were on excellent terms with each other, and exchanged the usual
greetings on birthdays and anniversaries.  Yet, on the ihole, perhaps it
was just as well that the girls had never met, and probably never would.
Myrna had been born on Mars and so could not tolerate the high gravity
of Earth.  And Caroline hated even the twenty-five minutes of the
longest possible terrestrial journey.

'Sorry I'm a day late with this transmission,' sAd the Commander after
he had finished the general-purpose preliminaries, 'but I've been away
from the ship for the last thirty hours, believe it or not ...

'Don't be alarmed - everything is under control, going perfectly.  It's
taken us two days, but we're almost through the airlock complex.  We
could have done it in a couple of hours, if we'd known what we do now.
But we took no chances, sent remote cameras ahead, and cycled all the
locks a dozen times to make sure they wouldn't seize up behind us -
after we'd gone through ...

'Each lock is a simple revolving cylinder with a slot on one side.  You
go in through this opening, crank the cylinder round a hundred and
eighty degrees and the slot then matches up with another door so that
you can step out of it.

Or float, in this case.

'The Ramans really made sure of things.  There are three of these
cylinderlocks, one after the other just inside the outer hull and below
the entry pillbox.  I can't ima .  the how even one would fail, unless
someone blew it 91 up with explosives, but if it did, there would be a
second back-up, and then a third ...

'And that's only the beginning.  The final lock opens into a straight
corridor, almost half a kilometer long.  It looks clean and tidy, like
everything else we've seen; every few metres there are small ports that
probably held lights, but now everything is completely black and, I
don't mind telling you, scary.  There are also two parallel slots, about
a centimetre wide, cut in the walls and running the whole length of the
tunnel.  We suspect that some kind of shuttle runs inside these, to tow
equipment - or people - back and forth.  It would save us a lot of
trouble if we could get it working ...

'I mentioned that the tunnel was half a kilometer long.  Well, from our
seismic soundings we knew that's about the thickness of the shell, so
obviously we were almost through it.  And at the end of the tunnel we
were'nt surprised to find another of those cylindrical airlocks.

'Yes, and another.  And another.  These people seem to have done
everything in threes.  We're in the final lock chamber.  now, awaiting
the OK from Earth before we go through.  The interior of Rama is only a
few metres away.  I'll be a lot happier when the suspense is over.

'You know Jerry Kirchoff, my Exec, who's got such a library of real
books that he can't afford to emigrate from Earth?  Well, Jerry told me
about a situation just like this, back at the beginning of the
twenty-first - no, twentieth century.  An archaeologist found the tomb
of an Egyptian king, the first one that hadn't been looted by TWO WIVES
35 robbers.  His workmen took months to dig their way in, chamber by
chamber, until they came to the final wall.  Then they broke through the
masonery, and he held out a lantern and pushed his head inside.  He
found himself looking into a whole roomful of treasure - incredible
stuff, gold and jewels ...

'Perhaps this place is also a tomb; it seems more and more likely.  Even
now, there's still not the slightest sound, or hint of any activity.
Well, tomorrow we should know." Commander Norton switched the record to
HOLD.  What else, he wondered, should he say about the work before he
began the separate personal messages to his families?  Normally, he
never went into so much detail, but these circumstances were scarcely
normal.  This might be the last 'gram he would ever send to those he
loved; he owed it to them to explain what he was doing.

By the time they saw these images, and heard these words, he would be
inside Rama - for better or for Worse.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Through the Hub

Never before had Norton felt so strongly his kinship with that long dead
Egyptologist.  Not since Howard Carter had first peered into the tomb of
Tutankhamen could any man have known a moment such as this - yet the
comparison was almost laughably ludicrous.

Tutankhamen had been buried only yesterday - not even four thousand
years ago; Rama might be older than mankind.  That little tomb in the
Valley of the Kings could have been lost in the corridors through which
they had already passed, yet the space that lay beyond this final seal
was at least a million times greater.  And as for the treasure it might
hold - that was beyond imagination.

No one had spoken over the radio circuits for at least five minutes; the
well-trained team had not even reported verbally when all the checks
were complete.  Mercer had simply given him the OK sign and waved him
towards the open tunnel.  It was as if everyone realized that this was a
moment for History, not to be spoiled by unnecessary small-talk.  That
suited Commander Norton, for at the moment he too had nothing to say. He
flicked on the beam of his flashlight, triggered his jets, and drifted
slowly down the short corridor, trailing his safety line behind him.
Only seconds later, he was inside.

Inside what?  All before him was total darkness; not a glimmer of light
was reflected back from the beam.  He had expected this, but he had not
really believed it.  All the calculations had shown that the far wall
was tens of THROUGH THE HUB 37 kilometres away; now his eyes told him
that this was indeed the truth.  As he drifted slowly into that
darkness, he felt a sudden need for the reassurance of his safety line,
stronger than any he had ever experienced before, even on his very first
EVA.  And that was ridiculous; be bad looked out across the lightyears
and the megaparsecs without vertigo; why should he be disturbed by a few
cubic kilometres of emptiness?

He was still queasily brooding over this problem when the momentum
damper at the end of the line braked him gently to a halt, with a barely
perceptible rebound.  He swept the vainly-probing beam of the flashlight
down from the nothingness ahead, to examine the surface from which he
had emerged.

He might have been hovering over the centre of a small crater, which was
itself a dimple in the base of a much larger one.  On either side rose a
complex of terraces and ramps - all geometrically precise and obviously
artificial which extended for as far as the beam could reach.  About a
hundred metres away he could see the exit of the other two airlock
systems, identical with this one.

And that was all.  There was nothing particularly exotic or alien about
the scene: in fact, it bore a considerable resemblance to an abandoned
mine.  Norton felt a vague sense of disappointment; after all this
effort, there should have been some dramatic, even transcendental
revelation.  Then he reminded himself that he could see only a couple of
hundred metres.  The darkness beyond his field of view might vet contain
more wonders than he cared to face.

He reported briefly to his anxiously-waiting companions, then added:
'I'm sending out the flare - two minutes delay.  Here goes." Wi th all
his strength, he threw the little cylinder straight upwards - or outward
- and started to count seconds as it dwindled along the beam.  Before he
had reached the quarter minute it was out of sight; when he had got to a
hundred he shielded his eyes and aimed the camera.  He had always been
good at estimating time; he was only two seconds off when the world
exploded with light.  And this time there was no cause for
disappointment.

Even the millions of candlepower of the flare could not light up the
whole of this enormous cavity, but now he could see enough to grasp its
plan and appreciate its titanic scale.  He was at one end of a hollow
cylinder at least ten kilometres wide, and of indefinite length.  From
his viewpoint at the central axis he could see such a mass of detail on
the curving walls surrounding him that his mind could not absorb more
than a minute fraction of it; he was looking at the landscape of an
entire world by a single flash of lightning, and he tried by a
deliberate effort of will to freeze the image in his mind.

All round him, the terraced slopes of the 'crater' rose up until they
merged into the solid wall that rimmed the sky.  No - that impression
was false; he must discard the instincts both of earth and of space, and
reorientate himself to a new system of coordinates.

He was not at the lowest point of this strange, insideout world, but the
highest.  From here, all directions were down, not up.  If he moved away
from this central axis, towards the curving wall which he must no longer
think of.as a wall, gravity would steadily increase.  When he reache ' d
the inside surface of the cylinder, he could stand upright on it at any
point, feet towards the stars and head towards the centre of the
spinning drum.  The concept was familiar enough; since the earliest dawn
of spaceflight, centrifugal force had been used to simulate gravity.  It
was only the scale of this application which was so overwhelming, so
shocking.  The largest of all spacestations, Syncsat Five, was less than
two hundred metres in diameter.  It would take some little while to grow
accustomed to one a hundred times that size.

The tube of landscape which enclosed him was mottled with areas of light
and shade that could have been forests, fields, frozen lakes or towns;
the distance, and the THROUGH THE HUB 19 fading illumination of the
flare, made identification impossible.  Narrow lines that could be
highways, canals, or well-trained rivers formed a faintly visible
geometrical network; and far along the cylinder, at the very limit of
vision, was a band of deeper darkness.  It formed a complete circle,
ringing the interior of this world, and Norton suddenly recalled the
myth of Oceanus, the sea which, the ancients believed, surrounded the
Earth.

Here, perhaps, was an even stranger sea - not circular, but cylindrical.

Before it became frozen in the interstellar night, did it have waves and
tides and currents and fish?

The flare guttered and died; the moment of revelation was over.  But
Norton knew that as long as he lived these images would be burned on his
mind.  Whatever discoveries the future might bring, they could never
erase this first impression.

And History could never take from him the privilege of being the first
of all mankind to gaze upon the works of an alien civilization.

CHAPTER NINE

Reconnaissance

"We have now launched five long-delay flares down the axis of the
cylinder, and so have a good photo-coverage of its full length.  All the
main features are mapped; though there are very few that we can
identify, we've given them provisional names.

'The interior cavity is fifty kilometres long and sixteen wide.  The two
ends are bowl-shaped, with rather complicated geometries.  We've called
ours the Northern Hemisphere and are establishing our first base here at
the axis.

'Radiating away from the central hub, i.-o degrees apart, are three
ladders that are almost a kilometer long.  They all end at a terrace or
ring-shaped plateau, that runs right round the bowl.  And leading on
from that, continuing the direction of the ladders, are three enormous
stairways, which go all the way down to the plain.  If you imagine an
umbrella with only three ribs, equally spaced, you'll have a good idea
of this end of Rama.

'Each of those ribs is a stairway, very steep near the axis and then
slowly flattening out as it approaches the plain below.  The stairways -
we've called them Alpha, Beta, Gamma - aren't continuous, but break at
five more circular terraces.  We estimate there must be between twenty
and thirty thousand steps .

.  .  presumably they were only used for emergencies, since it's
inconceivable that the Ranians - or whatever we're going to call them
had no better way of reaching the axis of their world.

'The Southern Hemisphere looks quite different; for one thing, it has no
stairways, and no flat central hub.

RE CONN AI SS A NC E 41 Instead, there's a huge spike - kilometres long
- jutting along the axis, with six smaller ones around it.  The whole
arrangement is very odd, and we can't imagine what it means.

'The fifty-kilometer-long cylindrical section between the two bowls
we've called the Central Plain.  It may seem crazy to use the word
"plain" to describe something so obviously curved, but we feel it's
justified.  It will appear flat to us when we get down there - just as
the interior of a bottle must seem flat to an ant crawling round inside
it.

'The most striking feature of the Central Plain is the
ten-kilometer-wide dark band running completely round it at the half-way
mark.  It looks like ice, so we've christened it the Cylindrical Sea.
Right out in the middle there's a large oval island, about ten
kilometres long and three wide, and covered with tall structures.
Because it reminds us of Old Manhattan, we've called it New York.  Yet I
don't think it's a city; it seems more like an enormous factory or
chemical processing plant.

'But there are some cities - or at any rate, towns.  At least six of
them; if they were built for human beings, they could each hold about
fifty thousand people.  We've called them Rome, Peking, Paris, Moscow,
London, Tokyo ...  They are linked with highways and something that
seems to be a rail system.

'There must be enough material for centuries of research in this frozen
carcass of a world.  We've four thousand square kilometres to explore,
and only a few weeks to do it in.  I wonder if we'll ever learn the
answer to the two mysteries that have been haunting me ever since we got
inside; who were they and what went wrong?" The recording ended.  On
Earth and Moon, the inembers of the Rama Committee relaxed, then started
to examine the maps and photographs spread in front of them.  Though
they had already studied these for many hours, Commander Norton's voice
added a dimension which no pictures could convey.  He had actually been
there - had looked with his own eyes across this extraordinary
inside-out world, during the brief moments while its age-long night had
been illuminated by the flares.  And he was the man who would lead any
expedition to explore it.

'Dr. Perera, I believe you have some comments to make?" Ambassador Bose
wondered briefly if he should have first given the floor to Professor
Davidson, as senior scientist and the only astronomer.  But the old
cosmologist still seemed to be in a mild state of shock, and was clearly
out of his element.  All his professional career he had looked upon the
universe as an arena for the titanic impersonal forces of gravitation,
magnetism, radiation; he had never believed that life played an
important role in the scheme of things, and regarded its appearance on
Earth, Mars and Jupiter as an accidental aberration.

But now there was proof that life not only existed outside the solar
system, but had scaled heights far beyond anything that man had
achieved, or could hope to reach for centuries to come.  Moreover, the
discovery of Rama challenged another dogma that Professor Olaf had
preached for years.  When pressed, he would reluctantly admit that life
probably did exist in other star systems but it was absurd, he had
always maintained to imagine that it could ever cross the interstellar
gulfs ...

Perhaps the Rarnans had indeed failed, if Commander Norton was correct
in believing that their world was now a tomb.  But at least they had
attempted the feat, on a scale which indicated a high confidence in the
outcome.  If such a thing had happened once, it must surely have
happened many times in this Galaxy of a hundred thousand million suns
...  and someone, somewhere, would eventually succeed.

This was the thesis which, without proof but with considerable
arm-waving, Dr. Carlisle Perera had been preaching for years.  He was
now a very happy man, though also a most frustrated one.  Rama had
spectacularly confirmed his views but he could never set foot inside it,
or even RECONNAI SSANCE 43 see it with his own eyes.  If the devil had
suddenly appeared and offered him the gift of instantaneous
teleportation, he would have signed the contract without bothering to
look at the small print.

'Yes, Mr Ambassador, I think I have some information of interest.  What
we have here is undoubtedly a "Space Ark".  It's an old idea in the
astronautical literature; I've been able to trace it back to the British
physicist J.  D.

Bernal, who proposed this method of interstellar colonization in a book
published in 1929 - yes, two hundred years ago.  And the great Russian
pioneer Tsiolkovski put forward somewhat similar proposals even earlier.

'If you want to go from one star system to another you have a number of
choices.  Assuming that the speed of light is an absolute limit - and
that's still not completely settled, despite anything you may have heard
to the contrary' - there was an indignant sniff, but no formal protest
from Professor Davidson - 'you can make a fast trip in a small vessel,
or a slow journey in a giant one.

'There seems no technical reason why spacecraft cannot reach ninety
percent, or more, of the speed of light.  That would mean a travel time
of five to ten years between neighbouring stars - tedious, perhaps, but
not impracticable, especially for creatures whose life spans might be
measured in centuries.  One can imagine voyages of this duration,
carried out in ships not much larger than ours.

'But perhaps such speeds are impossible, with reasonable payloads;
remember, you have to carry the fuel to slow down at the end of the
voyage, even if you're on a one-way trip.  So it may make more sense to
take your time - ten thousand, a hundred thousand years ...

'Bernal and others thought this could be done with mobile worldlets a
few .  kilometres across, carrying thousands of passengers on journeys
that would last for generations.  Naturally, the system would have to be
rigidly closed, recycling all food, air and other expendables.  But, of
course, that's just how the Earth operates - on a slightly larger scale.

'Some writers suggested that these Space Arks should be built in the
form of concentric spheres; others proposed hollow, spinning cylinders
so that centrifugal force could provide artificial gravity - exactly
what we've found in Rama-' Professor Davidson could not tolerate this
sloppy talk.

'No such thing as centrifugal force.  It's an engineer's phantom.
There's only inertia." 'You're quite right, of course,' admitted Perera,
'though it might be hard to convince a man who'd just been slung off a
carousel.  But mathematical rigour seems unnecessary-' 'Hear, hear,'
interjected Dr. Bose, with some exasperation.  'We all know what you
mean, or think we do.  Please don't destroy our illusions." 'Well, I was
merely pointing out that there's nothing conceptually novel about Rama,
though its size is startling.  Men have imagined such things for two
hundred years.

'Now I'd like to address myself to another question.  Exactly how long
has Rama been travelling through space?

'We now have a very precise determination of its orbit and its velocity.

Assuming that it's made no navigational changes, we can trace its
position back for millions of years.  We expected that it would be
coming from the direction of a near-by star - but that isn't the case at
all.

'It's more than two hundred thousand years since Rama passed near any
star, and that particular one turns out to be an irregular variable -
about the most unsuitable sun you could imagine for an inhabited solar
system.  It has a brightness range of over fifty to one; any planets
would be alternately baked and frozen every few years." 'A suggestion,'
put in Dr. Price.  'Perhaps that explains everything.  Maybe this was
once a normal sun and be RECONNAISSANCE came unstable.  That's why the
Ramans had to find a new one." Dr. Perera admired the old archaeologist,
so he let her down lightly.  But what would she say, he wondered, if he
started pointing out the instantly obvious in her own speciality ...

'We did consider that,' he said gently.  'But if our present theories of
stellar evolution are correct, this star could never have been stable -
could never have had lifebearing planets.  So Rama has been cruising
through space for at least two hundred thousand years, and perhaps for
more than a million.

'Now it's cold and dark and apparently dead, and I think I know why. The
Ramans may have had no choice - perhaps they were indeed fleeing from
some disaster but they miscalculated.

'No closed ecology can be one hundred percent efficient; there is always
waste, loss - some degradation of the environment, and build-up of
pollutants.

It may take billions of years to poison and wear out a planet - but it
will happen in the end.  The oceans will dry up, the atmosphere will
leak away ...

By our standards, Rama is enormous - yet it is still a very tiny planet.

My calculations, based on the leakage through its hull, and some
reasonable guesses about the rate of biological turnover, indicate that
its ecology could only survive for about a thousand years.  At the most,
I'll grant ten thousand ...

'That would be long enough, at the speed Rama is travelling, for a
transit between the closely-packed suns in the heart of the Galaxy.  But
not out here, in the scattered population of the spiral arms.  Rama is a
ship which exhausted its provisions before it reached its goal.  It's a
derelict, drifting among the stars.

'There's just one serious objection to this theory, and I'll raise it
before anybody else does.  Rama's orbit is aimed so accurately at the
solar sytem.  that coincidence seems ruled out.  In fact, I'd say it's
now heading much too close to the sun for comfort: Endeavour will have
to break away long before perihelion, to avoid overheating.

'I don't pretend to understand this.  Perhaps, there may be some form of
automatic terminal guidance still operating, steering Rama to the
nearest suitable star ages after its builders are dead.

'And they are dead; I'll stake my reputation on that.  All the samples
we've taken from the interior are absolutely sterile - we've not found a
single microorganism.  As for the talk you may have heard about
suspended animation, you can ignore it.  There are fundamental reasons
why hibernation techniques will only work for a very few centuries - and
we're dealing with time spans a thousand-fold longer.

'So the Pandorans and their sympathizers have nothing to worry about.
For my part, I'm sorry.  It would have been wonderful to have met
another intelligent species.

'But at least we have answered one ancient question.  We are not alone.
The stars will never again be the same to us."

CHAPTER TEN

Descent into Darkness

Commander Norton was sorely tempted - but, as captain his first duty was
to his ship.  If anything went badly wrong on this initial probe, he
might have to run for it.

So that left his second officer, Lieut-Commander Mercer, as the obvious
choice.  Norton willingly admitted that Karl was better suited for the
mission.

The authority on life-support systems, Mercer had written some of the
standard textbooks on the subject.  He had personally checked out
innumerable types of equipment, often under hazardous conditions, and
his biofeedback control was famous.  At a moment's notice he could cut
his pulse-rate by fifty percent, and reduce respiration to almost zero
for up to ten minutes.  These useful little tricks had saved his life on
more than one occasion.

Yet despite his great ability and intelligence, he was almost wholly
lacking in imagination.  To him the most dangerous experiments or
missions were simply jobs that had to be done.  He never took
unnecessary risks, and had no use at all for what was commonly regarded
as courage.

The two mottoes on his desk summed up his philosophy of life.  One asked
WHAT HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN?  The other said HELP STAMP OUT BRAVERY.  The
fact that he was widely regarded as the bravest man in the Fleet was the
only thing that ever made him angry.

Given Mercer, that automatically selected the next man - his inseparable
companion It Joe Calvert.  It was hard to see what the two had in
common; the lightlybuilt, rather highly strung navigating officer was
ten years younger than his stolid and imperturbable friend, who
certainly did not share his passionate interest in the art of the
primitive cinema.

But no one can predict where lightning will strike, and years ago Mercer
and Calvert had established an apparently stable liaison.  That was
common enough; much more unusual was the fact that they also shared a
wife back on Earth, who had borne each of them a child.  Commander
Norton hoped that he could meet her one day; she must be a very
remarkable woman.  The triangle had lasted for at least five years, and
still seemed to be an equilateral one.

Two men were not enough for an exploring team; long ago it had been
found that three was the optimum - for if one man was lost, two might
still escape where a single survivor would be doomed.  After a good deal
of thought, Norton had chosen Technical Sergeant Willard Myron.  A
mechanical genius who could make anything work - or design something
better if it wouldn't - Myron was the ideal man to identify alien pieces
of equipment.  On a long sabbatical from his regular job as Associate
Professor at Astrotech, the Sergeant had refused to accept a commission
on the grounds that he did not wish to block the promotion of more
deserving career officers.  No one took this explanation very seriously
and it was generally agreed that Will rated zero for ambition.  He might
make it to Space Sergeant, but would never be a full professor.  Myron,
like countless NCOs before him, had discovered the ideal compromise
between power and responsibility.

As they drifted through the last airlock and floated out along the
weightless axis of Rama, It Calvert found himself, as he so often did,
in the middle of a movie flashback.  He sometimes wondered if he should
attempt to cure himself of this habit, but he could not see that it had
any disadvantages.  It could make even the dullest situations
interesting and - who could tell?  - one day it might 1i save his life.
He would remember what Fairbanks or DESCENT INTO DARKNESS Connery or
Hiroshi had done in similar circumstances...

This time, he was about to go over the top, in one of the
early-twentiethcentury wars; Mercer was the sergeant leading a three-man
patrol on a night raid into no-man's land.  It was not too difficult to
imagine that they were at the bottom of an immense shell-crater, though
one that had somehow become neatly tailored into a series of ascending
terraces.  The crater was flooded with light from three widely-spaced
plasma-arcs, which gave an almost shadowless illumination over the whole
interior.  But beyond that - over the rim of the most distant terrace -
was darkness and mystery.

In his mind's eye, Calvert knew perfectly well what lay there.  First
there was the flat circular plain over a kilometer across.  Trisecting
it into three equal parts, and looking very much like broad railroad
tracks, were three wide ladders, their rungs recessed into the surface
so that they would provide no obstruction to anything sliding over it.
Since the arrangement was completely symmetrical, there was no reason to
choose one ladder rather than another; that nearest to Airlock Alpha had
been selected purely as a matter of convenience.

Though the rungs of the ladders were uncomfortably far apart, that
presented no problem.  Even at the rim of the Hub, half a kilometer from
the axis, gravity was still barely one thirtieth of Earth's.  Although
they were carrying almost a hundred kilos of equipment and life-sup rt
PO gear, they would still be able to move easily hand-ov erhand.

Commander Norton and the back-up team accompanied them along the guide
ropes that had been stretched from Airlock Alpha to the rim of the
crater; then, beyond the range of the floodlights, the darkness of Rama
lay before them.  All that could be seen in the dancing beams of the
helmet lights was the first few hundred metres of the ladder, dwindling
away across a flat and otherwise featureless plain.

And now, Karl Mercer told himself, I have to mak e In y first decision.
Am I going up that ladder, or down it?

The question was not a trivial one.  They were still essentially in zero
gravity, and the brain could select any reference system it pleased.  By
a simple effort of will, Mercer could convince himself that he was
looking Out across a horizontal plain, or up the face of a vertical
wall, or over the edge of a sheer cliff.  Not a few astronauts had
experienced grave psychological problems by choosing the wrong
coordinates when they started on a complicated job.

Mercer was determined to go head-first, for any other mode of locomotion
would be awkward; moreover, this way he could more easily see what was
in front of him.  For the first few hundred inetres, therefore, he would
imagine he was climbing upwards; only when the increasing pull of
gravity made it impossible to maintain the illuSion would he switch his
mental directions one hundred and eighty degrees.

He grasped the first rung and gently propelled himself along the ladder.

Movement was as effortless as swimming along the seabed - more so, in
fact, for there was no backward drag of water.  It was so easy that
there was a temptation to go too fast, but Mercer was much too
experienced to hurry in a situation as novel as this.

In his earphones, he could hear the regular breathing of his two
companions.

He needed no other proof that they were in good shape, and wasted no
time in conversation.  Though he was tempted to look back, he decided
not to risk it until they had reached the platform at the end of the
ladder.

The rungs were spaced a uniform half metre apart, and for the first
portion of the climb Mercer missed the alternate ones.  But he counted
them carefully, and at around two hundred noticed the first distinct
sensations of weight.  The spin of Rama was starting to make itself
felt.

At rung four hundred, he estimated that his apparent weight was about
five kilos.  This was no problem, but it was now getting hard to pretend
that he was climbin 91 when he was being firmly dragged upwards.

The five hundredth rung seemed a good place to pause.  He could feel the
muscles in his arms responding to the unaccustomed exercise, even though
Rama was now doing all the work and he had merely to guide himself.

'Everything OK, Skipper,' he reported.  'We're just passing the halfway
inark.  Joe, Will - any problems?" 'I'm fine - what are you stopping
for?" Joe Calvert answered.

'Same here,' added Sergeant Myron.  'But watch out for the Coriolis
force.

It's starting to build up." So Mercer had already noticed.  When he let
go of the rungs he had a distinct tendency to drift off to the right. He
knew perfectly well that this was merely the effect of Rama's spin, but
it seemed as if some mysterious force was gently pushing him away from
the ladder.

Perhaps it was time to start going feet-first, now that 'down' was
beginning to have a physical meaning.  He would run the risk of a
momentary disorientation.

'Watch out - I'm going to swing round." Holding firmly on to the rung,
he used his arms to twist himself round a hundred and eighty degrees,
and found himself momentarily blinded by the lights of his companions.
Far above them - and now it really was above - he could see a fainter
glow along the rim of the sheer cliff.  Silhouetted against it were the
figures of Commander Norton and the back-up team, watching him intently.
They seemed very small and far away, and he gave them a reassuring wave.

He released his grip, and let Rama's still feeble pseudogravity take
over.

The drop from one rung to the next required more than two seconds; on
Earth, in the same time, a man would have fallen thirty metres.

The rate of fall was so painfully slow that he hurried things up a
trifle by pushing with his hands, gliding over spans of a dozen rungs at
a time, and checking himself with his feet whenever he felt he was
travelling too fast.

At rung seven hundred, he came to another halt and swung the beam of his
helmet-lamp downwards; as he had calculated, the beginning of the
stairway was only fifty metres below.

A few minutes later, they were on the first step.  It was a strange
experience, after months in space, to stand upright on a solid surface,
and to feel it pressing against one's feet.  Their weight was still less
than ten kilogrammes, but that was enough to give a feeling of
stability.  When he closed his eyes, Mercer could believe that he once
more had a real world beneath him.

The ledge or platform from which the stairway descended was about ten
metres wide, and curved upwards on each side until it disappeared into
the darkness.  Mercer knew that it formed a complete circle and that if
he walked along it for five kilometres he would come right back to his
starting-point, having circumnavigated Rama.

At the fractional gravity that existed here, however, real walking was
impossible; one could only bound along in giant strides.  And therein
lay danger.

The stairway that swooped down into the darkness, far below the range of
their lights, would be deceptively easy to descend.  But it would be
essential to hold on to the tall handrail that flanked it on either
side; too bold a step might send an incautious traveller arching far out
into space.  He would hit the surface again perhaps a hundred metres
lower down; the impact would be harmless, but its consequences might not
be - for the spin of Rama would have moved the stairway off to the left.
And so a falling body would hit against the smooth curve that swept in
an unbroken arc to the plain almost seven kilometres below.

That, Mercer told himself, would be a hell of a toboggan ride; the
terminal speed, even in this gravity, could be several hundred
kilometres an hour.  Perhaps it would be possible to apply enough
friction to check such a headlong descent; if so, this might even be the
most convenient way to reach the inner surface of Rama.  But some very
cautious experimenting would be necessary first.

'Skipper,' reported Mercer, 'there were no problems getting down the
ladder.  If you agree, I'd like to continue towards the next Platform I
want to time our rate of descent on the stairway." Norton replied
without hesitation.

'Go ahead." He did not need to add, 'Proceed with caution." It did not
take Mercer long to make a fundamental discovery.  It was impossible, at
least at this onetwentiethof-a-gravity level, to walk down the stairway
in the normal manner.  Any attempt to do so resulted in a slowmotion
dream-like movement that was intolerably tedious; the only practical way
was to ignore the steps, and to use the handrail to pull oneself
downwards.

Calvert had come to the same conclusion.

'This stairway was built to walk up, not down V he exclaimed.  'You can
use the steps when you're moving against gravity, but they're just a
nuisance in this direction.  It may not be dignified, but I think the
best way down is to slide along the handrail." ' That's ridiculous,'
protested Sergeant Myron.  'I can't believe the Ramans did it this way."
'I doubt if they ever used this stairway - it's obvio usly only for
emergencies.  They must have had some mechanical transport system to get
up here.

A funicular, perhaps.

That would explain those long slots running down from the Hub." 'I
always assumed they were drains - but I suppose they could be both.  I
wonder if it ever rained here?" 'Probably,' said Mercer.  'But I think
Joe is right, and to hell with dignity.  Here we go." The handrail -
presumably it was designed for something like hands - was a smooth,
flat, metal bar supported on widely-spaced pillars a metre high.
Commander Mercer straddled it, carefully gauged the braking power he
could exert with his hands, and let himself slide.

Very sedately, slowly picking up speed, he descended into the darkness,
moving in the pool of light from his helmet-lamp.  He had gone about
fifty metres when he called the others to join him.

None would admit it, but they all felt like boys again, sliding down the
banisters.  In less than two minutes, they had made a kilometer descent
in safety and comfort.  Whenever they felt they were going too fast , a
tightened grip on the handrail provided all the braking that was
necessary.

'I hope you enjoyed yourselves,' Commander Norton called when they
stepped off at the second platform.  'Climbing back won't be quite so
easy." 'That's what I want to check,' replied Mercer, who was entally
back and forth, getting the feel walking experim of the increased
gravity.  Jt's already a tenth of a gee here - you really notice the
difference." He walked - or, more accurately, glided - to the edge of
the platform, and shone his helmet-lialit down the next section of the
stairway.  As far as his beam could with the one above - though reach,
it appeared identical careful examination of photos had shown that the
height of the steps steadily decreased with the rising gravity.  The
stair had apparently been designed so that the effort required to climb
it was more or less constant at every point in its long curving sweep.

Mercer glanced up towards the Hub of Rama, now almost two kilometres
above him.  The little glow of light, and the tiny figures silhouetted
against it, seemed horribly far away.  For the first time, he was
suddenly glad that he could not see the whole length of this enormous
stairway.  Des ite his steady nerves and lack of imaginap tion, he was
not sure how he would react if he could see himself like an insect
crawling up the face of a vertical gh - and with the saucer more than
sixteen kilometres hit, upper half overhanging above him.  Until this
momen he had regarded the darkness as a nuisance; now he almost welcomed
it.

'There's no change of temperature,' he reported to Commander Norton.
'Still just below freezing.  But the air-pressure is up, as we expected
- around three hundred millibars.  Even with this low oxygen content,
it's almost breathable; further down there will be no problems at all.
That will simplify exploration enormously.  What a find - the first
world on which we can walk without breathing gear I In fact, I'm going
to take a sniff." Up on the Hub, Commander Norton stirred a little
uneasily.  But Mercer, of all men, knew exactly what he was doing.  He
would already have made enough tests to satisfy himself.

Mercer equalized pressure, unlatched the securing clip of his helmet,
and opened it a crack.  He took a cautious breath; then a deeper one.

The air of Rama was dead and musty, as if from a tomb so ancient that
the last trace of physical corruption had disappeared ages ago.  Even
Mercer's ultrasensitive nose, trained through years of testing
life-support systems to and beyond the point of disaster, could detect
no recognizable odours.  There was a faint metallic tang, and he
suddenly recalled that the first men on the Moon had reported a hint of
burnt gunpowder when they repressurized the lunar module.

Mercer imagined that the moon-dust-contaminated cabin on Eagle must have
smelled rather like Rama.

He sealed the helmet again, and emptied his lungs of the alien air.  He
had extracted no sustenance from it; even a mountaineer acclimatized to
the summit of Everest would die quickly here.  But a few kilometres
further down, it would be a different matter.

What else was there to do here?  He could think of nothing, except the
enjoyment of the gentle, unaccustomed gravity.  But there was no point
in growing used to that, since they would be returning immediately to
the weightlessness of the Hub.

'We're comin g back, Skipper,' he reported.  'There's no reason to go
further - until we're ready to go all the way.

'I agree.  We'll be timing you, but take it easy." As he bounded up the
steps, three or four at a stride, Mercer agreed that Calvert had been
perfectly correct; these stairs were built to be walked up, not down. As
long as one did not look back, and ignored the vertiginous steepness of
the ascending curve, the climb was a delightful experience.  After about
two hundred Steps, however, he began to feel some twinges in his calf
muscles, and decided to slow down.  The others had done the same; when
he ventured a quick glance over his shoulder, they were considerably
further down the slope.

The climb was wholly uneventful - merely an apparently endless
succession of steps.  When they stood once more on the highest platform,
immediately beneath the ladder, they were barely winded, and it had
taken them only ten minutes.

They paused for another ten, then started on the last vertical
kilornetre.

jump - catch hold of a rung - jump - catch - jump catch ...  it was
easy, but so boringly repetitious that there was danger of becoming
careless.  Halfway up the ladder they rested for five minutes: by this
time their arms as well as their legs had begun to ache.  Once again,
Mercer was glad that they could see so little of the vertical face to
which they were clinging; it was not too difficult to pretend that the
ladder only extended just a few metres beyond their circle of light, and
would soon come to an end.

jump - catch a rung - jump - then, quite suddenly, the ladder really
ended.

They were back at the weightless world of the axis, among their anxious
friends.

The whole trip had taken under an hour, and they felt a sense of modest
achievement.

But it was much too soon to feel pleased with themselves.  For all their
efforts, they had traversed less than an eighth of that cyclopean
stairway.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Men Women and Monkows

Some women, Cqmmander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed
aboard ship; weightlessness did things to their breasts that were too
damn distracting.

It was bad enough when they were motionless; but when they started to
move, and sympathetic vibrations set in, it was more than any
warm-blooded male should be asked to take.  He was quite sure that at
least one serious s pace accident had been caused by acute crew
distraction, after the transit of a wellupholstered lady officer through
the control cabin.

He had once mentioned this theory to Surgeon-Commander Laura Ernst.
without revealing who had inspired his particular train of thought.
There was no need; they knew each other much too well.  On Earth, years
ago, in a moment of mutual loneliness and depression, they had once made
love.  Probably they would never repeat the experience (but could one
ever be quite sure of that?) because so much had changed for both of
them.  Yet whenever the well-built Surgeon oscillated into the
Commander's cabin, he felt a fleeting echo of an old passio she knew
that he felt it, and everyone was happy.  n, 'Bill,' she began, 'I've
checked our mountaineers, and here's my verdict.

Karl and Joe are in good shape - all indications normal for the work
they've done.  But Will shows signs of exhaustion and body-loss - I
won't bother about the details.  I don't believe he's been getting all
the exercise he should, and he's not the only one.  There's been some
cheating in the centrifuge; if there's any more, heads will roll. Please
pass the word." 'Yes, Ma'am.  But there's some excuse.  The men have
been working very hard." 'With their brains and fingers, certainly. But
not with their bodies - not real work in kilogramme-metres.  And that's
what we'll be dealing with, if we're going to explore Rama." 'Well, can
we?" 'Yes, if we proceed with caution.  Karl and I have Al worked out a
very conservative profile - based on the assum ption that we can
dispense with breathing gear below Level Two.  Of course, that's an
incredible stroke of luck, and changes the whole logistics picture. I
still can't get used to the idea of a world with oxygen ...  So we only
need to supply food and water and thermosuits, and we're in business.
Going down will be easy; it looks as if we can slide most of the way, on
that very convenient banister." 'I've got Chips working on a sled with
parachute braking.  Even if we can't risk it for crew, we can use it for
stores and equipment." 'Fine; that should do the trip in ten minutes;
otherwise it will take about an hour.

'Climbing up is harder to estimate; I'd like to allow six hours,
including two one-hour periods.  Later, as we get experience - and
develop some muscles we may be able to cut this back considerably."
'What about psychological factors?" 'Hard to assess, in such a novel
environment.  Darkness may be the biggest problem." 'I'll establish
searchlights on the Hub.  Besides its own lamps, any party down there
will always have a beam playing on it." 'Good - that should be a great
help." 'One other point: should we play safe and send a party only
halfway down the stair - and back - or should we go F the whole way on
the first attempt 'If we had plenty of time, I'd be cautious.  But time
is MEN, WOMEN AND, MONKEYS 59 short, and I can see no danger in going
all the way - and looking around when we get there." 'Thanks, Laura -
that's all I want to know.  I'll get the Exec working on the details.
And I'll order all hands to the centrifuge - twenty minutes a day at
half a gee.  Will that satisfy you?" -No.  It's point six gee down there
in Rama, and I want a safety margin.

Make it three quarters--' 'Ouch P '-for ten minutes-2 'I'll settle for
that-2 '-twice a day." 'Laura, you're a cruel, hard woman.  But so be
it.  I'll break the news just before dinner.  That should spoil a few
appetites." It was the first time that Commander Norton had ever seen
Karl Mercer slightly ill at ease.  He had spent the fifteen minutes
discussing the logistics problem in his usual competent manner, but
something was obviously worrying him.  His captain, who had a shrewd
idea of what it was, waited patiently until he brought it out.

'Skipper,' Karl said at length, 'are you sure you should lead this
party?

If anything goes wrong, I'm considerably more expendable.  And I've been
further inside Rama than anyone else - even if only by fifty metres."
'Granted.  But it's time the commander led his troops, and we've decided
that there's no greater risk on this trip than on the last.  At the
first sign of trouble, I'll be back up that stairway fast enough to
qualify for the Lunar Olympics." He waited for any further objections,
but none came, though Karl still looked unhappy.  So he took pity on him
and added gently: 'And I bet Joe will beat me to the top." The big man
relaxed, and a slow grin spread across his face.  'All the same, Bill, I
wish you'd taken someone else." 'I wanted one man who'd been down
before, and we coot both go.  As for Herr Doktor Professor Sergeant
Myron, Laura says he's still two kilos overweight.  Even shaving off
that mustache didn't help." 'Who's your number three?" 'I still haven't
decided.  That depends on Laura." 'She wants to go herself." 'Who
doesn't?  But if she turns up at the top of her own fitness list, I'll
be very suspicious." As Lieut-Commander Mercer gathered up his papers
and launched himself out of the cabin, Norton felt a brief stab of envy.
Almost all the crew - about eighty-five percent, by his minimum estimate
- had worked out some sort of emotional accommodation.  He had known
ships where the captain had done the same, but that was not his way.
Though discipline aboard the Endeavour was based very largely on the
mutual respect between highly trained and intelligent men and women, the
commander needed something more to underline his position.  His
responsibility was unique, and demanded a certain degree of isolation,
even from his closest friends.  Any liaison could be damaging to morale,
for it was almost impossible to avoid charges of favouritism.  For this
reason, affairs spanning more than two degrees of rank were firmly
discouraged; but apart from this, the only rule regulating shipboard sex
was 'So long as they don't do it

in the corridors and frighten the simps'.

There were four superchimps aboard Endeavour, though strictly speaking
the name was inaccurate, because the ship's non-human crew was not based
on chimpanzee stock.  In zero gravity, a prehensile tail is an enormous
advantage, and all attempts to supply these to humans had turned into
embarrassing failures.

After equally unsatisfactory results with the great apes, the
Superchimpanzee Corporation had turned to the monkey kingdom.

Blackie, BIondie, Goldie and Brownie had family trees whose branches
included the most intelligent of the Old and New World monkeys, plus
synthetic genes that had MEN, WOMEN -AND MONKEYS 6i never existed in
nature.  Their rearing and education had probably cost as much as that
of the average spaceman, and they were worth it.  Each weighed less than
thirty kilos and consumed only half the food and oxygen of a human
being, but each could replace -2-75 men for housekeeping, elementary
cooking, tool-carrying and dozens of other routine jobs.

That 2.75 was the Corporation's claim, based on innumerable
time-and-motion studies.  The figure, though surprising and frequently
challenged, appeared to be accurate, for simps were quite happy to work
fifteen hours a day and did not get bored by the most menial and
repetitious tasks.  So they freed human beings for human work; and on a
spaceship, that was a matter of vital importance.

Unlike the monkeys who were their nearest relatives Endeavour's simps
were docile, obedient and uninquisitive.  Being cloned, they were also
sexless, which eliminated awkward behavioural problems.  Carefully
housetrained vegetarians, they were very clean and didn't smell; they
would have made perfect pets, except that nobody could possibly have
afforded them.

Despite these advantages, having simps on board involved certain
problems.

They had to have their own quarters - inevitably labelled 'The Monkey
House'.

Their little mess-room was always spotless, and was wellequipped with
TV, games equipment and programmed teaching machines.  To avoid
accidents, they were absolutely forbidden to enter the ship's technical
areas; the entrances to all these were colour-coded in red, and the
simps were conditioned so that it was psychologically impossible for
them to pass the visual barriers.

There was also a communications problem.  Though they had an equivalent
IQ of sixty, and could understand several hundred words of English, they
were unable to talk.  It had proved impossible to give useful vocal
chords either to apes or monkeys, and they therefore had to express
themselves in sign language.

The basic sips were obvious and easily learned, so that everyone on
board ship could understand routine messages.  But the only man who
could speak fluent Simpish was their handler - Chief Steward McAndrews.

It was a standing joke that Sergeant Ravi McAndrews looked rather like a
simp - which was hardly an insult, for with their short, tinted pelts
and graceful movements they were very handsome animals.  They were also
affectionate, and everyone on board had his favourite; Commander
Norton's was the aptly-named Goldie.

But the warm relationship which one could so easily establish with simps
created another problem, often used as a powerful argument against their
employment in space.  Since they could only be trained for routine,
lowgrade tasks, they were worse than useless in an emergency; they could
then be a danger to themselves and to their human companions.  In
particular, teaching them to use spacesuits had proved impossible, the
concepts involved being quite beyond their understanding.

No one liked to talk about it, but everybody knew what had to be done if
a hull was breached or the order came to abandon ship.  It had happened
only once; then the simp handler had carried out his instructions more
than adequately.  He was found with his charges, killed by the same
poison.  Thereafter the job of euthing was transferred to the chief
medical officer, who it was felt would have less emotional involvement.

Norton was very thankful that this responsibility, at least, did not
fall upon the captain's shoulders.  He had known men he would have
killed with far fewer qualms than he would Goldie.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Stairway of the Gods

In the clear, cold atmosphere of Rama, the beam of the searchlight was
completely invisible.  Three kilometres down from the central Hub, the
hundred-metre wide oval of light lay across a section of that colossal
stairway.  A brilliant oasis in the surrounding darkness, it was
sweeping slowly towards the curved plain still five kilometres below;
and in its centre moved a trio of ant-like figures, casting long shadows
before them.

It had been, just as they had hoped and expected, a completely
uneventful descent.  They had paused briefly at the first platform, and
Norton had walked a few hundred metres along the narrow, curving ledge
before starting the slide down to the second level.  Here they had
discarded their oxygen gear, and revelled in the strange luxury of being
able to breathe without mechanical aids.

Now they could explore in comfort, freed from the greatt est danger that
confronts a man in space, and forge ting all worries about suit
integrity and oxygen reserve.

By the time they had reached the fifth level, and there was only one
more section to go, gravity had reached almost half its terrestrial
value.  Rama's centrifugal spin was at last exerting its real strength;
they were surrendering themselves to the implacable force which rules
every planet, and which can exert a merciless price for the smallest
slip.  It was still very easy to go downwards; but the thought of the
return, up those thousands upon thousands of steps, was already
beginning to prey upon their minds.

The stairway had long ago ceased its vertiginous downward plunge and was
now flattening out towards the horizontal.  The gradient was now only
about i in 5; at the beginning, it had been 5 in i.  Normal walking was
now both physically, and psychologically, acceptable; only the lowered
gravity reminded them that they were not descending some great stairway
on Earth.  Norton had once visited the ruins of an Aztec temple, and the
feelings he had then experienced came echoing back to him amplified a
hundred times.  Here was the same sense of awe and mystery, and the
sadness of the irrevocably vanished past.  Yet the scale here was so
much greater, both in time and space, that the mind was unable to do it
justice; after a while, it ceased to respond.  Norton wondered if,
sooner or later, he would take even Rama for granted.

And there was another respect in which the parallel with terrestrial
ruins failed completely.  Rama was hundreds of times older than any
structure that had survived on Earth - even the Great Pyramid.  But
everything looked absolutely new; there was no sign of wear and tear.

Norton had puzzled over this a good deal, and had arrived at a tentative
explanation.  Everything that they had so far examined was part of an
emergency back-up system, very seldom put to actual use.  He could not
imagine that the Ramans - unless they were physical fitness fanatics of
the kind not uncommon on Earth - ever walked up and down this incredible
stairway, or its two identical companions completing the invisible Y far
above his head.  Perhaps they had only been required during the actual
construction of Rama, and had served no purpose since that distant day.
That theory would do for the moment, yet it did not feel right.  There
was something wrong, somewhere ...

They did not slide for the last kilometer but went down the steps two at
a time in long, gentle strides; this way, Norton decided, they would
give more exercise to muscles that would soon have to be used.  And so
the end THE STAIRWAY.  OF THE GODS 65 of the stairway came upon them
almost unawares; suddenly, there were no more steps - only a flat plain,
dull grey in the now weakening beam of the Hub searchlight, fading away
into the darkness a few hundred metres ahead.

Norton looked back along the beam, towards its source up on the axis
more than eight kilometres away.  He knew that Mercer would be watching
through the telescope, so he waved to him cheerfully.

'Captain here,' he reported over the radio.  'Everyone in fine shape -
no problems.  Proceeding as planned." 'Good,' replied Mercer.  'We'll be
watching." There was a brief silence; then a new voice cut in.  'This is
the Exec, on board ship.  Really, Skipper, this isn't good enough.  You
know the news services have been screaming at us for the last week.  I
don't expect deathless prose, but can't you do better than that?" 11,11
try,' Norton chuckled.  'But remember there's nothing to see yet.

It's like - well, being on a huge, darkened stage, with a single
spotlight.  The first few hundred steps of the stairway rise out of it
until they disappear into the darkness overhead.  What we can see of the
plaill looks perfectly flat - the curvature's too small to be visible
over this limited area.  And that's about it." 'Like to give any
impressions?" 'Well, it's still very cold - below freezing - and we're
glad of our thermosuits.  And quiet of course; quieter than 9 anything
I've ever known on Earth, Or in space, where there's always some
background noise.

Here, every sound is swallowed up; the space around us is so enormous
that there aren't any echoes.  It's weird, but I hope we'll get used to
it." 'Thanks, Skipper.  Anyone else - Joe, Boris?" It Joe Calvert, never
at a loss for words, was happy to oblige.

'I can't help thinking that this is the first time - ever - that we've
been able to walk on another world, brea hing its natural atmosphere -
though I suppose "natural' is hardly the word you can apply to a place
like this.  Still, Rama must resemble the world of its builders; our own
spaceships are all miniature earths.  Two examples are damned poor
statistics, but does this mean that all intelligent life-forms are
oxygen eaters?

What we've seen of their work suggests that the Ramans were humanoid,
though perhaps about fifty percent taller than we are.  Wouldn't you
agree, Boris?" Is Joe teasing Boris?  Norton asked himself.  I wonder
how he's going to react?  ...

To all his shipmates, Boris Rodrigo was something of an enigma.  The
quiet, dignified communications officer was popular with the rest of the
crew, but he never entered fully into their activities and always seemed
a little apart - marching to the music of a different drummer.

As indeed he was, being a devout member of the Fifth Church of Christ,
Cosmonaut.

Norton had never been able to discover what had happened to the earlier
four, and he was equally in the dark about the Church's rituals and
ceremonies.  But the main tenet of its faith was well known: it believed
that Jesus Christ was a visitor from space, and had constructed an
entire theology on that assumption.

It was perhaps not surprising that an unusually high proportion of the
Church's devotees worked in space in some capacity or other. Invariably,
they were efficient, conscientious and absolutely reliable. They were
universally respected and even liked, especially as they made no attempt
to convert others.  Yet there was also something slightly spooky about
them; Norton could never understand how men with advanced scientific and
technical training could possibly believe some of the things he had
heard Christers state as incontrovertible facts.

As he waited for It Rodrigo to answer Joe's possibly loaded question,
the commander had a sudden insight into his own hidden motives.  He had
chosen Boris because he was physically fit, technically qualified, and
completely dependable.  At the same time, he wondered if THE STAIRWAY OF
THE GODS 67 some part of his mind had not selected the lieutenant out of
an almost mischievous curiosity.  How would a man with such religious
beliefs react to the awesome reality of Rama?  Suppose he encountered
something that confounded his theology ...  or, for that matter,
confirmed it?

But Boris Rodrigo, with his usual caution, refused to be drawn.

'They were certainly oxygen breathers, and they could be humanoid.  But
let's wait and see.  With any luck, we should discover what they were
like.  There may be pictures, statues - perhaps even bodies, over in
those towns.  If they are towns." 'And the nearest is only eight
kilometres away,' said Joe Calvert hopefully.

Yes, thought the commander, but it's also eight kilometies back - and
then there's that overwhelming stairway to climb again.  Can we take the
risk?

A quick sortie to the 'town' which they had named Paris had been among
the first of his contingency plans, and now he had to make his decision.
They had ample food and water for a stay of twenty-four hours; they
would always be in full view of the back-up team on the Hub, and any
kind of accident seemed virtually impossible on this smooth, gently
curving, metal plain.  The only foreseeable danger was exhaustion; when
they got to Paris, which they could do easily enough, could they do more
than take a few photographs and perhaps collect some small artifacts,
before they had to return?

But even such a brief foray would be worth it; there was so little time,
as Rama hurtled sunwards towards a perihelion too dangerous for
Endeavour to match.

In any case, part of the decision was not his to make.  Up in the ship,
Dr. Ernst would be watching the outputs of the bio-telemetering sensors
attached to his body.  If she turned thumbs-down, that would be that.

'Laura, what do you think?"

'Take thirty minutes' rest, and a five hundred calorie energy module.
Then you can start." 'Thanks, Doc,' interjected Joe Calvert.  'Now I can
die happy.  I always wanted to see Paris.  Montmartre, here we come."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Plain of Rama

After those interminable stairs, it was a strange luxury to walk once
more on a horizontal surface. Directly ahead, the ground was indeed
completely flat; to right and left, at the limits of the floodlit area,
the rising curve could just be detected.  They might have been walking
along a very wide, shallow valley; it was quite impossible to believe
that they were really crawling along the inside of a huge cylinder, and
that beyond this little oasis of light the land rose up to meet - no, to
become - the sky.

Though they all felt a sense of confidence and subdued excitement, after
a while the almost palpable silence of Rama began to weigh heavily upon
them.

Every footstep, every word, vanished instantly into the unreverberant
void; after they had gone little more than half a kilo metre, It Calvert
could stand it no longer.

Among his minor accomplishments was a talent now rare, though many
thought not rare enough - the art of whistling.  With or without
encouragement he could reproduce the themes from most of the movies of
the last two hundred years.  He started appropriately with Heighho,
heigh-ho, 'tis off to work we go, found that he couldn't stay down
comfortably in the bass with Disney's marching dwarfs, and switched
quickly to River Kwai.  Then he progressed, more or less
chronologically, through half a dozen epics, culminating with the theme
from Sid Krassman's famous late -twentieth-century Napoleon.

It was a good try, but it didn't work, even as a moralebuilder.  Rama
needed the grandeur of B ach or Beethoven or Sibelius or Tuan Sun, not
the trivia of popular entertainment.  Norton was on the point of
suggesting that Joe save his breath for later exertions, when the young
officer realized the inappropriateness of his efforts.  Thereafter,
apart from an occasional consultation with the ship, they marched on in
silence.

Rama had won this round.

On his initial traverse, Norton had allowed for one detour.

Paris lay straight ahead, halfway between the foot of the stairway and
the shore of the Cylindrical Sea, but 4 only a kilometer to the right of
their track was a very prominent, and rather mysterious, feature which
had been christened the Straight Valley.  It was a long groove or
trench, forty metres deep and a hundred wide, with gently sloping sides;
it had been provisionally identified as an irrigation ditch or canal.
Like the stairway itself, it had two similar counterparts, equally
spaced around the curve of Rama.

The three valleys were almost ten kilometres long, and stopped abruptly
just before they reached the Sea which was strange, if they were
intended to carry water.  And on the other side of the Sea the pattern
was repeated: three more ten-kilometer-trenches continued on to the
South Polar region.

They reached the end of the Straight Valley after only fifteen minutes'
comfortable walking, and stood for a while staring thoughtfully into its
depths.  The perfectly smooth walls sloped down at an angle of sixty
degrees; there were no steps or footholds.  Filling the bottom was a
sheet of flat, white material that looked very much like ice.  A
specimen could settle a good many arguments; Norton decided to get one.

With Calvert and Rodrigo acting as anchors and paying out a safety rope,
he rapelled slowly down the steep incline.  When he reached the bottom,
he fully expected to find the familiar slippery feel of ice underfoot,
but he was mistaken.  The friction was too great; his footing was
secure.  This material was some kind of glass or transTHE PLAIN OF RAMA
71 parent crystal; when he touched it with his fingertips, it was cold,
hard and unyielding.

Turning his back to the searchlight and shielding his eyes from its
glare, Norton tried to peer into the crystalline depths, as one may
attempt to gaze through the ice of a frozen lake.  But he could see
nothing; even when he tried the concentrated beam of his own
helmet-lamp, he was no more successful.  This stuff was translucent, but
not transparent.  If it was a frozen liquid, it had a meltingpoint very
much higher than water.

He tapped it gently with the hammer from his geology kit; the tool
rebounded with a dull, unmusical 'clunk'.  The tapped harder, with no
more result, and was about to exert his full strength when some impulse
made him desist.

It seemed most unlikely that he could crack this mattrial; but what if
he did?  He would be like a vandal, smashing some enormous plate-glass
window.  There would be a better opportunity later, and at least he had
discovered valuable information.  It now seemed more unlikely than ever
that this was a canal; it was simply a peculiar trench that stopped and
started abruptly, but led nowhere.  And if at any time it had carried
liquid, where were the stains, the encrustations of dried-up sediment,
that one would expect?  Everything was bright and clean, as if the
builders had left only yesterday ...

Once again he was face to face with the fundamental mystery of Rama, and
this time it was impossible to evade it.  Commander Norton was a
reasonably imaginative man, but he would never have reached his present
position if he had been liable to the wilder flights of fancy.  Yet now,
for the first time, he had a sense - not exactly of foreboding, but of
anticipation.  Things were not what they seemed; there was something
very, very odd about a place that was simultaneously brand new - and a
million years old.

Very thoughtfully, he began to walk slowly along the length of the
little valley, while his companions, still  0 I holding the rope that
was attached to his waist, followed him along the rim.  He did not
expect to make any further discoveries, but he wanted to let his curious
emotional state run its course.  For something else was worrying him;
and it had nothing to do with the inexplicable newness of Rama.

He had walked no more than a dozen metres when it hit him like a
thunderbolt.

He knew this place.  He had been here before.  Even on Earth, or some
familiar planet, that experience is disquieting, though it is not
particularly rare.  Most men have known it at some time or other, and
usually they dismiss it as the memory of a forgotten photograph, a pure
coincidence - or, if they are mystically inclined, some form of
telepathy from another mind, or even a flashback from their own future.

But to recognize a spot which no other human being can possibly have
seen - that is quite shocking.  For several seconds, Commander Norton
stood rooted to the gm oath crystalline surface on which he had been
walking, trying to straighten out his emotions.  His well-ordered
universe had been turned upside down, and he had a dizzying glimpse of
those mysteries at the edge of existence which he had successfully
ignored for most of his life.

Then, to his immense relief, common sense came to the rescue.  The
disturbing sensation of diiii-vu faded out, to be replaced by a real and
identifiable memory from his youth.

It was true - he had once stood between such steeply sloping walls,
watching them drive into the distance until they seemed to converge at a
point indefinitely far ahead.  But they had been covered with neatly
trimmed grass; and underfoot had been broken stone, not smooth crystal.

It had happened thirty years ago, during a summer vacation in England.
Largely because of another student (he could remember her face - but he
had forgotten her THE PLAIN OF RAMA 73 name) he had taken a course of
industrial archaeology, then very popular among science and engineering
graduates.  They had explored abandoned coal-mines and cotton mills,
climbed over ruined blast-furnaces and steamengines, goggled
unbelievingly at primitive (and still dangerous) nuclear reactors, and
driven priceless turbinepowered antiques along restored motor roads.

Not everything that they saw was genuine; much had been lost during the
centuries, for men seldom bother to preserve the commonplace articles of
everyday life.  But where it was necessary to make copies, they had been
reconstructed with loving care.

And so young Bill Norton had found himself bowling along, at an
exhilarating hundred kilometres an hour, while he furiously shovelled
precious coal into the firebox of a locomotive that looked two hundred
years old, but was actually younger than he was.  The thirty-kilometer
stretch of the Great Western Railway, however, was quite genuine, though
it had required a good deal of excavating to get it back into
commission.

Whistle screaming, they had plunged into a hillside and raced through a
smoky, flame-lit darkness.  An astonishingly long time later, they had
burst out of the tunnel into a deep, perfectly straight cutting between
steep grassy banks.  The long-forgotten vista was almost identical with
the one before him now.

'What is it, Skipper?" called It Rodrigo.  'Have you found something?"
As Norton dragged himself back to present realit Y, some of the
oppression lifted from his mind.  There was mystery here - yes; but it
might not be beyond human understanding.  He had learned a lesson,
though it was not one that he could readily impart to others.  At all
costs, he must not let Rama overwhelm him.  That way lay failure -
perhaps even madness.

'No,' he answered, 'there's nothing down here.  Haul me up - we'll head
straight to Paris."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Storm Warning

'I've called this meeting of the Committee,' said His Excellency the
Ambassadoi of Mars to the United Planets, 'because Dr Perera has
something important to tell us.  He insists that we get in touch with
Commander Norton right away, using the priority channel we've been able
to establish after, I might say, a good deal of difficulty. Dr Perera's
statement is rather technical, and before we come to it I think a
summary of the present position might be in order; Dr. Price has
prepared one.  Oh yes some apologies for absence.  Sir Lewis Sands is
unable to be with us because he's chairing a conference, and Dr. Taylor
asks to be excused." He was rather pleased about that last abstention.
The anthropologist had rapidly lost interest in Rama, when it became
obvious that it would present little scope for him.  Like many others,
he had been bitterly disappointed to find that the mobile worldlet was
dead; now there would be no opportunity for sensational books and
viddies about Raman rituals and behavioural patterns.

Others might dig up skeletons and classify artifacts; that sort of thing
did not app'eal to Conrad Taylor.  Perhaps the only discovery that would
bring him back in a hurry would be some highly explicit works of art,
like the notorious frescoes of Thera and Pompeii.

Thelma Price, the archaeologist, took exactly the opposite point of
view.

She preferred excavations and ruins uncluttered by inhabitants who might
interfere with dispassionate, scientific studies.  The bed of the
Mediter STORM WARNING 75 ranean had been ideal - at least until the city
planners and landscape artists had started getting in the way.  And Rama
would have been perfect, except for the maddening detail that it was a
hundred million kilometres away and she would never be able to visit it
in person.

'As you all know,' she began, 'Commander Norton has completed one
traverse of almost thirty kilometres, without encountering any problems.
He explored the curious trench shown on your maps as the Straight
Valley; its purpose is still quite unknown, but it's clearly important
41 as it runs the full length of Rama - except for the break at the
Cylindrical Sea - and there are two other identical structures
i.-o'degrees apart round the circumference of the world.

'Then the party turned left - or East, if we adopt the North Pole
convention - until they reached Paris.  As you'll see from this
photograph, taken by a telescope camera at the Hub, it's a group of
several hundred buildings, with wide streets between them.

'Now these photographs were taken by Commander Norton's group when they
reached the site.  If Paris is a city, it's a very peculiar one.  Note
that none of the buildings have windows, or even doorsl They are all
plain rectangular structures, an identical thirty-five metres high.  And
they appear to have been extruded out of the ground - there are no seams
or joints - look at this closeup of the base of a wall - there's a
smooth transition into the ground.

'My own feeling is that this place is not a residential area, but a
storage or supply depot.  In support of that theory, look at this photo
...

'These narrow slots or grooves, about five centimetres wide, run along
all the streets, and there's one leading to every building - going
straight into the wall There's a striking resemblance to the street-car
tracks of the early twentieth century; they are obviously part of some
transport system.

'We've never considered it necessary to have public transport direct to
every house.  It would be economically absurd - people can always walk a
few hundred metres.  But if these buildings are used for the storage of
heavy materials, it would make sense." 'May I ask a question?"said the
Ambassador for Earth.

'Of course, Sir Robert." 'Commander Norton couldn't get into a single
building?" 'No; when you listen to his report, you can tell he was quite
frustrated.

At one time he decided that the buildings could only be entered from
underground; then he discovered the grooves of the transport system, and
changed his mind." 'Did he try to break in?" 'There was no way he could,
without explosives or heavy tools.  And he doesn't want to do that until
all other approaches have failed." 'I have itl' Dennis Solomons suddenly
interjected.  'Cocooning!" J beg your pardon?" 'It's a technique
developed a couple of hundred years ago,' continued the science
historian.  'Another name for it is moth-balling.  When you have
something you want to preserve, you seal it inside a plastic envelope,
and then pump in an inert gas.  The original use was to protect military
equipment between wars; it was once applied to.  whole ships.  It's
still widely used in museums that are short of storage space; no one
knows what's inside some of the hundredyear -old cocoons in the
Smithsonian basement." Patience was not one of Carlisle Perera's
virtues; he was aching to drop his bombshell, and could restrain himself
no longer.

'Please, Mr Ambassadorl This is all very interesting, but I feel my
information is rather more urgent." 'If there are no other points - very
well, Dr. Perera." The exobiologist, unlike Conrad Taylor, had not found
Rama a disappointment..  It was true that he no STORM WARNING 77 longer
expected to find life - but sooner or later, he had been quite sure,
some remains would be discovered of the creatures who had built this
fantastic world.

The exploration had barely begun, although the time available was
horribly brief before Endeavour would be forced to escape from her
present sun-grazing orbit.

But now, if his calculations were correct, Man's contact with Rama would
be even shorter than he had feared.  For one detail had been overlooked
- because it was so large that no one had noticed it before.  4f
'According to our latest information,' Perera began, one party is now on
its way to the Cylindrical Sea, while Commander Norton has another group
setting up a supply base at the foot of Stairway Alpha.  When that's
established, he intends to have at least two exploratory missions
operating at all times.  In this way he hopes to use his limited
manpower at maximum efficiency.

'It's a good plan, but there may be no time to carry it out.  In fact, I
would advise an immediate alert, and a preparation for total withdrawal
at twelve hours' notice.  Let me explain ...

'It's surprising how few people have commented on a rather obvious
anomaly about Rama.  It's now well inside the orbit of Venus - yet the
interior is still frozen.  But the temperature of an object in direct
sunlight at this point is about five hundred degrees I 'The reason of
course, is that Rama hasn't had time to warm up.  It must have cooled
down to near absolute zero t - two hundred and seventy below while it
was in interstellar space.  Now, as it approaches the sun, the outer
hull is already almost as hot as molten lead.  But the inside will stay
cold, until the heat works its way through that kilometer of rock.

'There's some kind of fancy dessert with a hot exterior and ice-cream in
the middle - I don't remember what it's called-' 'Baked Alaska.  It's a
favourite at UP banquets, unfortunately." 'Thank you, Sir Robert. That's
the situation in Rama at the moment, but it won't last.  All these
weeks, the solar heat has been working its way through, and we expect a
sharp temperature rise to begin in a few hours.  That's not the problem;
by the time we'll have to leave anyway, it will be no more than
comfortably tropical." 'Then what's the difficulty?" 40 'I can answer in
one word, Mr Ambassador.  Hurri- 1, canes." 4A.

There were now more than twenty men and women inside Rama - six of them
down on the plain, the rest ferrying equipment and expendables through
the airlock system and down the stairway.  The ship itself was almost
deserted, with the minimum possible staff on duty; the joke went around
that Endeavour was really being run by the four simps and that Goldie
had been given the rank of Acting-Commander.

For these first explorations, Norton had established a number of
groundrules; the most important dated back to the earliest days of man's
space-faring.

Every group, he had decided, must contain one person with prior
experience.  But not more than one.  In that way, everybody would have
an opportunity of learning as quickly as possible.

And so the first party to head for the Cylindrical Sea, though it was
led by Surgeon-Commander Laura Ernst, had as its one-time veteran It
Boris Rodrigo, just back from Paris.  The third member, Sergeant Pieter
Rousseau, had been with the back-up teams at the Hub; he was an expert
on space reconnaissance instrumentation, but on this trip he would have
to depend on his own eyes and a small portable telescope.

From the foot of Stairway Alpha to the edge of the Sea was just under
fifteen kilometres - or an Earth-equivalent of eight under the low
gravity of Rama.  Laura Ernst, who had to prove that she lived up to her
own standards, set a brisk pace.  They stopped for thirty min

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The e Edge of the Sea

minutes at the midway mark, and made the whole trip in a completely
uneventful three hours.

It was also quite monotonous, walking forward in the beam of the
searchlight through the anechoic darkness of Rama.  As the pool of light
advanced with them, it slowly elongated into a long, narrow ellipse;
this foreshortening of the beam was the onl visible sign of progress. If
the 000 observers up on the Hub had not given them continual distance
checks, they could not have guessed whether they had travelled one
kilometer, or five, or ten.  They just plodded onwards through the
million-year-old night, over an apparently seamless metal surface.

But at last, far ahead at the limits of the now weakening beam, there
was something new.  On a normal world, it would have been a horizon; as
they approached, they could see that the plain on which they were
walking came to an abrupt stop.  They were nearing the edge of the Sea.

'Only a hundred metres,' said Hub Control.  'Better slow down." That was
hardly necessary, yet they had already done so.  It was a sheer straight
drop of fifty metres from the level of the plain to that of the Sea - if
it was a sea, and not another sheet of that mysterious crystalline
material.  Although Norton had impressed upon everyone the danger of
taking anything for granted in Rama, few doubted that the Sea was really
made of ice.  But for what conceivable reason was the cliff on the
southern shore five hundred metres high, instead of the fifty here?

It was as if they were approaching the edge of the world; their oval of
light, cut off abruptly ahead of them, became shorter and shorter.  But
far out on the curved screen of the Sea their monstrous foreshortened
shadows had appeared, magnifying and exaggerating every movement.  Those
shadows had been their companions every step of the way, as they marched
down the beam, but now that they were broken at the edge of the cliff
they no longer seemed part of them.  They might have been crea THE EDGE
OF THE SEA 81 tures of the Cylindrical Sea, waiting to deal with any
intruders into their domain.

Because they were now standing on the edge of a fiftymetre cliff, it was
possible for the first time to appreciate the curvature of Rama.  But no
one had ever seen a frozen lake bent upwards into a cylindrical surface;
that was distinctly unsettling, and the eye did its best to find some
other interpretation.  It seemed to Dr. Ernst, who had once made a study
of visual illusions, that half the time she was really looking at a
horizontally curving bay, not a surface that soared up into the sky.  It
required a deliberate effort of will to accept the fantastic truth.

Only in the line directly ahead, parallel to the axis of Rama, was
normalcy preserved.  In this direction alone was there agreement between
vision and logic.

Here - for the next few kilometres at least - Rama looked flat, and was
flat ...

And out there, beyond their distorted shadows and the outer limit of the
beam, lay the island that dominated the Cylindrical Sea.

'Hub Control,' Dr. Ernst radioed, 'please aim your beam at New York."
The night of Rama fell suddenly upon them, as the oval of light went
sliding out to sea.  Conscious of the now invisible cliff at their feet,
they all stepped back a few metres.  Then, as if by some magical stage
transformation, the towers of New York sprang into view.

The resemblance to old-time Manhattan was only superficial; this
star-born echo of Earth's past possessed its own unique identity.  The
more Dr. Ernst stared at it, the more certain she became that it was not
a city at all.

The real New York, like all of Man's habitations, had never been
finished; still less had it been designed.  This place, however, had an
overall symmetry and pattern, though one so complex that it eluded the
mind.  It had been conceived and planned by some controlling
intelligence - and then it had been completed, like a machine devised
for some specific purpose.  After that, there was no possibility of
growth or change.

The beam of the searchlight slowly tracked along those distant towers
and domes and interlocked spheres and crisscrossed tubes.  Sometimes
there would be a brilliant reflection as some flat surface shot the
light back towards them; the first time this happened, they were all
taken by surprise.  It was exactly as if, over there on that strange
island, someone was signalling to them ...

But there was nothing that they could see here that was not already
shown in greater detail on photographs taken from the Hub.  After a few
minutes, they called for the light to return to them, and began to walk
eastwards along the edge of the cliff.  It had been plausibly theorized
that, somewhere, there must surely be a flight of steps, or a ramp,
leading down to the Sea.  And one crewman, who was a keen sailor, had
raised an interesting conjecture.

'Where there's a sea,' Sergeant Ruby Barnes had predicted, 'there must
be docks and harbours - and ships.

You can learn everything about a culture by studying the way it builds
boats." Her colleagues thought this a rather restricted point of view,
but at least it was a stimulating one.

Dr. Ernst bad almost given up the search, and was preparing to make a
descent by rope, when It Rodrigo spotted the narrow stairway.  It could
easily have been overlooked in the shadowed darkness below the edge of
the cliff, for there was no guard-rail or other indication of its
presence.  And it seemed to lead nowhere; it ran down the fifty-metre
vertical wall at a steep angle, and disappeared below the surface of the
Sea.

They scanned the flight of steps with their helmetlights, could see no
conceivable hazard, and Dr. Ernst got Commander Norton's permission to
descend.  A minute later, she was cautiously testing the surface of the
Sea.

Her foot slithered almost frictionlessly back and forth.  The material
felt exactly like ice.

It was ice.

When she struck it with her hammer, a familiar patTHE.  EDGE OF THE SEA
83 tern of cracks radiated from the impact point, and she bad no
difficulty in collecting as many pieces as she wished.  Some had already
melted when she held up the sample holder to the light; the liquid
appeared to be slightly turbid water, and she took a cautious sniff.

'Is that safe?" Rodrigo called down, with a trace of anxiety.

'Believe me, Boris,' she answered, 'if there are any pathogens around
here that have slipped through my detectors, our insurance policies
lapsed a week ago." But Boris had a point.  Despite all the tests that
had been carried out, there was a very slight risk that this substance
might be poisonous, or might carry some unknown disease.  In normal
circumstances, Dr. Ernst would not have taken even this minuscule
chance. Now, however, time was short and the stakes were enormous.  If
it became necessary to quarantine Endeavour, that would be a very small
price to pay for her cargo of knowledge.

'It's water, but I wouldn't care to drink it - it smells like an algae
culture that's gone bad.  I can hardly wait t( get it to the lab." 'Is
the ice safe to walk on?" 'Yes, solid as a rock." 'Then we can get to
New York." 'Can we, Pieter?  Have you ever tried to walk across four
kilometres of ice?" 'Oh - I see what you mean.  just imagine what Stores
would say, if we asked for a set of skates I Not that many of us would
know how to use them, even if we had any aboard." 'And there's another
problem,' put in Boris Rodrigo.  'Do you realize that the temperature is
already above freezing?  Before long, that ice is going to melt.  How
many spacemen can swim four kilometres?  Certainly not this one..." Dr
Ernst rejoined them at the edge of the cliff, and held up the small
sample bottle in triumph.

'It's a long walk for a few cc's of dirty water, but it may teach us
more about Rama than anything we've found so far.  Let's head for
hoine." They turned towards the distant lights of the Hub, moving with
the gentle, loping strides which had proved the most comfortable means
of walking under this reduced gravity.  Often they looked back, drawn by
the hi4den enigma of the island out there in the centre of the frozen
sea.

And just once, Dr. Ernst thought she felt the faint suspicion of a
breeze against her cheek.

It did not come again, and she quickly forgot all about it.

j!  )J J 7A A

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Kealakekua

'As you know perfectly well, Dr. Perera,' said Ambassador Bose in a tone
of patient resignation, 'few of us share your knowledge of mathematical
meteorology.

So please take pity on our ignorance." 'With pleasure,' answered the
exobiologist, quite unabashed.  'I can explain it best by telling you
what is going to happen inside Rama - very soon.

'The temperature is now aboutto rise, as the solar heat pulse reaches
the interior.  According to the latest information I've received, it's
already above freezing point.  The Cylindrical Sea will soon start to
thaw; and unlike bodies of water on Earth, it will melt from the botto
in upwards.  That may produce some odd effects; but I'm much more
concerned with the atmosphere.

'As it's heated, the air inside Rama will expand - and will attempt to
rise towards the central axis.  And this is the problem.  At ground
level, although it's apparently stationary, it's actually sharing the
spin of Rama - over eight hundred kilometres an hour.  As it rises
towards the axis it will try to retain that speed - and it won't be able
to do so, of course.  The result will be violent winds and turbulence; I
estimate velocities of between two and three hundred kilometres an hour.

'Incidentally, very much the same thing occurs on Earth.  The heated air
at the Equator - which shares the Earth's
sixteen-hundred-kilometres-an-hour spin runs into the same problem when
it rises and flows north and south." 'Ah, the Trade Windsl I remember
that from my geography lessons." 'Exactly, Sir Robert.  Rama will have
Trade Winds, with a vengeance.  I believe they'll last only a few hours,
and then some kind of equilibrium will be restored.  Meanwhile, I should
advise Commander Norton to evacuate - as soon as possible.  Here is the
message I propose sending." With a little imagination, Commander Norton
told himself, he could pretend that this was an improvised night camp at
the foot of some mountain in a remote region of Asia or America.  The
clutter of sleeping pads, collapsible chairs and tables, portable power
plant, lighting equipment, electrosan toilets, and miscellaneous
scientific apparatus would not have looked out of place on Earth
especially as there were men and women working here without life-support
systems.

Establishing Camp Alpha had been very hard work, for everything had had
to be man-handled through the chain of airlocks, sledded down the slope
from the Hub, and then retrieved and unpacked.  Sometimes, when the
braking parachutes had failed, a consignment had ended up a good
kilometer away out on the plain.

Despite this, several crew members had asked permission to make the
ride; Norton had firmly forbidden it.  In an emergency, however, he
might be prepared to reconsider the ban.

Almost all this equipment would stay here, for the labour of carrying it
back was unthinkable - in fact, impossible.  There were times when
Commander Norton felt an irrational shame at leaving so much human
litter in this strangely immaculate place.  When they finally departed,
be was prepared to sacrifice some of their precious time to leave
everything in good order.  Improbable though it was, perhaps millions of
years hence, when Rama shot through some other staj system, it might
have visitors again.  He would like to give them a good impression of
Earth.

Meanwhile, he had a rather more immediate problem.  During the last
twenty-four hours he had received almost identical messages from both
Mars and Earth.

It seemed an odd coincidence; perhaps they had been commiserating with
each other, as wives who lived safely on different planets were liable
to do under sufficient provocation.  Rather pointedly, they had reminded
him that even though he was now a great hero, he still had family
responsibilities.

The Commander picked up a collapsible chair, and walked out of the pool
of light into the darkness surrounding the camp.  It was the only way he
could get any privacy, and he could also think better away from the
turmoil.  Deliberately turning his back on the organized confusion
behind him, he began to speak into the recorder slung around his neck.

'Original for personal file, dupes to Mars and Earth.  Hello, darling -
yes, I know I've been a lousy correspondent, but I haven't been aboard
ship for a week.  Apart from a skeleton crew, we're all camping inside
Rama, at the foot of the stairway we've christened Alpha.

'I have three parties out now, scouting the plain, but we've made
disappointingly slow progress, because everything has to be done on
foot.  If only we had some means of transport!  I'd be very happy to
settle for a few electric bicycles ...  they'd be perfect for the job.

'You've met my medical officer, Surgeon-Commander Ernst-' He paused
uncertainly; Laura had met one of his wives, but which?  Better cut that
outErasing the sentence, he began again.

'My MO, Surgeon-Commander Ernst, led the first group to reach the
Cylindrical Sea, fifteen kilometers from here.  She found that it was
frozen water, as we'd expected - but you wouldn't want to drink it.  Dr
Ernst says it's a dilute organic soup, containing traces of almost any
carbon compound you care to name, as well as phosphates and nitrates and
dozens of metallic salts.

There's not the slightest sign of life - not even any dead
microorganisms.  So we still know nothing about the biochemistry of the
Ramans ...  though it was probably not wildly different from ours."
Something brushed lightly against his hair; he had been too busy to get
it cut, and would have to do something about that before he next put on
a space-helmet ...

'You've seen the viddies, of Paris and the other towns we've explored on
this side of the Sea ...  London, Rome, Moscow.  It's impossible to
believe that they were ever built for anything to live in.

Paris looks like a giant storage depot.  London is a collection of
cylinders linked together by pipes connected to what areobviously
pumping stations.  Everything is sealed up, and there's no way of
finding what's inside without explosives or lasers.  We won't try these
until there are no alternatives.

'As for Rome and Moscow-' 'Excuse me, Skipper.  Priority from Earth!

What now?  Norton asked himself.  Can't a man get a few minutes to talk
to his families?

He took the message from the Sergeant, and scanned it quickly, just to
satisfy himself that it was not immediate.  Then he read it again, more
slowly.

What the devil was the Rama Committee?  And why had he never heard of
it?  He knew that all sorts of associations, societies, and professional
groups - some serious, some completely crackpot had been trying to get
in touch with him; Mission Control had done a good job of protection,
and would not have forwarded this message unless it was considered
important.

'Two-hundred-kilometer winds - probably sudden onset' - well, that was
something to think about.  But it was hard to take it too seriously, on
this utterly calm night; and it would be ridiculous to run away like
frightened mice, when they were just starting effective exploration.  A
Commander Norton lifted a hand to brush aside his hair, which had
somehow fallen into his eyes again.  Then he froze, the gesture
uncompleted.

He had felt a trace of wind, several times in the last hour.  It was so
slight that he had completely ignored it; after all, he was the
commander of a spaceship, not a sailing ship.  Until now the movement of
air had not been of the slightest professional concern.  What would the
long-dead captain of that earlier Endeavour have done in a situation
such as this?

Norton had asked himself that question at every moment of crisis in the
last few years.  It was his secret, which he had never revealed to
anyone.  And like most of the important things in life, it had come
about quite by accident.

He had been captain of Endeavour for several months before he realized
that it was named after one of the most famous ships in history.  True,
during the last four hundred years there had been a dozen Endeavours of
sea and two of space, but the ancestor of them all was the 37o-ton
Whitby collier that Captain James Cook, RN, had sailed round the world
between 1768 and 1771.

With a mild interest that had quickly turned to an absorbing curiosity -
almost an obsession - Norton had begun to read everything he could find
about Cook.  He was now probably the world's leading authority on the
greatest explorer of all time, and knew whole sections of the Journals
by heart.

It still seemed incredible that one man could have done so much, with
such primitive equipment.  But Cook had been not only a supreme
navigator, but a scientist and - in an age of brutal discipline - a
humanitarian.  He treated his own men with kindness, which was unusual;
what was quite unheard of was that he behaved in exactly the same way to
the often hostile savages in the new lands he discovered.

It was Norton's private dream, which he knew he would never achieve, to
retrace at least one of Cook's voyages around the world.  He had made a
limited but spectacular start, which would certainly have astonished the
Captain, when he once flew a polar orbit directly above the Great
Barrier Reef.  It had been early morning go on a clear day, and from
four hundred kilometres up he had had a superb view of that deadly wall
of coral, marked by its line of white foam along the Queensland coast.

He had taken just under five minutes to travel the whole two thousand
kilometres of the Reef.  In a single glance he could span weeks of
perilous voyaging for that first Endeavour.  And through the telescope,
he had caught a glimpse of Cooktown and the estuary where the ship had
been dragged ashore for repairs, after her nearfatal encounter with the
Reef.

A year later, a visit to the Hawaii Deep-Space Tracking Station had
given him an even more unforgettable experience.  He had taken the
hydrofoil to Kealakekua Bay, and as he moved swiftly past the bleak
volcanic cliffs, he felt a depth of emotion that had surprised and even
disconcerted him.  The guide had led his group of scientists, engineers
and astronauts past the glittering metal pylon that had replaced the
earlier monument, destroyed by the Great Tsunami of '68.  They had
walked on for a few more yards across black, slippery lava to the small
plaque at the water's edge.  Little waves were breaking over it, but
Norton scarcely noticed them as he bent down to read the words: NEAR
THIS SPOT CAPTAIN JAMES COOK WAS KILLED 14 FEBRUARY, 1779 ORIGINAL
TABLET DEDICATED 2 8 AUGUST, I 92 8 BY COOK SESQUICENTENNIAL COMMISSION.
REPLACED BY TRICENTENNIAL COMMISSION 14 FEBRUARY, 2079 A That was years
ago, and a hundred million kilometres away.  But at moments like this,
Cook's reassuring presence seemed very close.  In the secret depths of
his mind, lie would ask: 'Well, Captain - what is your advice?" It was a
little game he played, on occasions when there were not enough facts for
sound judgement, and one had to relyon intuition.  That had been part of
Cook's genius; lie always made the right choice - until the very end, at
Kealakekua Bay.

The Sergeant waited patiently, while his Commander stared silently out
into the night of Rama.  It was no longer unbroken, for at two spots
about four kilometres away, the faint patches of light of exploring
parties could be clearly seen.

In an emergency, I can recall them within the hour, Norton told himself.

And that, surely, should be good enough.

He turned to the Sergeant, 'Take this message.  Rama Committee, care of
Spacecom.  Appreciate your advice and will take precautions.  Please
specify meaning of phrase "sudden onset".  Respectfully, Norton,
Commander, Endem)our." He waited until the Sergeant had disappeared
towards the blazing lights of the camp, then switched on his recorder
again.  But the train of thought was broken, and he could not get back
into the mood.  The letter would have to wait for some other time.

It was not often that Captain Cook came to his aid when he was
neglecting his duty.  But he suddenly remembered how rarely and briefly
poor Elizabeth Cook had seen her husband in sixteen years of married
life.  Yet she had borne him six children - and outlived them all.

His wives, never more than ten minutes away at the speed of light, had
nothing to complain about ...

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Spring

During the first 'nights' on Rama, it had not been easy to sleep. The
darkness and the mysteries it concealed were oppressive, but even more
unsettling was the silence.  Absence of noise is not a natural
condition; all human senses require some input.  If they are deprived of
it, the mind manufactures its own substitutes.

And so many sleepers had complained of strange noises - even of voices
which were obviously illusions, because those awake had heard nothing.
SurgeonCommander Ernst had prescribed a very simple and effective cure;
during the sleeping period, the camp was now lulled by gentle,
unobtrusive background music.

This night, Commander Norton found the cure inadequate.  He kept
straining his cars into the darkness, and he knew what he was listening
for.  But though a very faint breeze did caress his face from time to
time, there was no sound that could possibly be taken for that of a
distant, rising wind.  Nor did either of the exploring parties report
anything unusual.

At least, around Ship's midnight, he went to sleep.  There was always a
man on watch at the communications console, in case of any urgent
messages.  No other precautions seemed necessary.

Not even a hurricane could have created the sound that did wake him, and
the whole camp, in a single instant.  It seemed that the sky was
falling, or that Rama had split open and was tearing itself apart. First
there was a rending crack, then a long-drawn-out series of SPRING 93
crystalline crashes like a million glass-houses being demolished.  It
lasted for minutes, though it seemed like hours; it was still
continuing, apparently moving away into the distance, when Norton got to
the message centre.

'Hub Control I What's happened?" 'Just a moment, Skipper.  It's over by
the Sea.  We're getting the light on it." Eight kilometres overhead, on
the axis of Rama, the searchlight began to swing its beam out across the
plain.  V, It reached the edge of the Sea, then started to track along
it, scanning around the interior of the world.

A quarter of the way round the cylindrical surface, it stopped.

Up there in the sky - or what the mind still persisted in calling the
sky something extraordinary was happening.  At first, it seemed to
Norton that the Sea was boiling.  It was no longer static and frozen in
the grip of an eternal winter; a huge area, kilometres across, was in
turbulent movement.  And it was changing colour; a broad band of white
was marching across the ice.

Suddenly a slab perhaps a quarter of a kilometer on a side began to tilt
upwards like an opening door.  Slowly and majestically, it reared into
the sky, glittering and sparkling in the beam of the searchlight.  Then
it slid back and vanished underneath the surface, while a tidal wave of
foaming water raced outwards in all directions from its point of
submergence.

Not until then did Commander Norton fully realize what was happening.
The ice was breaking up.  All these days and weeks, the Sea had been
thawing, far down in the depths.  It was hard to concentrate because of
the crashing roar that still filled the world and echoed round the sky,
but he tried to think of a reason for so dramatic a convulsion.  When a
frozen lake or river thawed on Earth, it was nothing like this ...

But of course I It was obvious enough, now that it had happened.  The
Sea was thawing from beneath as the solar heat seeped through the hull
of Rama.  And when ice turns into water, it occupies less volume ...

So the Sea had been sinking below the upper layer of ice, leaving it
unsupported.  Day by day the strain had been building up; now the band
of ice that encircled the equator of Rama was collapsing, like a bridge
that had A lost its central pier.  It was splintering into hundreds of
floating islands, that would crash and jostle into each other until they
too melted.  Norton's blood ran suddenly cold, when he remembered the
plans that were being made to reach New York by sledge ...

The tumult was swiftly subsiding; a temporary stalemate had been reached
in the war between ice and water.  In a few hours, as the temperature
continued to rise, the water would win and the last vestiges of ice
would disappear.  But in the long run, ice would be the victor, as Rama
rounded the sun and set forth once more into the interstellar night.

Norton remembered to start breathing again; then he called the party
nearest the Sea.  To his relief, Lieutenant Rodrigo answered at once.
No, the water hadn't reached them.  No tidal wave had come sloshing over
the edge of the cliff.

'So now we know,' he added very calmly, 'why there is a cliff." Norton
agreed silently; but that hardly explains, he thought to himself, why
the cliff on the southern shore is ten times higher ...

The Hub searchlight continued to scan round the world.  The awakened Sea
was steadily calming, and the boiling white foam no longer raced
outwards from capsizing ice-floes.  In fifteen minutes, the main
disturbance was over.

But Rama was no longer silent; it had awakened from its sleep, and ever
and again there came the sound of grinding ice as one berg collided with
another.

Spring had been a little late, Norton told himself, but winter had
ended.

And there was that breeze again, stronger than ever.  Rama had given him
enough warnings; it was time to go.

As he neared the halfway mark, Commander Norton SPRING 95 once again
felt gratitude to the darkness that concealed the view above - and
below.  Though he knew that more than ten thousand steps still lay ahead
of him, and could picture the steeply ascending curve in his mind's eye,
the fact that he could see only a small portion of it made the prospect
more bearable.

This was his second ascent, and he had learned from his mistakes on the
first.  The great temptation was to climb too quickly in this low
gravity; every step was so easy that it was very hard to adopt a slow,
plodding rhythm.  But unless one did this, after the first few thousand
steps strange aches developed in the thighs and calves.  'Muscles that
one never knew existed started to protest, and it was necessary to take
longer and longer periods of rest.  Towards the end he had spent more
time resting than climbing, and even then it was not enough.  He had
suffered painful leg-cramps for the next two days, and would have been
almost incapacitated had he not been back in the zero-gravity
environment of the shipSo this time he had started with almost painful
slowness, moving like an old man.  He had been the last to leave the
plain, and the others were strung out along the half-kilometer of
stairway above him; he could see their lights moving up the invisible
slope ahead.

He felt sick at heart at the failure of his mission, and even now hoped
that this was only a temporary retreat.  When they reached the Hub, they
could wait until any atmospheric disturbances had ceased.  Presumably,
it would be a dead calm there, as at the centre of a cyclone, and they
could wait out the expected storm in safety.

Once again, he was jumping to conclusions, drawing dangerous analogies
from Earth.  The meteorology Of a whole world, even under steady-state
conditions, was a matter of enormous complexity.  After several
centuries of study, terrestrial weather-forecasting was still not
absolutely reliable.  And Rama was not merely a completely novel system;
it was also undergoing rapid changes, for the temperature had risen
several degrees in the last few hours.  Yet still there was no sign of
the promised hurricane, though there had been a few feeble gusts from
apparently random directions.

They had now climbed five kilometres, which in this low and steadily
diminishing gravity was equivalent to less than two on Earth.  At the
third level, three kilometres from the axis, they rested for an hour,
taking light refreshments and massaging leg muscles.  This was the last
point at which they could breathe in comfort; like oldtime Himalayan
mountaineers, they had left their oxygen supplies here, and now put them
on for the final ascent.

An hour later, they had reached the top of the stairway - and the
beginning of the ladder.  Ahead lay the last, vertical kilometer,
fortunately in a gravity field only a few percent of Earth's.  Another
thirty-minute rest, a careful check of oxygen, and they were ready for
the final lap.

Once again, Norton made sure that all his men were safely ahead of him,
spaced out at twenty-metre intervals along the ladder.  From now on, it
would be a slow, steady haul, extremely boring.  The best technique was
to empty the mind of all thoughts and to count the rungs as they drifted
by - one hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred ...

He had just reached twelve hundred and fifty when he suddenly realized
that something was wrong.  The light shining on the vertical surface
immediately in front of his eyes was the wrong colour - and it was much
too bright.

Commander Norton did not even have time to check his ascent, or to call
a warning to his men.  Everything happened in less than a second.

In a soundless concussion of light, dawn burst upon Rama.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Dawn

The light was so brilliant that for a full minute Norton had to keep his
eyes clenched tightly shut.  Then he risked opening them, and stared
through barelyparted lids at the wall a few centimetres in front of his
face.  He blinked several times, waited for the involuntary tears to
drain away, and then turned slowly to behold the dawn.

He could endure the sight for only a few seconds; then he was forced to
close his eyes again.  It was not the glare that was intolerable - he
could grow accustomed to that but the awesome spectacle of Rama, now
seen for the first time in its entirety.

Norton had known exactly what to expect; nevertheless the sight had
stunned him.  He was seized by a spasm of uncontrollable trembling; his
hands tightened round the run of the ladder with the violence of a
drowning gs man clutching at a lifebelt.  The muscles of his forearms
began to knot, yet at the same time his legs - already fatigued by hours
of steady climbing - seemed about to give way.  If it had not been for
the low gravity, he ml t have fallen.

Then his training took over, and he began to apply the first remedy for
panic.  Still keeping his eyes closed and trying to forget the monstrous
spectacle around him, he started to take deep, long breaths, filling his
lungs with oxygen and washing the poisons of fatigue out of his System.

Presently he felt much better, but he did not open his eyes until he had
performed one more action.  It took a major effort of will to force his
right hand to open - he had to talk to it like a disobedient child - but
presently he manoeuvred it down to his waist, unclipped the safety belt
from his harness, and hooked the buckle to the nearest rung.

Now, whatever happened, he could not fall.

Norton took several more deep breaths; then - still f keeping his eyes
closed - he switched on his radio.  He hoped his voice sounded calm and
authoritative as he called: 'Captain here.  Is everyone OKF As he
checked off the names one by one, and received answers - even if
somewhat tremulous ones - from everybody, his own confidence and
self-control came swiftly back to him.  All his men were safe, and were
looking to him for leadership.  He was the commander once more.

'Keep your eyes closed until you're quite sure you can take it,' he
called.

'The view is - overwhelming.  If anyone finds that it's too much, keep
on climbing without looking back.  Remember, you'll soon be at zero
gravity, so you can't possibly fall." It was hardly necessary to point
out such an elementary fact to trained spacemen, but Norton had to
remind himself of it every few seconds.  The thought of zero-gravity was
a kind of talisman, protecting him from harm.  Whatever his eyes told
him, Rama could not drag him down to destruction on the plain eight
kilometres below.

It became an urgent matter of pride and self-esteem that he should open
his eyes once more and look at the world around him.  But first, he had
to get his body under control.

He let go of the ladder with both hands, and hooked his left arm under a
rung.  Clenching and unclenching his fists, he waited until the muscle
cramps had faded away; then, when he felt quite comfortable, he opened
his eyes and slowly turned to face Rama.

His first impression was one of blueness.  The glare that filled the sky
could not have been mistaken for sunlight; DAWN it might have been that
of an electric arc.  So Rama's sun, Norton told himself, must be hotter
than ours.  That should interest the astronomers ...

And now he understood the purpose of those mysterious trenches, the
Straight Valley and its five companions; they were nothing less than
gigantic striplights.  Rama had six linear suns, symmetrically ranged
around its interior.

From each, a broad fan of light was aimed across the central axis, to
shine upon the far side of the world.  Norton wonde red if they could be
switched alternately to produce a cycle of light and darkness, or
whether this was a planet of perpetual day.

Too much staring at those blinding bars of light had made his eyes hurt
again; he was not sorry to have a good excuse to close them for a while.
It was not until then, when he had almost recovered from this initial
visual shock, that he was able to devote himself to a much more serious
problem.

Who, or what, had switched on the lights of Rama?

This world was sterile, by the most sensitive tests that man could apply
to it.  But now something was happenIng that could not be explained by
the action of natural forces.  There might not be life here, but there
could be consciousness, awareness; robots might be waking after a sleep
of aeons.  Perhaps this outburst of light was an unprogrammed, random
spasm - a last dying gasp of machines that were responding wildly to the
warmth of a new sun, and would soon lapse again into quiescence, this
time for ever.

Yet Norton could not believe such a simple explanation.  Bits of the
jigsaw puzzle were beginning to fall into place, though many were still
missing.  The absence of all signs of wear, for example - the feeling of
newness, as if Rama had just been created,..

These thoughts might have inspired fear, -even terror.  Somehow, they
did nothing of the sort.  On the contrary, Norton felt a sense of
exhilaration almost of delight.  There was far more here to discover
than they had ever dared to hope.  'Wait,' he said to himself, 'until
the Rama Committee hears about this I' Then, with a calm determination,
he opened his eyes again and began a careful inventory of everything he
saw.

First, he had to establish some kind of reference system.  He was
looking at the largest enclosed space ever seen by man, and needed a
mental map to find his way around it.

The feeble gravity was very little help, for with an effort of will he
could switch Up and Down in any direction he pleased.  But some
directions were psychologically dangerous; whenever his mind skirted
these, he had to vector it hastily away.

Safest of all was to imagine that he was at the bowlshaped bottom of a
gigantic well, sixteen kilometres wide and fifty deep.  The advantage of
this image was that there could be no danger of falling further;
nevertheless, it had some serious defects.

He could pretend that the scattered towns and cities, and the
differently coloured and textured areas, were all securely fixed to the
towering walls.  The various complex structures that could be seen
hanging from the dome overhead were perhaps no more disconcerting than
the pendent candelabra in some great concerthall on Earth.  What was
quite unacceptable was the Cylindrical Sea ...

There it was, halfway up the well-shaft - a band of water, wrapped
completely round it, with no visible means of support.  There could be
no doubt that it was water; it was a vivid blue, flecked with brilliant
sparkles from the few remaining ice-floes.  But a vertical sea forming a
complete circle twenty kilometers up in the sky was such an unsettling
phenomenon that after a while he began to seek an alternative.

That was when his mind switched the scene through ninety degrees.

Instantly, the deep well became a long tunnel, capped at either end.
'Down' was obviously in the direction of the ladder and the stairway he
had just as DAWN 101 cended; and now with this perspective, Norton was
at last able to appreciate the true vision of the architects who had
built this place.

He was clinging to the face of a curving sixteen-kilometer-high cliff,
the upper half of which overhung completely until it merged into the
arched roof of what was now the sky.  Beneath him, the ladder descended
more than five hundred metres, until it ended at the first ledge or
terrace.  There the stairway began, continuing almost vertically at
first in this low-gravity regime, then slowly becoming less and less
steep until, after breaking at five more platforms, it reached the
distant plain.  For the first two or three kilometers he could see the
individual steps, but thereafter they had merged into a continuous band.

The downward swoop of that immense stairway was so overwhelming that it
was impossible to appreciate its true scale.  Norton had once flown
round Mount Everest, and had been awed by its size.  He reminded himself
that this stairway was as high as the Himalayas, but the comparison was
meaningless.

And no comparison at all was possible with the other two stairways, Beta
and Gamma, which slanted up into the sky and then curved far out over
his head.

Norton had now acquired enough confidence to lean back and glance up at
them briefly.  Then he tried to forget that they w-re there ...

For too much thinking along those lines evoked yet a third image of
Rama, which he was anxious to avoid at all costs.  This was the
viewpoint that regarded it once again as a vertical cylinder or well -
but now he was at the top, not the bottom, like a fly crawling upside
down on a domed ceiling, with a fiftykilometre drop immediately below.
Every time Norton found this image creeping up on him, it needed all his
willpower not to cling to the ladder again in mindless panic.

In time, he was sure, all these fears would ebb.  'I he wonder and
strangeness of Rama would banish its terrors, at least for men who were
trained to face the realities of space.  Perhaps no one who had never
left Earth, and had never seen the stars all around him, could endure
these vistas.  But if any men could accept them, Norton told himself
with grim determination, it would be the captain and crew of Endeavour.

He looked at his chronometer.  This pause had lasted only two minutes,
but it had seemed a lifetime.  Exerting barely enough effort to overcome
his inertia and the fading gravitational field, he started to pull
himself slowly up the last hundred Inetres of the ladder.  just before
he entered the airlock and turned his back upon Rama, he made one final
swift survey of the interior.

It had changed, even in the last few minutes; a mist was rising from the
Sea.  For the first few hundred metres the ghostly white columns were
tilted sharply forward in the direction of Rama's spin; then they
started to dissolve in a swirl of turbulence, as the up-rushing air
tried to jettison its excess velocity.  The Trade Winds of this
cylindrical world were beginning to etch their patterns in its sky; the
first tropical storm in unknown ages was about to break.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

A Warning from Mercug

It was the first time in weeks that every member of the Rama Committee
had made himself available. Professor Solomons had emerged from the
depths of the Pacific, where he had been studying mining operations
along the mid-ocean trenches.  And to nobody's surprise, Dr. Taylor had
reappeared, now that there was at least a possibility that Rama held
something more newsworthy than lifeless artifacts.

The Chairman had fully expected Dr. Carlisle Perera to be even more
dogmatically assertive than usual, now that his prediction of a Raman
hurricane had been confirmed.  To His Excellency's great surprise,
Perera was remarkably subdued, and accepted the congratulations of his
colleagues in a manner as near to embarrassment as he was ever likely to
achieve.

The exobiologist, in fact, was deeply mortified.  The spectacular
break-up of the Cylindrical Sea was a much more obvious phenomenon than
the hurricane winds - yet he had completely overlooked it.  To have
remembered that hot air rises, but to have forgotten that hot ice
contracts, was not an achievement of which he could be very proud.
However, he would soon get over it, and revert to his normal Olympian
self-confidence.

When the Chairman offered him the floor, and asked what further climatic
changes he expected, he was very careful to hedge his bets.

plained, 'that the metearolo 'You must realize,' he ex gy of a world as
strange as Rama may have many other surprises.  But if my calculations
are correct, there will be no further storms, and conditions will soon
be stable.  There will be a slow temperature rise until perihelion - and
beyond - but that won't concern us, as Endeavour will have had to leave
long before then." 'So it should soon be safe to go back inside?" 'Er -
probably.  We should certainly know in fortyeight hours." 'A return is
imperative,' said the Ambassador for Mercury.  'We have to learn
everything we possibly can about Rama.  The situation has now changed
completely." 'I think we know what you mean, but would you care to
elaborate?" 'Of course.  Until now, we have assumed that Rama is
lifeless - or at any rate uncontrolled.  But we can no longer pretend
that it is a derelict.  Even if there are no life-forms aboard, it may
be directed by robot mechanisms, programmed to carry out some mission -
perhaps one highly disadvantageous to us.

Unpalatable though it may be, we must consider the question of
selfdefence." There was a babble of protesting voices, and the Chairman
had to hold up his hand to restore order.

'Let His Excellency finish I' he pleaded.  'Whether we like the idea or
not, it should be considered seriously." 'With all due respect to the
Ambassador,' said Dr. Conrad Taylor in his most disrespectful voice, 'I
think we can rule out as naive the fear of malevolent intervention.
Creatures as advanced as the Ramans must have correspondingly developed
morals.  Otherwise they would have destroyed themselves - as we nearly
di in the twentieth century.  I've made that quite clear in my new book
Ethos and Cosmos.  I hope you received your copy." Yes, thank you,
though I'm afraid the pressure of other matters has not allowed me to
read beyond the introduction.  However, I'm familiar with the general
thesis.  We may have no malevolent intentions towards an ant-heap.  But
if we want to build a house on the same site ...

A WARNING FROM MERCURY 105 'This is as bad as the Pandora Party I It's
nothing less than interstellar xenophobia I' 'Please, gentlemen I This
is getting us nowhere.  Mr Ambassador, you still have the floor." The
Chairman glared across three hundred and eighty thousand kilometres of
space at Conrad Taylor, who reluctantly subsided, like a volcano biding
its time.

'Thank you,' said the Ambassador for Mercury.  'The danger may be
unlikely, but where the future of the human race is involved, we can
take no chances.  And, if I may say so, we Hermians may be particularly
concerned.  We may have more cause for alarm than anyone else." Dr
Taylor snorted audibly, but was queue by another glare from the Moon.

'Why Mercury, more than any other planet?" asked the Chairman.

'Look at the dynamics of the situation.  Rama is already inside our
orbit.

It is only an assumption that it will go round the sun and head on out
again into space.  Suppose it carries out a braking manoeuvre?  If it
does so, this will be at perihelion, about thirty days from now.  My
scientists tell me that if the entire velocity change is carried out
there, Rama will end up in a circular orbit only twenty-five million
kilometres from the sun.  From here, it could dominate the solar
system." For a long time nobody - not even Conrad Taylor spoke a word.
All the members of the Committee were marshalling their thoughts about
those difficult people the Hermians, so ably represented here by their
Ambassador.

To most people, Mercury was a fairly good approximation of Hell; at
least, it would do until something worse came along.  But the Hermians
were proud of their 1);zarre planet, with its days longer than its
years, its double sunrises and sunsets, its rivers of molten metal By
comparison, the Moon and Mars had been almost tri icI6 vial challenges.
Not until men landed on Venus (if they ever did) would they encounter an
environment more hostile than that of Mercury.

And yet this world had turned out to be, in many ways, the key to the
solar system.  This seemed obvious in retrospect, but the Space Age had
been almost a century old before the fact was realized.  Now the
Hermians never let anyone forget it.

Long before men reached the planet, Mercury's abnormal density hinted at
the heavy elements it contained; even so, its wealth was still a source
of astonishment, and had postponed for a thousand years any fears that
the key metals of human civilization would be exhausted.  And these
treasures were in the best possible place, where the power of the Sun
was ten times greater than on frigid Earth.

Unlimited energy - unlimited metal; that was Mercury.  Its great
magnetic launchers could catapult manufactured products to any point in
the solar system.

It could also export energy, in synthetic transuranium isotopes or pure
radiation.  It had even been proposed that Hermian lasers would one day
thaw out gigantic Jupiter, but this idea had not been well received on
the other worlds.

A technology that could cook Jupiter had too many tempting possibilities
for interplanetary blackmail.

That such a concern had ever been expressed said a good deal about the
general attitude towards the Hermians.  They were respected for their
toughness and engineering skills, and admired for the way in which they
had conquered so fearsome a world.  But they were not liked, and still
less were they completely trusted.

At the same time, it was possible to appreciate their point of view. The
Hermians, it was often joked, sometimes behaved as if the Sun was their
personal property.  They were bound to it in an intimate love-hate
relationship - as the Vikings had once been linked to the sea, the
Nepalese to the Himalayas, the Eskimos to the Tundra.

A WARNING FROM MERCURY They would be most unhappy if something came
between them and the natural force that dominated and controlled their
lives.

At last, the Chairman broke the long silence.  He still remembered the
sun of India, and shuddered to contemplate the sun of Mercury.  So he
took the Hermians very seriously indeed, even though he considered them
uncouth technological barbarians.

'I think there is some merit in your argument, Mr Ambassador,' he said
slowly.  'Have you any proposals?" 'Yes, sir.  Before we know what act
ion to take, we must have the facts.

We know the geography of Rama - if one can use that term - but we have
no idea of its capabilities.  And the key to the whole problem is this:
does Rama have a propulsion system?  Can it change orbit?  I'd be very
interested in Dr. Perera's views." 'I've given the subject a good deal
of thought,' answered the exobiologist.

'Of course, Rama must have been given its original impetus by some
launching device, but that could have been an external booster.  If it
does have onboard propulsion, we've found no trace of it.  Certainly
there are no rocket exhausts, or anything similar, anywhere on the outer
shell." 'They could be hidden." 'True, but there would seem little point
in it.  And where are the propellant tanks, the energy sources?  The
main hull is solid - we've checked that with seismic Surveys.  The
cavities in the northern cap are all accounted for by the airlock
systems.

'That leaves the southern end of Rama, which Commander Norton has been
unable to reach, owing to that ten-kilometer-wide band of water.  There
are all sorts of curious mechanisms and structures up on the South Pole
- you've seen the photographs.  What they are is anybody's guess.

'But I'm reasonably sure of this.  If Rama does have a propulsion
system, it's something completely outside our present knowledge.  In
fact, it would have to be the fabulous "Space Drive" people have been
talking about for two hundred years." 'You wouldn't rule that out?"
'Certainly not.  If we can prove that Rama has a Space Drive - even if
we learn nothing about its mode of operation - that would be a major
discovery.  At least we'd know that such a thing is possible." 'What is
a Space Drive?" asked the Ambassador for Earth, rather plaintively.

'Any kind of propulsion system, Sir Robert, that doesn't work on the
rocket principle.  Anti-gravity - if it is possible - would do very
nicely.  At present, we don't know where to look for such a drive, and
most scientists doubt if it exists." 'It doesn't,' Professor Davidson
interjected.  'Newton settled that.  You can't have action without
reaction.  Space Drives are nonsense.  Take it from me." 'You may be
right,' Perera replied with unusual blandness.  'But if Rama doesn't
have a Space Drive, it has no drive at all.  There's simply no room for
a conventional propulsion system, with its enormous fuel tanks." 'It's
hard to imagine a whole world being pushed around,' said Dennis
Solomons.  'What would happen to the objects inside it?  Everything
would have to be bolted down.  Most inconvenient." 'Well, the
acceleration would probably be very low.  The biggest problem would be
the water in the Cylindrical Sea.  How would you stop that from..."
Perera's voice suddenly faded away, and his eyes glazed over.  He seemed
to be in the throes of an incipient epileptic fit, or even a heart
attack.  His colleagues looked at him in alarm; then he made a sudden
recovery, banged his fist on the table and shouted: 'Of course I That
explains everything The southern cliff - now it makes sense!  ' 'Not to
me" grumbled the Lunar Ambassador, speaking for all the diplomats
present.

'Look at this longitudinal cross-section of Raina,' Per A WARNING FROM
MERCURY log era continued excitedly, unfolding his map.  'Have you got
your copies?  The Cylindrical Sea is enclosed between two cliffs, which
completely circle the interior of Rama.  The one on the north is only
fifty metres high.  The southern one, on the other hand, is almost half
a kilometer high.  Why the big difference?

No one's been able to think of a sensible reason.

'But suppose Rama is able to propel itself - accelerating so that the
northern end is forward.  The water in the Sea would tend to move back;
the level at the south would rise - perhaps hundreds of metres.  Hence
the cliff.  Let's see- Perera started scribbling furiously.  After an
astonishingly short time it could not have been more than twenty seconds
- he looked up in triumph.

e southern continent." 'A fiftieth of a gee?  That's not very inuch."
'It is - for a mass of ten million megatons.  And it's all you need for
astronomical manoeuvring." 'Thank you very much, Dr. Perera,' said the
Hermian Ambassador.  'You've given us a lot to think about.  Mr Chairman
- can we impress on Commander Norton the importance of looking at the
South Polar region?" 'He's doing his best.  The Sea is the obstacle, of
course.  They're trying to build some kind of raft - so that they can at
)east reach New York." 'The South Pole may be even more important.
Meanwhile, I am going to bring these matters to the attention of the
General Assembly.  Do I have your approval?" There were no objections,
not even from Dr. Taylor.  But just as the Committee members were about
to switch out of circuit, Sir Lewis raised his hand.

The old historian very seldom spoke; when he did, everyone listened.

'Suppose we do find that Rama is - active - and has these capabilities.
There is an old saying in military affairs that capability does not
imply intention." 'How long should we wait to find what its intentions
are?" asked the Hermian.  'When we discover them, it may be far too
late." 'It is already too late.  There is nothing we can do to affect
Rama.

Indeed, I doubt if there ever was." 'I do not admit that, Sir Lewis.
There are many things we can do - if it proves necessary.  But the time
is desperately short.  Rama is a cosmic egg, being warmed by the fires
of the sun.  It may hatch at any moment." The Chairman of the Committee
looked at the Ambassador for Mercury in frank astonishment.  He had
seldom been so surprised in his diplomatic career.

He would never have dreamed that a Hermian was capable of such a poetic
flight of imagination.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Book of Revelation

When one of his crew called him 'Commander', or, worse r still 'Mister
Norton', there was always something serious afoot. He could not recall
that Boris Rodrigo had ever before addressed him in such a fashion, so
this must be doubly serious.  Even in normal times, Lieut-Commander
Rodrigo was a very grave and sober person.

'What's the problem, Boris?" he asked when the cabin door closed behind
them.

'I'd like permission, Commander, to use Ship Priority for a direct
message to Earth." This.  was unusual, though not unprecedented. Routine
signals went to the nearest planetary relay - at the moment, they were
working through Mercury and even though the transit time was only a
matter of minutes, it was often five or six hours before a message
arrived at the desk of the person for whom it was intended. Ninety-nine
percent of the time, that was quite good enough; but in an emergency
more direct, and much more expensive, channels could be employed, at the
captain's discretion.

'You know, of course, that you have to give me a good reason.  All our
available bandwidth is already clogged with data transmissions.  Is this
a personal emergency?" 'No, Commander.  It is much more important than
that.  I want to send a message to the Mother Church." Uh-uh, said
Norton to himself.

How do I handle this?

'I'd be glad if you'll explain." It was not mere curiosity that prompted
Norton's request though that was certainly present.  If he gave Boris
the priority he asked, he would have to justify his action.

The calm, blue eyes stared into his.  He had never known Boris to lose
control, to be other than completely self-assured.  All the
Cosmo-Christers were like this; it was one of the benefits of their
faith, and it helped to make them good spacemen.  Sometimes, however,
their unquestioning certainty was just a little annoying to those
unfortunates who had not been vouchsafed the Revelation.

'It concerns the purpose of Rama, Commander.  I believe I have
discovered it." 'Go on." 'Look at the situation.  Here is a completely
empty, lifeless world - yet it is suitable for human beings.  It has
water, and an atmosphere we can breathe.

It comes from the remote depths of space, aimed precisely at the solar
system something quite incredible, if it was a matter of pure chance.
And it appears not only new; it looks as if it has never been used."
We've all been through this dozens of times, Norton told himself.  What
could Boris add to it?

'Our faith has told us to expect such a visitation though we do not know
exactly what form it will take.  The Bible gives hints.  If this is not
the Second Coming, it may be the Second judgement; the story of Noah
describes the first.  I believe that Rama is a cosmic Ark, sent here to
save - those who are worthy of salvation." There was silence for quite a
while in the Captain's cabin.  It was not that Norton was at a loss for
words; rather, he could think of too many questions, but he was not sure
which ones it would be tactful to ask.

Finally he remarked, in as mild and non-committal a voice as he could
manage: 'That's a very interesting concept, and though I don't go along
with your faith, it's a tantalizingly plausible one." He was not being
hypocrite cal or flattering; stripped of its religious overtones,
Rodrigo's theory was at least as convincing as half a dozen others he
had heard.  Suppose some catastrophe was about BOOK OF REVELATION 113 to
befall the human race, and a benevolent higher intelligence knew all
about it?

That would explain everything, very neatly.  However, there were still a
few problems ...

'A couple of questions, Boris.  Rama will be at perihelion in three
weeks; then it will round the sun and leave the solar system just as
fast as it came in.

There's not much time for a Day of judgement, or for shipping across
those who are, er, selected - however that's going to be done." 'Very
true.  So when it reaches perihelion, Rama will have to decelerate and
go into a parking orbit - probably one with aphelion at Earth's orbit.
There it might make another velocity change, and rendezvous with Earth."
This was disturbingly persuasive.  If Rama wished to remain in the solar
system, it was going the right way about it.  The most efficient way to
slow down was to get as close to the sun as possible, and carry out the
braking manoeuvre there.  If there was any truth in Rodrigo's theory -
or some variant of it - it would soon be put to the test.

'One other point, Boris.  What's controlling Rama now?" 'There is no
doctrine to advise on that.  It could be a pure robot.  Or it could be -
a spirit.  That would explain why there are no signs of biological
life-forms." The Haunted Asteroid; why had that phrase popped up from
the depths of memory?  Then he recalled a silly story he had read years
ago; he thought it best not to ask Boris if he had ever run into it.  He
doubted if the other's tastes ran to that sort of reading.

'I'll tell you what we'll do, Boris,' said Norton, abruptly making up
his mind.  He wanted to terminate this interview before it got too
difficult, and thought he had found a good compromise.

'Can you sum up your ideas in less than - oh, a thousand bits?" 'Yes, I
think so." 'Well, if you can make it sound like a straightforward
scientific theory, I'll send it, top priority, to the Rama Committee.
Then a copy can go to your Church at the same time, and everyone will be
happy." 'Thank you, Commander, I really appreciate it." 'Oh, I'm not
doing this to save my conscience.  I'd just like to see what the
Committee makes of it.  Even if I don't agree with you all along the
line, you may have hit on something important." 'Well, we'll know at
perihelion, won't we?" 'Yes.  We'll know at perihelion." When Boris
Rodrigo had left, Norton called the bridge and gave the necessary
authorization.  He thought he had solved the problem rather neatly;
besides, just suppose that Boris was right.

He might have increased his chances of being among the saved.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

After the Storm

As they drifted along the now familiar corridor of the Alpha Airlock
complex, Norton wondered if they had let impatience overcome caution.
They had waited aboard Endeavour for forty-eight hours - two precious
days - ready for instant departure if events should justify it.  But
nothing had happened; the instruments left in Rama had detected no
unusual activity.  Frustratingly, the television camera on the Hub had
been blinded by a fog which had reduced visibility to a few metres and
had only now started to retreat.

When they operated the final airlock door, and floated out into the
cat'scradle of guide-ropes around the Hub, Norton was struck first by
the change in the light.  It was no longer harshly blue, but was much
more mellow and gentle, reminding him of a bright, hazy day on Earth.

He looked outwards along the axis of the world - and could see nothing
except a glowing, featureless tunnel of white, reaching all the way to
those strange mountains at the South Pole.  The interior of Rama was
completely blanketed with clouds, and nowhere was a break visib e in the
overcast.  The top of the layer was quite sharply defined; it formed a
smaller cylinder inside the larger one of this spinning world, leaving a
central core, five or six kilometres wide, quite clear except for a few
stray wisps of cirrus.

The immense tube of cloud was lit from underneath by the six artificial
suns of Rama.  The locations of the three on this Northern continent
were clearly defined by 116 diffuse strips of light, but those on the
far side of the cylindrical Sea merged together into a continuous,
glowing band.

What is happening down beneath those clouds?  Norton asked himself.  But
at least the storm, which had centrifuged them into such perfect
symmetry about the axis of Rama, had now died away.  Unless there were
some other surprises, it would be safe to descend.

It seemed appropriate, on this return visit, to use the team that had
made the first deep penetration into Rama.  Sergeant Myron - like every
other member of Endeavour's crew - now fully met SurgeonCommander
Ernst's physical requirements; he even maintained, with convincing
sincerity, that he was never going to wear his old uniforms again.

As Norton watched Mercer, Calvert and Myron 'swimming' quickly and
confidently down the ladder, he reminded himself how much had changed.
That first time they had descended in cold and darkness; now they were
going towards light and warmth.  And on all earlier visits, they had
been confident that Rama was dead.  That might yet be true, in a
biological sense.  But something was stirring; and Boris Rodrigo's
phrase would do as well as any other.  The spirit of Rama was awake.

When they had reached the platform at the foot of the ladder and were
preparing to start down the stairway, Mercer carried out his usual
routine test of the atmosphere.  There were some things that he never
took for granted; even when the people around him were breathing
perfectly comfortably, without aids, he had been known to stop for an
air check before opening his helmet.  When asked to justify such
excessive caution, he had answered: 'Because human senses aren't good
enough, that's why.  You may think you're fine, but you could fall flat
on your face with the next deep breath." He looked at his meter, and
said 'Damn I' 'What's the trouble?" asked Calvert.

AFTER THE STORM 117 'It's broken - reading too high.  Odd; I've never
known that to happen before.  I'll check it on my breathing circuit." He
plugged the compact little analyser into the test point of his oxygen
supply, then stood in thoughtful silence for a while.  His companions
looked at him with anxious concern; anything that upset Karl was to be
taken very seriously indeed.

He unplugged the meter, used it to sample the Rama atmosphere again,
then called Hub Control.

'Skipper I Will you take an 0, reading?" There was a much longer pause
than the request justified.  Then Norton radioed -back: 'I think there's
something wrong with my meter." A slow smile spread across Mercer's
face.

'It's up fifty percent, isn't it?" 'Yes, what does that mean?" 'It means
that we can all take off our masks.  Isn't that convenient?" 'I'm not
sure,' replied Norton, echoing the sarcasm in Mercer's voice.  'It seems
too good to be true." There was no need to say any more.  Like all
spacemen, Commander Norton had a profound suspicion of things that were
too good to be true.

Mercer cracked his mask open a trifle, and took a cautious sniff.  For
the first time at this altitude, the air was perfectly breathable.  The
musty, dead smell had gone; so had the excessive dryness, which in the
past had caused several respiratory complaints.  Humidity was now an
astonishing eighty percent; doubtless the thawing of the Sea was
responsible for this.  There was a inugg-/ feeling in the air, though
not an unpleasant' one.  It was like a summer evening, Mercer told
himself, on some tropical coast.  The climate inside Rama had improved
dramatically during the last few days ...

em And why?  The increased humidity was no probi 11 the startling rise
in oxygen was much more difficult to explain.

As he recommenced the descent, Mercer began a whole series of mental
calculations.  He had not arrived at any satisfactory result by the time
they entered the cloud layer.

It was a dramatic experience, for the transition was very abrupt.  At
one moment they were sliding downwards in clear air, gripping the smooth
metal of the handrail so that they would not gain speed too swiftly in
this quarter-of-agravity region.  Then, suddenly, they shot into a
blinding white fog, and visibility dropped to a few ly that Calvert
metres.  Mercer put on the brakes so quick almost bumped into him - and
Myron did bump into Calvert, nearly knocking him off the rail.

'Take it easy,' said Mercer.  'Spread out so we can just see each other.

And don't let yourself build up speed, in case I have to stop suddenly."
In eerie silence, they continued to glide downwards through the fog.

Calvert could just see Mercer as a vague shadow ten metres ahead, and
when he looked back, Myron was at the same distance behind him.  In some
ways, this was even spookier than descending in the complete darkness of
the Raman night; then, at least, the searchlight beams had shown them
what lay ahead.  But this was like diving in poor visibility in the open
sea.

It was impossible to tell how far they had travelled, and Calvert
guessed they had almost reached the fourth level when Mercer suddenly
braked again.  When they had bunched together, he whispered: Tisteni
Don't you hear something?" 'Yes,' said Myron, after a minute.  'It
sounds like the wind." Calvert was not so sure.  He turned his head back
and forth, trying to locate the direction of the very faint murmur that
had come to them through the fog, then abandoned the attempt as
hopeless.

They continued the slide, reached the fourth level, and started on
towards the fifth.  All the while the sound grew louder - and more
hauntingly familiar.

They were half AFTER THE STORM 119 way down the fourth stairway before
Myron called out: 'Now do you recognize it?" They would have identified
it long ago, but it was not a sound they would ever have associated with
any world except Earth.  Coming out of the fog, from a source whose
distance could not be guessed, was the steady thunder of falling water.

A few minutes later, the cloud ceiling ended as abruptly as it had
begun.

They shot out into the blinding glare of the Raman day, made more
brilliant by the light reflected from the low-hanging clouds.  There was
the familiar curving plain - now made more acceptable to mind and
senses, because its full circle could no longer be seen.  It was not too
difficult to pretend that they were looking along a broad valley, and
that the upward sweep of the Sea was really an outward one.

They halted at the fifth and pentiltimate platform, to report that they
were through the cloud cover and to make a careful survey.  As far as
they could tell, nothing had changed down there on the plain; but up
here on the Northern dome, Rama had brought forth another wonder.

So there was the origin of the sound they had heard.  Descending from
some hidden source in the clouds three or four kilometres away was a
waterfall, and for long minutes they stared at it silently, almost
unable to believe their eyes.

Logic told them that on this spinning world no falling object could move
in a straight line, but there was something horribly unnatural about a
curving waterfall that curved sideways, to end many kilometres away from
the point directly below its source ...

'If Galileo had been born in this world,' said Mercer at length, 'he'd
have gone crazy working out the laws of dynamics." 'I thought I knew
tbem,'Calvert replied,'and I'm going crazy anyway.

Doesn't it upset you, Prof?" 'Why should it?" said Sergeant Myron. 'It's
a perfectly straightforward demonstration of the Coriolis Effect. I wish
I could show it to some of my students." Mercer was staring thoughtfully
at the globe-circling band of the Cylindrical Sea.

'Have you noticed what's happened to the water?" he said at last.

'Why - it's no longer so blue.  I'd call it pea-green.  What does that
signify?" 'Perhaps the same thing that it does on Earth.  Laura called
the Sea an organic soup waiting to be shaken into life.  Maybe that's
exactly what's happened." 'In a couple of daysl It took millions of
years on Earth." 'Three hundred and seventy-five million, according to
the latest estimate.  So that's where the oxygen's come from.  Rama's
shot through the anerobic stage and has got to photosynthetic plants -
in about forty-eight hours.  I wonder what it will produce tomorrow?"

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Sail the Cylindrical Sea

When they reached the foot of the stairway, they had another shock.  At
first, it appeared that something had gone through the camp, overturning
equipment, even collecting smaller objects and carrying them away.  But
after a .1brief examination, their alarm was replaced by a rather
shame-faced annoyance.

AThe culprit was only the wind; though they had tied down all loose oh
ects before they left, some ropes must have parted during exceptionally
strong gusts.  It was several days before they were able to retrieve all
their scattered property.

VOtherwise, there seemed no major changes.  Even the silence of Rama had
returned, now that the ephemeral storms of spring were over.  And out
there at the edge of the plain was a calm sea, waiting for the first
ship in a million years.

'Shouldn't one christen a new boat with a bottle of champagne?" 'Even if
we had any on board, I wouldn't allow such a criminal waste.

Anyway, it's too late.  We've already launched the thing." 'At least it
does float.  You've won your bet, Jimmy.  I'll settle when we get back
to Earth." 'It's got to have a name.  Any ideas?" The subject of these
unflattering comments was now bobbing beside the steps leading down into
the Cylindrical Sea.  It was a small raft, constructed from six empty
storage drums held together by a light metal framework.  Building it,
assembling it at Camp Alpha and hauling it on demountable wheels across
more than ten kilometres of plain had absorbed the crew's entire
energies for several days.  It was a gamble that had better pay off.

The prize was worth the risk.  The enigmatic towers of New York,
gleaming there in the shadowless light five kilometres away, had taunted
them ever since they had entered Rama.  No one doubted that the city -
or whatever it might be - was the real heart of this world.  If they did
nothing else, they must reach New York.

'We still don't have a name.  Skipper - what about it?" Norton laughed,
then became suddenly serious.

'I've got one for you.  Call it Resolution." 'Why?" 'That was one of
Cook's ships.  It's a good name - may she live up to it." There was a
thoughtful silence; then Sergeant Barnes, who had been principally
responsible for the design, asked for three volunteers.  Everyone
present held up a hand.

'Sorry - we only have ur li jackets.  Boris, Jimmy, Pieter - you've all
done some sailing.  Let's try her out." No one thought it in the least
peculiar that an Executive Sergeant was now taking charge of the
proceedings.  Ruby Barnes had the only Master's Certificate aboard, so
that settled the matter.  She had navigated racing trimarans across the
Pacific, and it did not seem likely that a few kilometres of dead-calm
water could present much of a challenge to her skills.

Ever since she had set eyes upon the Sea, she had been determined to
make this voyage.  In all the thousands of years that man had had
dealings with the waters of his own world, no sailor had ever faced
anything remotely like this.  In the last few days a silly little jingle
had been running through her mind, and she could not get rid of it.

'To sail the Cylindrical Sea..." Well, that was precisely what she was
going to do.

Af Her passengers took their places on the improvised bucket seats, and
Ruby opened the throttle.  The twentykilowatt motor started to whirr,
the chain-drives of the reduction gear blurred, and Resolution surged
away to the cheers of the spectators.

Ruby had hoped to get fifteen kph with this load, but would settle for
anything over ten.  A half-kilometer course had been measured along the
cliff, and she made the round trip in five and a half minutes.  Allowing
for turning time, this worked out at twelve kph; she was quite happy
with that.

With no power, but with three energetic paddlers helping her own more
skilful blade, Ruby was able to get a quarter of this speed.  So even if
the motor broke down, they could get back to shore in a couple of hours.
The heavy-duty power cells could provide enough energy to circumnavigate
the world; she was carrying two spares, to be on the safe side.

And now that the fog had compete y burned away, even such a cautious
mariner as Ruby was prepared to put to sea without a compass.

She saluted smartly as she stepped ashore.

'Maiden voyage of Resolution successfu y compete Sir.  Now awaiting your
instructions." 'Very good ...  Admiral.  When will you be ready to
sail?" 'As soon as stores can be loaded aboard, and the Harbour Master
gives us clearance." 'Then we leave at dawn." 'Aye, aye, Sir." Five
kilonietres of water does not seem very much on a map; it is very
different when one is in the middle of it.  They had been cruising for
only ten minutes, and the fifty-metre cliff facing the Northern
Continent already seemed a surprising distance away.  Yet, mysteriously,
New York hardly appeared much closer than before ...

But most of the time they paid little attention to the land; they were
still too engrossed in the wonder of the Sea.  They no longer made the
nervous jokes that had punctuated the start of the voyage; this new
experienceI was too overwhelming.

Every time, Norton told himself, he felt that he had grown tomed to
Rama, it produced some new wonder.  As Resolution hummed steadily
forward, it seemed that they were caught in the through of a gigantic
wave - a wave which curved up on either side until it became vertical -
then overhung until the two flanks met in a s.  Despite liquid arch
sixteen kilometres above their head everything that reason and logic
told them, none of the voyagers could for long throw off the impression
that at any minute those millions of tons of water would comeI I I
crashing down from the sky.

Yet despite this, their main feeling was one of exhilara-i tion; there
was a sense of danger, without any real danger.  Unless, of course, the
Sea itself produced any more surprises.

That was a distinct possibility, for as Mercer had guessed, the water
was now alive.  Every spoonful contained thousands of spherical,
single-celled microorganisms, similar to the earliest forms of plankton
that had existed in the oceans of Earth.

Yet they showed puzzling differences; they lacked a nucleus, as well as
many of the other minimum requirements of even the most primitive
terrestrial life-forms.

And although Laura Ernst - now doubling as research scientist as well as
ship's doctor - had proved that they definitely generated oxygen, there
were far too few of them to account for the augmentation of Rama's
atmoot mere sphere.  They should have existed in billions, n thousands.

Then she discovered that their numbers were dwindling rapidly, and must
have been far higher during the first hours of the Raman dawn.  It was
as if there had been a brief explosion of life, recapitulating on a
trillionfold swifter time-scale the early history of Earth.  Now,
perhaps, it had exhausted itself; the drifting microorganisms were
disintegrating, releasing their stores of chemicals back into the Sea.

'If you have to swim for it,' Dr. Ernst had warned the mariners, 'keep
your mouths closed.  A few drops won't matter - if you spit them out
right away.  But all those weird organo-metallic salts add up to a
fairly poisonous package, and I'd hate to have to work out an antidote."
This danger, fortunately, seemed very unlikely.  Resolution could stay
afloat if any two of her buoyancy tanks were punctured.  (When told of
this, Joe Calvert had muttered darkly: 'Remember the Titanicl') And even
if she sank, the crude but efficient life-jackets would keep their heads
above water.  Although Laura had been reluctant to give a firm ruling on
this, she did not think that a few hours' immersion in the Sea would be
fatal; but she did not recommend it.

After twenty minutes of steady progress, New York was no longer a
distant island.  It was becoming a real place, and details which they
had seen only through telescopes and photo-enlargements were now
revealing themselves as massive, solid structures.  It was now
strikingly apparent that the 'city', like so much of Rama, was
triplicated; it consisted of three identical, circular complexes or
superstructures, rising from a long, oval foundation.  Photographs taken
from the Hub also indicated that each complex was itself divided into
three equal components, like a pie sliced into i.-o-degree portions.
This would greatly simplify the task of exploration; presumably they had
to examine only one ninth of New York to have seen the whole of it. Even
this would be a formidable undertaking; it would mean investigating at
least a square kiloInetre of buildings and machinery, some of which
towered hundreds of metres into the air.

The Ramans, it seemed, had brought the art of tripleredundancy to a high
degree of perfection.  This was demonstrated in the airlock system, the
stairways at the Hub, the artificial suns.  And where it really
mattered, they had even taken the next step.  New York appeared to F t*6
RENDEZVOUS -WITH RAMA be an example of triple-triple redundancy.

Ruby was steering Resolution towards the central complex, where a flight
of steps led up from the water to the very top of the wall or levee
which surrounded the island.  There was even a conveniently-placed
mooring post to which boats could be tied; when she saw this, Ruby
became quite excited.  Now she would never be content until she found
one of the craft in which the Ramans sailed their extraordinary sea.

Norton was the first to step ashore; he looked back at his three
companions and said: 'Wait here on the boat until I get to the top of
the wall.  When I wave, Pieter and Boris will join me.  You stay at the
helm, Ruby, so that we can cast off at a moment's notice.  If anything
happens to me, report to Karl and follow his instructions.  Use your
best judgement - but no heroics.  Understood?" 'Yes, Skipper.  Good luck
I' Commander Norton did not really believe in luck; he never got into a
situation until he had analysed all the factors involved and had secured
his line of retreat.  But once again Rama was forcing him to break some
of his cherished rules.  Almost every factor here was unknown as unknown
as the Pacific and the Great Barrier Reef had been to his hero, three
and a half centuries ago ...  Yes, he could do with all the luck that
happened to be lying around.

The stairway was a virtual duplicate of the one down which they had
descended on the other side of the Sea; doubtless his friends over there
were looking straight across at him through their telescopes.  And
'straight' was now the correct word; in this one direction, parallel to
the axis of Rama, the Sea was indeed completely flat.  It might well be
the only body of water in the universe of which this was true, for on
all other worlds, every sea or lake must follow the surface of a sphere,
with equal curvature in all directions.

'Nearly at the top,' he reported, speaking for the record and for his
intently listening second-in-command, five All kilometres away, 'Still
completely quiet - radiation normal.  I'm holding the meter above my
head, just in case this wall is acting as a shield for anything.

And if there are any hostiles on the other side, they'll shoot that
first He was joking, of course.  And yet - why take y an' chances, when
it was just as easy to avoid them?

When he took the last step, he found that the flattopped embankment was
about ten metres thick; on the inner side, an alternating series of
ramps and stairways led down to the main level of the city, twe my
metres below.  In effect, he was standing on a high wall which
completely surrounded New York, and so was able to get a grandstand view
of it.  his It was a view almost stunning in its complexity, and first
act was to make a slow panoramic scan with his camera.  Then he waved to
his companions and radioe d back across the Sea: 'No sign of any
activity everything quiet.  Come on up we'll start exploring."

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Rama

It was not a city; it was a machine. Norton bad come to that conclusion
in ten minutes, and saw no reason to change it after they had made a
complete traverse of the island.  A city - whatever the nature of its
occupants surely had to provide some form of accommodation: there was
nothing here of that nature, unless it was underground.  And if that was
the case, where were the enthe elevators?

He had not found trances, the stairways, anything that even qualified as
a simple door ...

The closest analogy he had ever seen to this place on Earth was a giant
chemical processing plant.  However, there were no stockpiles of raw
materials, or any indications of a transport system to move them around.
Nor could he imagine where the finished product would emerge - still
less what that product could possibly be.  It was all very baffling, and
more than a little frustrating.

'Anybody care to make a guess?" he said at last, to all who might be
listening.  'If this is a factory, what does it make?  And where does it
get its raw Materials?" 'I've a suggestion, Skipper,' said Karl Mercer,
over on the far shore.

'Suppose it uses the Sea.  According to Doc, that contains just about
anything you can think of." It was a plausible answer, and Norton had
already considered it.  There could well be buried pipes leading to the
Sea - in fact, there must be, for any conceivable chemical plant would
require large quantities of water.  But he had a suspicion of plausible
answers; they were so often wrong.

Ar NY, RAMA hat does New York do 'That's a good idea, Karl; but w with
its seawater?" from ship, Hub or For a long time, nobody answered fr
Northern plain.  Then an unexpected voice spoke.

'That's easy, Skipper.  But you're all going to laugh at me." 'No, we're
not, Ravi.  Go ahead." Sergeant Ravi McAndrews, Chief Steward and Simp
Master, was the last person on this ship who would normally get involved
in a technical discussion.  His IQ was modest and his scientific
knowledge was minimal, but he was no fool and had a natural shrewdness
which everyone respected.

'Well, it s a factory all right, Skipper, and maybe the Sea provides the
raw material ...  after all, that's how it all happened on Earth, though
in a different way believe New York is a factory for making - Ramans."
Somebody, somewhere, snickered, but became quickly silent and did not
identify himself.

'You know, Ravi,' said his commander at last, 'that theory is crazy
enough to be true.  And I'm not sure if I want to see it tested ...  at
least, until I get back to the mainland." This celestial New York was
just about as wide as the island of Manhattan, but its geometry was
totally different.  There were few straight thoroughfares; it was a maze
of short, concentric arcs, with radial spokes linking them.

Luckily, it was impossible to lose one's bearings inside Rama; a single
glance at the sky was enough to establish the north-south axis of the
world.

They paused at almost every intersection to make a panoramic scan.  When
all these hundreds of pictures were sorted out, it would be a tedious
but fairly straightforward job to construct an accurate scale model of
the city.  Norton suspected that the resulting jigsaw puzzle would keep
scientists busy for generations.

It was even harder to get used to the silence here than it had been out
on the plain of Rama.  A city-machine ISO should make some sound; yet
there was not even the faintest of electric hums, or the slightest
whisper of Inechanical motion.  Several times Norton put his ear to the
ground, or to the side of a building, and listened ining except the
pounding of his tently.  He could hear noth own blood.

The machines were sleeping- they were not even ticking over.  Would they
ever wake again, and for what purpose?  Everything was in perfect
condition, as usual.  It was easy to believe that the closing of a
single circuit, in some patient, hidden computer, would bring all
this.maze back to life.

When at last they had reached the far side of the city, they climbed to
the top of the surrounding levee and looked across the southern branch
of the Sea.

For a long time Norton stared at the five-hundred-metre cliff that
barred them from almost half of Rama - and, judging from their
telescopic surveys, the most complex and varied half.  From this angle,
it appeared an ominous, forbidding black, and it was easy to think of it
as a prison wall surrounding a whole continent.  Nowhere along its
entire circle was there a flight of stairways or any other means of
access.

He wondered how the Ramans reached their southern land from New York.

Probably there was an underground transport system running beneath the
Sea, but they must also have aircraft as well; there were many open
aieas here in the city that could be used for landing.  To discover a
Raman vehicle would be a major accomplishment - especially if they could
learn to operate it.  (Though could any conceivable power-source still
be functioning, after several hundred thousand years?) e numerous
structures that had the functional There wer look of hangars or garages,
but they were all smooth and windowless, as if they had been sprayed
with sealant.  Sooner or later, Norton had told himself grimly, we'll be
forced to use explosives, and laser beams.  He was determined to put off
this decision to the last possible moment.

NY, RAMA I 31 His reluctance to use brute force was based partly on
pride, partly on fear.

He did not wish to behave like a technological barbarian, smashing what
he could not understand.  After all, he was an uninvited visitor in this
world, and should act accordingly.

As for his fear - perhaps that was too strong a word; apprehension might
be better.  The Ramans seemed to have planned for everything; he was not
anxious to discover the precautions they had taken to guard their
property.  When he sailed back to the mainland, it would be with empty
hands.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Dr,,(471,a o nfly

Lieutenant James Pak was the most junior officer on board Endeavour, and
this was only his fourth mission into deep space. He was ambitious, and
due for promotion; he had also committed a serious breach of
regulations.  No wonder, therefore, that he took a long time to make up
his mind.

It would be a gamble; if he lost, he could be in deep trouble.  He could
not only be risking his career; he might even be risking his neck.  But
if he succeeded, he would be a hero.  What finally convinced him was
neither of these arguments; it was the certainty that, if he did nothing
at all, he would spend the rest of his life brooding over his lost
opportunity.  Nevertheless, he was still hesitant when he asked the
Captain for a private meeting.

What is it this time?  Norton asked himself, as he analysed the
uncertain expression on the young officer's face.  He remembered his
delicate interview with Boris Rodrigo; no, it wouldn't be anything like
that.  Jimmy was certainly not the religious type; the only interests he
had ever shown outside his work were sport and sex, preferably combined.

It could hardly be the former, and Norton hoped it was not the latter.
He had encountered most of the problems that a commanding officer could
encounter in this department - except the classical one of an
unscheduled birth during a mission.  Though this situation was the
subject of innumerable jokes, it had never happened yet; DRAGONFLY 133
but such gross incompetence was probably only a matter of time.

'Well, Jimmy, what is it?" 'I have an idea, Commander.  I know how to
reach the southern continent even to the South Pole." 'I'm listening.
How do you propose to do it?" 'Er - by flying there." 'Jimmy, I've had
at least five proposals to do that more if you count crazy suggestions
from Earth.  We've looked into the possibility of adapting our spacesuit
propulsors, but air drag would make them hopelessly inefficient.

They'd run out of fuel before they could go ten kilometres." 'I know
that.  But I have the answer." It Pak's attitude was a curious mixture
of complete confidence and barely suppressed nervousness.  Norton was
quite baffled; what was the kid worried about?  Surely he knew his
commanding officer well enough to be certain that no reasonable proposal
would be laughed out of court.

'Well, go on.  If it works, I'll see your promotion is retroactive."
That little half-promise, half-joke didn't go down as well as he had
hoped.

Jimmy gave a rather sickly smile, made several false starts, then
decided on an oblique apoach to the subject.

Pr 'You know, Commander, that I was in the Lunar Olympics last year."
'Of course.  Sorry you didn't win." 'It was bad equipment; I know what
went wrong.  I have friends on Mars who've been working on it, in
secret.  We want to give everyone a surprise." 'Mars?  But I didn't
know..." 'Not many people do - the sport's still new there; it's only
been tried in the Xante Sportsdome.  But the best aerodynamicists in the
solar system are on Mars; if you can fly in that atmosphere, you can fly
anywhere.

'Now, my idea was that if the Martians could build a good machine, with
all their know-how, it would really perform on the Moon - where gravity
is only half as strong." 'That seems plausible, but how does it help
us?" Norton was beginning to guess, but he wanted to give Jimmy plenty
of rope.

'Well, I formed a syndicate with some friends in Lowell City.  They've
built a fully acrobatic flyer with some refinements that no one has ever
seen before.  In lunar gravity, under the Olympic dome, it should create
a sensation." 'And win you the gold medal." 'I hope so." 'Let me see if
I follow your train of thought correctly.  A sky-bike that could enter
the Lunar Olympics, at a sixth of a gravity, would be even more
sensational inside Rama, with no gravity at all.  You could fly it right
along the axis, from the North Pole to the South - and back again." 'Yes
- easily.  The one-way trip would take three hours, non-stop.  But of
course you could rest whenever you wanted to, as long as you kept near
the axis." 'It's a brilliant idea, and I congratulate you.  What a pity
sky-bikes aren't part of regular Space Survey equipment." Jimmy seemed
to have some difficulty in finding words.  He opened his mouth several
times, but nothing happened.

'All right, Jimmy.  As a matter of morbid interest, and purely off the
record, how did you smuggle the thing aboard?" 'Er - "Recreational
Stores"." 'Well, you weren't lying.  And what about the weight?" 'It's
only twenty kilograms." 'Only!  Still, that's not as bad as I thought.
In fact, I'm astonished you can build a bike for that weight." 'Some
have been only fifteen, but they were too fragile and usually folded up
when they made a turn.  There's no --Ad DRAGONFLY danger of Dragonfly
doing that.  As I said, she's fully aerobatic." 'Dragonfly - nice name.
So tell me just how you plan to use her; then I can decide whether a
promotion or a court martial is in order.  Or both."

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Maiden Flight

Dragonfly was certainly a good name. The long, tapering wings were
almost invisible, except when the light struck them from certain angles
and was refracted into rainbow hues.  It was as if a soap-bubble had
been wrapped round a delicate tracery of aerofoil sections; the envelope
enclosing the little flyer was an organic film only a few molecules
thick, yet strong enough to control and direct the movements of a
fifty-kph air flow.

The pilot - who was also the powerplant and the guidance system - sat on
a tiny seat at the centre of gravity, in a semi-reclining position to
reduce air resistance.  Control was by a single stick which could be
moved backwards and forwards, right and left; the only 'instrument' was
a iece of weighted ribbon attached to the leading edge, toI pI show the
direction of the relative wind.

Once the flyer had been assembled at the Hub, Jimmy kidPak would allow
no one to touch it.  Clumsy handling could snap one of the single-fibre
structural members, and those glittering wings were an almost
irresistible attraction to prying fingers.  It was hard to believe that
there was really something there ...

As he watched.limmy climb into the contraption, Commander Norton began
to have second thoughts.  If one of those wire-sized struts snapped when
Dragonfly was on the other side of the Cylindrical Sea, Jimmy would have
no way of getting back - even if he was able to make a safe landing.
They were also breaking one of the most sacrosanct rules of space
exploration; a man was going MAIDEN FLIGHT 137 alone into unknown
territory, beyond all possibility of help.  The only consolation was
that he would be in full view and communication all the time; they would
know exactly what had happened to him, if he did meet with disaster.

Yet this opportunity was far too good to miss; if one believed in fate
or destiny, it would be challenging the gods themselves to neglect the
only chance they might t ever have of reaching the far side of Rama, and
seeing at close quarters the mysteries of the South Pole.  Jimmy knew
what he was attempting, far better than anyone in the crew could tell
him.  This was precisely the sort of risk that had to be taken; if it
failed, that was the luck of the game.  You couldn't win them all ...

'Now listen to me carefully, jimmy,'said Surgeon-Commander Ernst.  'It's
very important not to over-exert yourself.  Remember, the oxygen level
here at the axis is still very low.  If you feel breathless at any time,
stop and hyperventilate for thirty seconds - but no longer." Jimmy
nodded absentmindedly as he tested the controls.  The whole
rudderelevator assembly, which formed a single unit on an outrigger five
metres behind the rudimentary cockpit, began to twist around; then the
flapshaped ailerons, halfway along the wing, moved alternately up and
down.

'Do you want me to swing the prop?" asked Joe Calvert, unable to
suppress memories of two-hundred-year-old war movies.  'Ignition!
Contact!" Probably no one except Jimmy knew what he was talking about,
but it helped to relieve the tension.

Very slowly, Jimmy started to move the foot-pedals.  The flimsy, broad
fan of the airscrew - like the wing, a delicate skeleton covered with
shimmering film - began to turn.  By the time it had made a few
revolutions, it had disappeared completely; and Dragonfly was on her
way.

She moved straight outwards from the Hub, moving slowly along the axis
of Rama.  When she had travelled a hundred metres, Jimmy stopped
pedalling; it was strange to see an obviously aerodynamic vehicle
hanging motionless in midair.  This must be the first time such a thing
had ever happened, except possibly on a very limited scale inside one of
the larger space-stations.

'How does she handle?" Norton called.

'Response good, stability poor.  But I know what the trouble is - no
gravity.  We'll be better off a kilometer lower down." 'Now wait a
minute - is that safe?" By losing altitude, Jimmy would be sacrificing
his main advantage.  As long as he stayed precisely on the axis, he and
Dragonfly - would be completely weightless.  He could hover
effortlessly, or even go to sleep if he wished.  But as soon as he moved
away from the central line around which Rama spun, the pseudo-weight of
centrifugal force would reappear.

And so, unless he could maintain himself at this altitude, he would
continue to lose height - and at the same time, to gain weight.  It
would be an accelerating process, which could end in catastrophe.  The
gravity down on the plain of Rama was twice that in which Dragonfly had
been designed to operate.

Jimmy might be able to make a safe landing; he could certainly never
take off again.

But he had already considered all this, and he answered confidently
enough: 'I can manage a tenth of a gee without any trouble.  And she'll
handle more easily in denser air." In a slow, leisurely spiral,
Dragonfly drifted across the sky, roughly following the line of Stairway
Alpha down towards the plain.  From some angles, the little sky-bike was
almost invisible; Jimmy seemed to be sitting in midair pedalling
furiously.  Sometimes he moved into spurts of up to thirty kilonietres
an hour; then he would coast to a halt, getting the feel of the
controls, before accelerating again.  And he was always very careful to
keep a safe distance from the curving end of Rama.

It was soon obvious that Dragonfly handled much better at lower
altitudes; she no longer rolled around at any MAIDEN FLIGHT angle, but
stabilized so that her wings were parallel to the plain seven kilometres
below.  Jimmy completed several wide orbits, then started to climb
upwards again.  He finally halted a few metres above his waiting
colleagues and realized, a little belatedly, that he was not quite sure
how to land this gossamer craft.

'Shall we throw you a rope?" Norton asked half-seriously.

'No, Skipper - I've got to work this out myself.  I won't have anyone to
help me at the other end." He sat thinking for a while, then started to
ease Dragonfly towards the Hub with short bursts of power.  She quickly
lost momentum between each, as air drag brought her to rest again.  When
he was only five metres away, and the sky-bike was still barely moving,
Jimmy abandoned ship.  He let himself float towards the nearest safety
line in the Hub webwork, grasped it, then swung around in time to catch
the approaching bike with his hands.  The manoeuvre was so neatly
executed that it drew a round of applause.

'For my next act-' Joe Calvert began.

Jimmy was quick to disclaim any credit.

'That was messy,' he said.  'But now I know how to do it.  I'll take a
sticky-bomb on a twenty-metre line; then I'll be able to pull myself in
wherever I want to." 'Give me your wrist, Jinuny,' ordered the Doctor,
'and blow into this bag.

I'll want a blood sample, too.  Did you have any difficulty in
breathing?" 'Only at this altitude.  Hey, what do you want the blood
for?" 'Sugar level; then I can tell how much energy you've used.  We've
got to make sure you carry enough fuel for the mission.  By the way,
what's the endurance record for sky-biking?" 'Two hours twenty-five
minutes three point six seconds.

On the Moon, of course - a two kilometer circuit in the Olympic Dome."
'And you think you can keep it UP for six hours?" 'Easily, since I can
stop for a rest at any time.  Skybiking on the Moon is at least twice as
hard as it is here." 'OK Jimmy - back to the lab.  I'll give you a
Go-No-Go on as I've analysed these samples.  I don't want to as so raise
false hopes - but I think you can make it." A large smile of
satisfaction spread across Jimmy Pak's ivory-bued countenance.  As he
followed Surgeon-Commander Ernst to the airlock, he called back to his
companions: 'Hands off, please I I don't want anyone putting his fist
through the wings." 'I'll see to that, Jimmy,' promised the Commander.

'Dragonfly is off limits to everybody - including myself."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The Voice of Rama

The real magnitude of his adventure did not hit Jimmy Pak until he
reached the coast of the Cylindrical Sea. Until now, he had been over
known territory; barring a catastrophic structural failure, he could
always land and walk back to base in a few hours.

That option no longer existed.  If he came down in the Sea, he would
probably drown, quite unpleasantly, in its poisonous waters.  And even
if he made a safe landing in the southern continent, it might be
impossible to rescue him before Endeavour had to break away from Rama's
sunward orbit.

He was also acutely aware that the foreseeable disasters were the ones
most unlikely to happen.  The totally unknown region over which he was
flying might produce any number of surprises; suppose there were flying
creatures here, who objected to his intrusion?  He would hate to engage
in a dog-fight with anything larger than a pigeon.  A few well-placed
pecks could destroy Dragonfly's aerodynamics.

Yet, if there were no hazards, there would be no achievement - no sense
of adventure.  Millions of men would gladly have traded places with him
now.  He was going not only where no one had ever been before - but
where no one would ever go again.  In all of history, he would be the
only human being to visit the southern regions of Rama.  Whenever he
felt fear brushing against his mind, he could remember that.

He had now grown accustomed to sitting in midair, with the world wrapped
around him.  Because he had dropped two kilometres below the central
axis, he had acquired a definite sense of 'up' and 'down'.  The ground
was only six kilometres below, but the arch of the sky was ten
kilometres overhead.  The 'city' of London was hanging up there near the
zenith; New York, on the other hand, was the right way up, directly
ahead.  .  'Dragonfly,' said Hub Control, 'you're getting a little low.
Twenty-two hundred metres from the axis." 'Thanks,' he replied.  'I'll
gain altitude.  Let me know when I'm back at twenty." This was something
he'd have to watch.  There was a natural tendency to lose height - and
he had no instruments to tell him exactly where he was.  If he got too
far away from the zero-gravity of the axis, he might never be able to
climb back to it.  Fortunately, there was a wide margin for error, and
there was always someone watching his progress through a telescope at
the Hub.

He was now well out over the Sea, pedalling along at a steady twenty
kilometres an hour.  In five minutes, he would be over New York; already
the island looked and round the rather like a ship, sailing for ever
round Cylindrical Sea.

When he reached New York, he flew a circle over it, stopping several
times so that his little TV camera could send back steady,
vibration-free images.  The panorama of buildings, towers, industrial
plants, power stations - or whatever they were - was fascinating but
essentially meaningless.  No matter how long he stared at its
complexity, he was unlikely to learn anything.  The camera would record
far more details than he could possibly assimilate; and one day -
perhaps years hence - some student might find in them the key to Rama's
secrets.

After leaving New York, he crossed the other half of the Sea in only
fifteen minutes.  Though he was not aware of it, he had been flying fast
over water, but as soon as he reached the south coast he unconsciously
relaxed and his speed dropped by several kilometres an hour.  He might
THE VOICE OF RAMA 143 be in wholly alien territory - but at least he was
over land.

As soon as he had crossed the great cliff that formed the Sea's southern
limit- he panned the TV camera completely round the circle of the world.

'Beautifull'said Hub Control."Thiswill keep themapmakers happy.  How are
you feeling?" 'I'm fine - just a little fatigue, but no more than I
expected.  How far do you make me from the Pole?" 'Fifteen point six
kilometres." 'Tell me when I'm at ten; I'll take a rest then.  And make
sure I don't get low again.  I'll start climbing when I'vefive to go."
Twenty minutes later the world was closing in upon him; he had come to
the end of the cylindrical section, and was entering the southern dome.

He had studied it for hours through the telescopes at the other end of
Rama, and had learned its geography by heart.  Even so, that had not
fully prepared him for the spectacle all around him.

In almost every way the southern and northern end s of Rama differed
completely.  Here was no triad of stairways, no series of narrow,
concentric plateaux, no sweeping curve from hub to plain.  Instead,
there was an immense central spike, more than five kilometres long,
extending along the axis.  Six smaller ones, half this size, were
equally spaced around it; the whole assembly looked like a group of
remarkably symmetrical stalactites, hanging from the roof of a cave. Or,
inverting the point of view, the spires of some Cambodian temple, set at
the bottom of a crater ...

Linking these slender, tapering towers, and curving down from them to
merge eventually in the cylindrical plain, were flying buttresses that
1qoked massive enough to bear the weight of a world.  And this, perhaps,
was their function, if they were indeed the elements of some exotic
drive units, as some had suggested.

Lieutenant Pak approached the central spike cautiously, stopped
pedalling while he was still a hundred metres away, and let Dragonfly
drift to rest.  He checked the radiation level, and found only Rama's
very low background.  There might be forces at work here which no human
instruments could detect, but that was another unavoidable risk.

'What can you see?" Hub Control asked anxiously.

'Just Big Horn - it's absolutely smooth - no markings and the point's so
sharp you could use it as a needle.  I'm almost scared to go near it."
He was only half joking.  It seemed incredible that so massive an object
should taper to such a geometrically perfect point.  Jimmy had seen
collections of insects impaled upon pins, and he had no desire for his
own Dragonfly to meet a similar fate.

He pedalled slowly forward until the spike had flared out to several
metres in diameter, then stopped again.  Opening a small container, he
rather gingerly extracted a sphere about as big as a baseball, and
tossed it towards the spike.  As it drifted away, it played out a barely
visible thread.

The sticky-bomb hit the smoothly curving surface and did not rebound.
Jimmy gave the thread an experimental twitch, then a harder tug.  Like a
fisherman hauling in his catch, he slowly wound Dragonfly across to the
tip of the appropriately christened 'Big Horn', until he was able to put
out his hand and make contact with it.

'I suppose you could call this some kind of touchdown,' he reported to
Hub Control.

'It feels like glass - almost frictionless, and slightly warm.  The
sticky-bomb worked fine.  Now I'm trying the mike ...  let's see if the
suction pad holds as well ...  plugging in the leads ...  anything
coming through?" There was a long pause from the Hub; then Control said
disgustedly: 'Not a damn thing, except the usual thermal noises.  Will
you tap it with a piece of metal?  Then at least we'll find if it's
hollow." 'OK.  Now what?"

THE VOICE OF RAMA 145 'We'd like you to fly along the spike, making a
complete scan every half-kilometer, and looking out for anything
unusual.  Then, if you're sure it's safe, you might go across to one of
the Little Horns.  But only if you're certain you can get back to zero
gee without any problems." 'Three kilometres from the axis - that's
slightly above lunar gravity.  Dragonfly was designed for that.  I'll
just have to work harder." 'Jimmy, this is the Captain.  I've got second
thoughts on that.  Judging by your pictures, the smaller spikes are just
the same as the big one.  Get the best coverage of them you can with the
zoom lens.  I don't want you leaving the low-gravity region ...

unless you see something that looks very important.  Then we'll talk it
over." 'OK, Skipper,' said Jimmy, and perhaps there was just a trace of
relief in his voice.

'I'll stay close to Big Horn.  Here we go again." He felt he was
dropping straight downwards into a narrow valley between a group of
incredibly tall and slender mountains.  Big Horn now towered a kilometer
above him, and the six spikes of the Little Horns were looming up all
around.  The complex of buttresses and flying arches which surrounded
the lower slopes was approaching rapidly; he wondered if he could make a
safe landing somewhere down there in that Cyclopean architecture.  He
could no longer land on Big Horn itself, for the gravity on its widening
slopes was now too powerful to be counteracted by the feeble force of
the stickybomb.

As he came even closer to the South Pole, he began to feel more and more
like a sparrow flying beneath the vaulted roof of some great cathedral -
though no cathedral ever built had been even one hundredth the size of
this place.  He wondered if it was indeed a religious shrine, or
something remotely analogous, but quickly dismissed the idea.

Nowhere in Rama had there been any trace of artistic expression;
everything was purely functional.  Perhaps the Ramans felt that they
already knew the ultimate secrets of the universe, and were no longer
haunted by the yearnings and aspirations that drove mankind.

That was a chilling thought, quite alien to Jimmy's usual
not-very-profound philosophy; he felt an urgent need to resume contact,
and reported his situation back to his distant friends.

'Say again, Dragonfly,' replied Hub Control.  'We can't understand you
your transmission is garbled." 'I repeat - I'm near the base of Little
Horn number Six, and am using the sticky-bomb to haul myself in."
'Understand only partially.  Can you hear me?" 'Yes, perfectly.  Repeat,
perfectly." 'Please start counting numbers." 'One, two, three, four..."
'Got part of that.  Give us beacon for fifteen seconds, then go back to
voice." 'Here it is." Jimmy switched on the low-powered beacon which
would locate him anywhere inside Rama, and counted off the seconds. When
he went over to voice again he asked plaintively: 'What's happening? Can
you hear me now?" Presumably Hub didn't, because the controller then
asked for fifteen seconds of TV.  Not until Jimmy had repeated the
question twice did the message get through.

'Glad you can hear us OK, Jimmy.  But there's something very peculiar
happening at your end.  Listen." Over the radio, he heard the familiar
whistle of his own beacon, played back to him.  For a moment it was
perfectly normal; then a weird distortion crept into it.  The
thousand-cycle whistle became modulated by a deep, throbbing pulse so
low that it was almost beneath the threshold of hearing; it was a kind
of basso-profundo flutter in which each individual vibration could be
heard.  And the modulation was itself modulated; it rose and fell, rose
and fell with a period of about five seconds.

Never for a moment did it occur to Jimmy that there was something wrong
with his radio transmitter.  This THE VOICE OF RAMA was from outside;
though what it was, and what it meant, was beyond his imagination.

Hub Control was not much wiser, but at least it had a theory.

'We think you must be in some kind of very in tense field - probably
magnetic - with a frequency of about ten cycles.  It may be strong
enough to be dangerous.  Suggest you get out right away - it may only be
local.  Switch on your beacon again, and we'll play it back to you. Then
you can tell when you're getting clear of the interference." Jimmy
hastily jerked the sticky-bomb loose and abandoned his attempt to land.
He swung Dragonfly round in a wide circle, listening as he did so to the
sound that wavered in his earphones.  After flying only a few metres, he
could tell that its intensity was falling rapidly; as Hub Control had
guessed, it was extremely localized.

He paused for a moment at the last spot where he could hear it, like a
faint throbbing deep in his brain.  So might a primitive savage have
listened in awestruck ignorance to the low humming of a giant power
transformer.  And even the savage might have guessed that the sound he
heard was merely the stray leakage from colossal energies, fully
controlled, but biding their time ...

Whatever this sound meant, Jimmy was glad to be clear of it.  This was
no place, among the overwhelmi architecture of the South Pole, for a
lone man to lis en ng t to the voice of Rama.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Electric Wind

As Jimmy turned homewards, the northern end of Rama seemed incredibly
far away.  Even the three giant stairways were barely visible, as a
faint Y etched on the dome that closed the world.  The band of the
Cylindrical Sea ier, waiting to swallow him was a wide and menacing barr
up if.  like Icarus, his fragile wings should fail. oblems, and But he
had come all this way with no pr though he was feeling slightly tired he
now felt that he had nothing to worry about. He had not even touched his
food or water, and had been too excited to rest.  On the return journey,
he would relax and take it easy.  He was also cheered by the thought
that the homeward trip could be twenty kiloinetres shorter than the
outward one, could make an for as long as he cleared the Sea, he
emergency landing anywhere in the northern continent.  That would be a
nuisance, because he would have a Iong walk - and much worse, would have
to abandon Dragonfly - but it gave him a very comforting safety margin.

He was now gaining altitude, climbing back towards the central spike;
Big Horn's tapering needle still stretched for a kilometer ahead of him,
and sometimes he felt it was the axis on which this whole world turned.

He had almost reached the tip of Big Horn when he became aware of a
curious sensation; a feeling of foreboding, and indeed of physical as
well as psychological discomfort, had come over him.  He suddenly
recalled - and this did nothing at all to help - a phrase he had once
come across: 'Someone is walking over your grave."

0 0 E.  i,"7 7 ELECTRIC WIND 149 At first he shrugged it off, and
continued his steady pedalling.  He certainly had no intention of
reporting anything as tenuous as a vague malaise to Hub Control, but as
it grew steadily worse he was tempted to do so.  It could not possibly
be psychological; if it was, his mind was much more powerful than he
realized.  For he could, quite literally, feel his skin beginning to
crawl ...

Now seriously alarmed, he stopped in midair and began to consider the
situation.  What made it all the more peculiar was the fact that this
depressed heavy feeling was not completely novel; he had known it
before, but could not remember where.

He looked around him.  Nothing had changed.  The great spike of Big Horn
was a few hundred metres above, with the other side of Rama spanning the
sky beyond that.  Eight kilometres below lay the complicated patchwork
of the Southern continent, full of wonders that no other man would ever
see.  In all the utterly alien yet now familiar landscape, he could find
no cause for his discomfort.

Something was tickling the back of his band; for a moment, he thought an
insect had landed there, and brushed it away without looking.  He bad
only halfcompleted the swift motion when he realized what he was doing
and checked himself, feeling slightly foolish.  Of course, no one had
ever seen an insect in Rama ...

He lifted his hand, and stared at it, mildly puzzled because the
tickling sensation was still there.  It was then that he noticed that
every individual hair was standing straight upright.  All the way up his
forearm it was the same and so it was with his head, when he checked
with an exploring hand.

So that was the trouble.  He was in a tremendously powerful electric
field; the oppressed, heavy sensation he had felt was that which
sometimes precedes a thunderstorm on Earth.

The sudden realization of his predicament brought Jimmy very near to
panic.

Never before in his life had he been in real physical danger.  Like all
spacemen, he had known moments of frustration with bulky equipment, and
times when, owing to mistakes or inexperience, he had wrongly believed
he was in a perilous situation.  But none of these episodes had lasted
more than a few minutes, and usually he was able to laugh at them almost
at once.

This time there was no quick way out.  He felt naked and alone in a
suddenly hostile sky, surrounded by titanic forces which might discharge
their furies at any moment.  Dragonfly - already fragile enough - now
seemed more insubstantial than the finest gossamer.  The first
detonation of the gathering storm would blast her to fragments.

'Hub Control,' he said urgently.  'There's a static charge building up
around me- I think there's going to be a thunderstorm at any moment." He
had barely finished speaking when there was a flicker of light behind
him; by the time he had counted ten, the first crackling rumble arrived.
Three kilometres that put it back around the Little Horns.  He looked
towards them and saw that every one of the six needles seemed to be on
fire.  Brush discharges, hundreds of metres long, were dancing from
their points, as if they were giant lightning conductors.

What was happening back there could take place on an even larger scale
near the tapering spike of Big Horn.  His best move would be to get as
far as possible from this A dangerous structure, and to seek clear air.
He starteil to pedal again, accelerating as swiftly as he could without
putting too great a strain on Dragonfly.  At the same time he began to
lose altitude; even though this would mean entering the region of higher
gravity, he was now prepared to take such a risk.  Eight kilometres was
much too far from the ground for his peace of mind.

The ominous black spike of Big Horn was still free of visible
discharges, but he did not doubt that tremendous ELECTRIC WIND 151
potentials were building up there.  From time to time the thunder still
reverberated behind him, rolling round and round the circumference of
the world.

It suddenly occurred to Jimmy how strange it was to have such a storm in
a perfectly clear sky; then he realized that this was not a
meteorological phenomenon at all.  In fact, it might be only a trivial
leakage of energy from some hidden source, deep in the southern cap of
Rama.  But why now?  And, even more important - what next?

He was now well past the tip of Big Horn, and hoped that he would soon
be beyond the range of any lightning discharges.  But now he had another
problem; the air was becoming turbulent, and he had difficulty in
controlling Dragonfly.

A wind seemed to have sprung up from nowhere, and if conditions became
much worse the bike's fragile skeleton would be endangered.  He pedalled
grimly on, trying to smooth out the buffeting by variaBec use tions in
power and movements of his body.  a Dragonfly was almost an extension of
himself, he was partly successful; but he did not like the faint creaks
of protest that came from the main spar, nor the way in which the wings
twisted with every gust.

And there was something else that worried him - a faint rushing sound,
steadily growing in strength, that seemed to come from the direction of
Big Horn.

It sounded like gas escaping from a valve under pressure, and he
wondered if it had anything to do with the turbulence which he was
battling.  Whatever its cause, it gave him yet further grounds for
disquiet.

From time to time he reported these phenomena, rather briefly and
breathlessly, to Hub Control.  No one there could give him any advice,
or even suggest what might be happening; but it was reassuring to hear
the voices of his friends, even though he was now beginning to fear that
he would never see them again.

The turbulence was still increasing.  It almost felt as if he was
entering a jet stream - which he had once done, in search of 'a record,
while flying a high-altitude glider on Earth.  But what could possibly
create a jet stream inside Rama?

He had asked himself the right question; as soon as he had formulated
it, he knew the answer.

The sound he had heard was the electric wind carrying away the
tremendous ionization that must be building up around Big Horn.  Charged
air was spraying out along the axis of Rama, and more air was flowing
into the lowpressure region behind.  He looked back at that gigantic and
now doubly threatening needle, trying to visualize the boundaries of the
gale that was blowing from it.  Perhaps the best tactic would be to fly
by ear, getting as far as possible away from the ominous hissing.

Rama spared him the necessity of choice.  A sheet of flame burst out
behind him, filling the sky.  He had time r to see it split into six
ribbons of fire, stretching from the tip of Big Horn to each of the
Little Horns.  Then the concussion reached him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Icarus

Jimmy Pak had barely time to radio: 'The wing's buckling - I'm going to
crash I'm going to crash!" when Dragonfly started to fold up gracefully
around him.

The left wing snapped cleanly in the middle, and the outer section
drifted away like a gently falling leaf.  The right wing put up a more
complicated performance.  It twisied round at the root, and angled back
so sharply that its tip became entangled in the tail.  Jimmy felt that
he was sitting in a broken kite, slowly falling down the sky.

Yet he was not quite helpless; the airscrew still worked, and while he
had'power there was still some measure of control.  He had perhaps five
minutes in which to use it.

Was there any hope of reaching the Sea?  No - it was much too far away.
Then he remembered that he was st 11 thinking in terrestrial terms;
though he was a good swimmer, it would be hours before he could possibly
be rescued, and in that time the poisonous waters would undoubtedly have
killed him.  His only hope was to come down on land; the problem of the
sheer southern cliff he would think about later - if there was any
'later'.  .  He was falling very slowly, here in this tenth-of-a-gravity
zone, but would soon start to accelerate as he got further away from the
axis.  However, air-drag would complicate the situation, and would
prevent him from buildIng up too swift a rate of descent.  Dragonfly,
even without power, would act as a crude parachute. The few kilogrammes
of thrust he could still provide might make all the difference between
life and death; that was his only hope.

Hub had stopped talking; his friends could see exactly what was
happening to him and knew that there was no way their words could help.
Jimmy was now doing the most skilful flying of his life; it was too bad,
he thought with grim humour, that his audience was so small, and could
not appreciate the finer details of his performance.

He was going down in a wide spiral, and as long as its pitch remained
fairly flat his chances of survival were good.  His pedalling was
helping to keep Dragonfly airborne, though he was afraid to exert
maximum power in case the broken wings came completely adrift.  And
every time he swung southwards, he could appreciate the fantastic
display that Rama had kindly arranged for his benefit.

The streamers of lightning still played from the tip of e Big Horn down
to the lesser peaks beneath, but now th whole pattern was rotating.

The six-pronged crown of fire was turning against the spin of Rama,
making one revo- li lution every few seconds.  Jimmy felt that he was
watching a giant electric motor in operation, and perhaps that was not
hopelessly far from the truth.

He was halfway down to the plain, still orbiting in a flat spiral, when
the firework display suddenly ceased.  He could feel the tension drain
from the sky and knew, without looking, that the hairs on his arms were
no longer straining upright.  There was nothing to distract or hinder
him now, during the last few minutes of his fight for life.

Now that he could be certain of the general area in which he must land,
he started to study it intently.  Much of this region was a checkerboard
of totally conflicting environments, as if a mad landscape gardener had
been given a free hand and told to exercise his imagination to the
utmost.  The squares of the checkerboard were almost a kilometer on a
side, and though most of them were flat he could not be sure if they
were solid, their colours and textures varied so greatly.  He decided to
wait until the ICARUS last possible minute before making a decision - if
indeed he had any choice.

When there were a few hundred metres to go, he made a last call to the
Hub.

'I've still got some control - will be down in half a minute - will call
you then." That was optimistic, and everyone knew it.  But he refused to
say goodbye; he wanted his comrades to know that he had gone down
fighting, and without fear.

Indeed, he felt very little fear, and this surprised him, for he had
never thought of himself as a particularly brave man.  It was almost as
if he was watching the struggles of a complete stranger, and was not
himself'personally involved - Rather, he was studying an interesting
problem in aerodynamics, and changing various parameters to see what
would happen.  Almost the only emotion he felt was a certain remote
regret for lost opportunities - of which the most important was the
forthcoming Lunar Olympics.  One future at least was decided; Dragonfly
would never show her paces on the Moon.

A hundred metres to go; his ground speed seemed acceptable, but how fast
was he falling?  And here was one piece of luck - the teirain was
completely flat.

He would put forth all his strength in a final burst of power, starting
- NOW I The right wing, having done its duty, finally tore off at the
roots.

Dragonfly started to roll over, and he tried to correct by throwing the
weight of his body against the spin.  He was looking directly at the
curving arch of land.  scape sixteen kilometres away when he hit.

It seemed altogether unfair and unreasonable that the sky should be so
hard.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

First Contact

When Jimmy Pak returned to consciousness, the first thing he became
aware of was a splitting headache.  He almost welcomed it; at least it
proved that he was stil I alive.

Then he tried to move, and at once a wide selection Of aches and pains
brought themselves to his attention.  But as far as he could tell,
nothing seemed to be broken.

After that, he risked opening his eyes, but closed them at once when he
found himself staring straight into the band of light along the ceiling
of the world.  As a cure for headache, that view was not recommended.

He was still lying there, regaining his strength and wondering how soon
it would be safe to open his eyes, when there was a sudden crunching
noise from close at hand.  Turning his head very slowly towards the
source of the sound, he risked a look - and almost lost consciousness
again.

Not more than five metres away, a large crab-like creature was
apparently dining on the wreckage of poor Dragonfly.  When Jimmy
recovered his wits he rolled slowly and quietly away from the monster,
expecting at every moment to be seized by its claws, when it discow ered
that more appetizing fare was available.  However -, it J took not the
slightest notice of him; when he had increased their mutual separation
to ten metres, he cautiously propped himself up in a sitting position.

From this greater distance, the thing did not appear quite so
formidable.  It had a low, flat body about two e FIRST CONTACT 157
Inetres long and one wide, supported on six triple-jointed legs' Jimmy
saw that he was 'Mistaken in assuming that it had been eating Dragonfly;
in fact, he could not we any sip of a mouth.  The creature was actually
doing a neat job of demolition, using scissorlike claws to chop the
skybike into small pieces.  A whole row of manipulators, n which looked
u cannily like tiny human hands, then transferred the fragments to a
steadily growing pile on the animal's back.

But was it an animal?  Though that had been Jimmy's first reaction, now
he had second thoughts.  There was a purposefulness about its behaviour
which suggested fairly high intelligence; he could see no reason why any
creature of pure instincts should carefully collect the scattered pieces
of his skybike - unless, perhaps, it was gathering material for a nest.

Keeping a wary eye on the crab, which still ignored him Completely,
Jimmy struggled to his feet.  A few wavering steps demonstrated that he
could still walk, though he was not sure if he could outdistance those
six legsThen he switched on his radio, never doubting that it would be
operating.  A crash that he could survive would not even have been
noticed by its solid-state electronics.

'Hub Control,'he said softly.  'Can you receive me?" 'Thank God!  Are
you OKV 'Just a bit shaken.  Take a look at this."

He turned his camera towards the crab, just in time to record the final
demolition of Dragonfly's wing.

'What the devil is it - and why is it chewing up your bike?" 'Wish I
knew.  It's finished with Dragonfly.  I'm going to back away, in case it
wants to start on me." Jimmy Slowly retreated, never taking his eyes off
the crab.

It was now moving round and round in a steadily widening spiral,
apparently searching for fragments it might have overlooked, and so
Jimmy was able to get an overall view of it for the first time.

Now that the initial shock had worn off, he could ,,Z appreciate that it
was quite a handsome beast.  The name .crab' which he had automatically
given it was perhaps a little misleading; if it had not been so
impossibly large, he might have called it a beetle.  Its carapace had a
beautiful metallic sheen; in fact, he would almost have been prepared to
swear that it was metal.

That was an interesting idea.  Could it be a robot, and not an animal?
He stared at the crab intently with this tboughE in mind, analysing all
the details of its anatomy.  Where it should have had a mouth was a
collection of manipulators that reminded Jimmy strongly of the
multipurpose knives that are the delight of all red-blooded boys; there
were pinchers, probes, rasps and even something that looked like a
drill.  But none of this was decisive.  On Earth, the insect world had
matched all these tools, and many more.  The animal-or-robot question
remained in perfect balance in his mind.

The eyes, which might have settled the matter, left it even more
ambiguous.

They were so deeply recessed in protective hoods that it was impossible
to tell whether their lenses were made of crystal or jelly.  They were
quite expressionless, and of a startlingly vivid blue.  Though they had
been directed towards Jimmy several times, they had never shown the
slightest flicker of interest.  In his perhaps biased opinion, that
decided the level of the creature's intelligence.  An entity - robot or
animal which could ignore a human being could not be verY bright.

It had now stopped its circling, and stood still for a few seconds, as
if listening to some inaudible message.  Then it set off, with a curious
rolling gait, in the general direction of the Sea.  It moved in a
perfectly straight line at a steady four or five kilometres an hour, and
had already travelled a couple of hundred metres before Jimmy's stiH
slightly-shocked mind registered the fact that the last sad relics of
his beloved Dragonfly were being carried away from him.  He set off in a
hot and indignant pursuit.

His action was not wholly illogical.  The crab was headFIRST CONTACTing
towards the Sea - and if any rescue was possible, it could only be from
this direction.  Moreover, he wanted to discover what the creature would
do with its trophy; that should reveal something about its motivation
and intelligence.

Because he was still bruised and stiff, it took Jimmy several minutes to
catch up with the purposefully-moving crab.  When he had done so, he
followed it at a respectful a distance, until he felt sure that it did
not resent his presence.  It was then that he noticed his water-flask
and emergency ration pack among the debris of Dragonfly, and instantly
felt both hungry and thirsty.

There, scuttling away from him at a remorseless five kilometres an hour,
was the only food and drink in all this half of the world.  Whatever the
risk, he had to get hold of it.

He cautiously closed in on the crab, approaching from right rear.  While
he kept station with it, he studied the complicated rhythm of its legs,
until he could anticipate where they would be at any moment.  When he
was ready, he muttered a quick 'Excuse me,' and shot swiftly in to grab
his property.  Jimmy had never dreamed that he would one day have to
exercise the skills of a pickpocket, and was delighted with his success.
He was out again in less than a second, and the crab never slackened its
steady pace.

He dropped back a dozen Inetres, moistened his lips from the flask, and
started to chew a bar of meat concentrate.  The little victory made him
feel much happier; now he could even risk thinking about his sombre
future.

While there was life, there was hope; yet he could imagine no way in
which he could possibly be rescued.  Even if his colleagues crossed the
Sea, how could he reach them, half a kilometer below?  'We'll find a way
down somehow,' Hub Control had promised.  'That cliff can't go right
round the world, without a break anywhere." He had been tempted to
answer 'Why not?", but had thought better of it.

16o One of the strangest things about walking inside Rama was that you
could always see your destination.  Here, the curve of the world did not
hide - it revealed.  For some time Jimmy had been aware of the crab's
objective; up there in the land which seemed to rise before him was a
half-kilometer-wide pit.  It was one of three in the southern continent;
from the Hub, it had been impossible to see how deep they were.  All had
been named after prominent lunar craters, and he was approaching
Copernicus.  The name was hardly appropriate, for there were no
surrounding hills and no central peaks- This Copernicus Was it or well,
with perfectly vertical sides.  merely a deep sha When he came close
enough to look into it, Jimmy was able to see a pool of ominous,
leaden-green water at least ould put it just about level half a below.
This w with the Sea, and he wondered if they were connected.  , Winding
down the interior of the well was a spiral ramp, completely recessed
into the sheer wall, so that the effect was rather like that of rifling
in an immense gunbarrel.  There seemed to be a remarkable number of
turns; not until Jimmy had traced them for several revolutions, getting
more and more confused in the process, p but three, did he realize that
there was not one ram totally independent and 12o degrees apart.  In any
other background than Rama, the whole concept would have been an
impressive architectural tour deforce.

The three ramps led straight down into the pool and disappeared beneath
its opaque surface.  Near the waterline Jimmy could see a group of black
tunnels or caves; they looked rather sinister, and he wondered if they
were inhabited.

Perhaps the Rarnans were amphibious ...

As the crab approached the edge of the well, Jimmy assumed that it was
going to descend one of the ramps - 11, perhaps taking the wreckage of
Dragonfly to some entity who would be able to evaluate it.  Instead, the
creature walked straight to the brink, extended almost half its body
over the gulf without any sign of hesitation, though an error of a few
ccntimetres would have been disastrous FIRST CONTACT 16i - and gave a
brisk shrug.  The fragments of Dragonfly went fluttering down into the
depths; there were tears in Jimmy's eyes as he watched them go.  So
much, he thought bitterly, for this creature's intelligence.

Having disposed of the garbage, the crab swung around and started to
walk towards Jimmy, standing only about ten metres away.  Am I going to
get the same treatment?  he wondered.  He hoped the camera was not too
unsteady as he showed Hub Control the rapidly approaching monster. 'What
do you advise?" he whispered anxiously, without much hope that he would
get a useful answer.  It was some small consolation to realize that he
was making history, and his mind raced through the approved patterns for
such a meeting.  Until now, all of these had been purely theoretical. He
would be the first man to check them in practice.

'Don't run until you're sure it's hostile', Hub Control whispered back
at him.  Run where?  Jimmy asked himself.  He thought he could
out-distance the thing in a hundred metre sprint, but had a sick
certainty that it could wear him down over the long haul.

Slowly, Jimmy held up his outstretched hands.  Men had been arguing for
two hundred years about this gesture; would every creature, everywhere
in the universe, interpret this as 'See - no weapons?" But no one could
think of anything better.

The crab showed no reaction whatsoever, nor did it slacken its pace.

Ignoring Jimmy completely, it walked straight past him and headed
purposefully into the south.  Feeling extremely foolish, the acting
representative of Homo sapiens watched his First Contact stride away
across the Raman plain, totally indifferent to his presence.

He had seldom been so humiliated in his life.  Then Jimmy's sense of
humour came to his rescue.  After all, it was no great matter to have
been ignored by an animated garbage truck.  It would have been worse if
it had greeted him as a long-lost brother ...

16s He walked back to the rim of Copernicus, and stared down into its
opaque waters.  For the first time, he noticed that vague shapes - some
of them quite large - were moving slowly back and forth beneath the
surface.  Presently one of them headed towards the nearest spiral ramp,
and something that looked like a multi-legged tank started on the long
ascent.  At the rate it was going, Jimmy decided, it would take almost
an hour to get here; if it was a threat, it was a very slow-moving one.

Then he noticed a flicker of much more rapid movement, near those
cave-like openings down by the waterline.  Something was travelling very
swiftly along the ramp, but he could not focus clearly upon it, or
discern any definite shape.  It was as if he was looking at a small
whirlwind or'dust-devil', about the size of a man ...

He blinked and shook his head, keeping his eyes closed for several
seconds.

When he opened them again, the apparition was gone.

Perhaps the impact had shaken him up more than he had realized; this was
the first time he had ever suffered from visual hallucinations.  He
would not mention it to Hub Control.

Nor would he bother to explore those ramps, as he had half-thought of
doing.

It would obviously be a waste of energy.

The spinning phantom he had merely imagined seeing had nothing to do
with his decision.

Nothing at all; for, of course, Jimmy did not believe in ghosts.

CHAPTER THIRTY

The Flower

Jimmy's exertions had made him thirsty, and he was acutely conscious of
the fact that in all this land there was no water that a man could
drink.  With the contents of his flask, he could probably survive a week
- but for a wh t purpose?  The best brains of Earth would soon be
focused on his problem; doubtless Commander Norton would be bombarded
with suggestions But he could imagine no way in which he could lower
himself down the face of that halfkilometre Cliff.  Even it he had a
long enough rope, there was nothing to which he could attach it.

Nevertheless, it was foolish - and unmanly - to give up without a
struggle.

Any help would have to come from the Sea, and while he was marching
towards it he could carry on with his job as if nothing had happened. No
one else would ever observe and photograph the varied terrain through
which he must pass, and that would guarantee a posthumous immortality.
Though he would have Preferred many other honours, that was better than
nothing.

He was only three kilometres from the Sea as poor Dragonfly could have
flown, but it seemed unlikely that he could reach it in a straight line;
some of the terrain ahead of him might prove too great an obstacle. That
was no problem, however, as there were plenty of alternative routes.
Jimmy could see them all spread out on the great curving map that swept
up and away from him on either side.

He had plenty of time; he would start with the most interesting scenery,
even if it took him off his direct route.  About a kilometer away
towards the right was a square that glittered like cut glass - or a
gigantic display of jewellery.

It was probably this thought that triggered Jimmy's footsteps.  Even a
doomed man might reasonably be expected to take some slight interest in
a few thousand square metres of gems.

He was not particularly disappointed when they turned out to be quartz
crystals, millions of them, set in a bed of sand.  The adjacent square
of the checkerboard was rather more interesting, being covered with an
apparently random pattern of hollow metal columns, set very close
together and ranging in height from less than one to more than five
metres.  It was completely impassable; only a tank could have crashed
through that forest of tubes.

Jimmy walked between the crystals and the columns until he came to the
first crossroads.  The square on the right was a huge rug or tapestry
made of woven wire; he tried to prise a strand loose, but was unable to
break it.

On the left was a tessellation of hexagonal tiles, so smoothly inlaid
that there were no visible joints between them.  It would have appeared
a continuous surface, had the tiles not been coloured all the hues of
the rainbow.  Jimmy spent many minutes trying to find two adjacent tiles
of the same colour, to see if he could then istinguish their boundaries,
but he could not find a single example of such coincidence.

As he did a slow pan right around the crossroads, he said plaintively to
Hub Control: 'What do you think this is?  I feel I'm trapped in a giant
jigsaw puzzle.

Or is this the Raman Art Gallery?" 'We're as baffled as you, Jimmy.  But
there's never been any sign that the Ramans go in for art.  Let's wait
until we have some more examples before we jump to any conclusions." The
two examples he found at the next crossroads were not much help.  One
was completely blank - a smooth, neutral grey, hard but slippery to the
touch.  The other was a soft sponge, perforated with billions upon
billions of tiny holes.  He tested it with his foot, and the whole
surface undulated sickeningly beneath him like a barely stabilized
quicksand.

At the next cross-roads he encountered something strikingly like a
ploughed field - except that the furrows were a uniform metre in depth,
and the material of which they were made had the texture of a file or
rasp.  But he paid little attention to this, because the square adjacent
to it was the most thoughtprovoking of all that he had so far met.  At
last there was something that he could understand; and it was more than
a little disturbing.

The entire square was surrounded by a fence, so conventional that he
would not have looked at it twice had he seen it on Earth.  There were
posts apparently of metal - five metres apart, with six strands of wire
strung taut between them.

Beyond this fence was a second, identical one - and beyond that, a
third.

It was another typical example of Raman redundancy; whatever was penned
inside this enclosure would have no chance of breaking out.  There was
no entrance - no gates that could be swung open to drive in the beast,
or beasts, that were presumably kept here.  Instead, there was a single
hole, like a smaller version of Copernicus, in the centre of the square.

Even in different circumstances, Jimmy would probably not have
hesitated, but now he had nothing to lose.  He quickly scaled all three
fences, walked over to the hole, and peered into it.

Unlike Copernicus, this well was only fifty metres deep.  There were
three tunnel exits at the bottom, each of which looked large enough to
accommodate an elephant.  And that was all.

After staring for some time, Jimmy decided that the only thing that made
sense about the arrangement was for the floor down there to be an
elevator.  But what it elevated he was never likely to know; he could
only guess that it was quite large, and possibly quite dangerous.

During the next few hours, he walked more than ten kilometres along the
edge of the Sea, and the checkerboard squares had begun to blur together
in his memory.  He had seen some that were totally enclosed in tent-like
structures of wire mesh, as if they were giant bird-cages.  There were
others which seemed to be pools of congealed liquid, full of
swirl-patterns; however, when he tested them gingerly, they were quite
solid.  And there was one so utterly black that he could not even see it
clearly; only the sense of touch told him that anything was there.

Yet now there was a subtle modulation into something he could
understand.

Ranging one after the other towards the south was a series of - no other
word would do fields.  He might have been walking past an experimental
farm on Earth; each square was a smooth expanse had ever seen in of
carefully levelled earth, the first he the metallic landscapes of Rama.

The great fields were virgin, lifeless - waiting for crops that had
never been planted.  Jimmy wondered what their purpose could be, since
it was incredible that creaL L.  tures as advanced as the Ramans would
engage in any form of agriculture; even on Earth, farming was no more
than a popular hobby and a source of exotic luxury foods.  But he could
swear that these were potential farms, immaculately prepared.  He had
never seen earth that looked so clean; each square was covered with a
great sheet of tough, transparent plastic.  He tried to cut through it
to obtain a sample, but his knife would barely scratch the surface.

Further inland were other fields, and on many of them were complicated
constructions of rods and wires, presumably intended for the support of
climbing plants.

ees in They looked very bleak and desolate, like leafless tr the depths
of winter.  The winter they had known must have been long and terrible
indeed, and these few weeks of light and warmth might be only a brief
interlude before it came again.

Jimmy never knew what made him stop and look more closely into the metal
maze to the south.  Unconsciously, his mind must have been checking
every detail around him; it had noticed, in this fantastically alien
landscape, something even more anomalous.

About a quarter of a kilometer away, in the middle of a trellis of wires
and rods, glowed a single speck of colour.  It was so small and
inconspicuous that it was almost at the limit of visibility; on Earth,
no one would have looked at it twice.  Yet undoubtedly one of the
reasons he had noticed it now was because it reminded him of Earth ...

He did not report to Hub Control until he was sure that there was no
mistake, and that wishful thinking had not deluded him.  Not until he
was only a few metres away could he be completely sure that life as he
knew it had intruded into the sterile, aseptic world of Rama.  For
blooming here in lonely splendour at the edge of the southern continent
was a flower.

As he came closer, it was obvious to Jimmy that something had gone
wrong.

There was a hole in the sheathing that, presumably, protected this layer
of earth from conlamination by unwanted life-forms.  Through this break
extended a green stem, about as thick as a man's little finger, which
twined its way up through the trellis-work.  A metre from the ground it
burst into an efflorescence of bluish leaves, shaped more like feathers
than the foliage of any plant known to Jimmy.  The stem ended, at
eyelevel, in what he had first taken to be a single flower.  Now he saw,
with no surprise at all, that it was actually three flowers tightly
packed together.

The petals were brightly coloured tubes about five centimetres long;
there were at least fifty in each bloom, violets and and they glittered
with such metallic blues, ergreens, that they seemed more like the wings
of a butt fly than anything in the vegetable kingdom.  Jimmy knew
practically nothing about botany, but he was puzzled to see no trace of
any structures resembling petals or stamens.  He wondered if the
likeness to terrestrial flowers might be a pure coincidence; perhaps
this was something more akin to a coral polyp.  In either case, it would
seem to imply the existence of small, airborne creatures to serve either
as fertilizing agents - or as food.

It did not really matter.  Whatever the scientific definition, to Jimmy
this was a flower.  The strange miracle, the un-Raman-like accident of
its existence here reminded him of all that he would never see again;
and he was determined to possess it.

That would not be easy.  It was more than ten metres away, separated
from him by a lattice-work made of thin rods.  They formed a cubic
pattern, repeated over and over again, less than forty centimetres on
either side.  Jimmy would not have been flying sky-bikes unless he had
been slim and wiry, so he knew he could crawl through the interstices of
the grid.  But getting out again might be quite a different matter; it
would certainly be impossible for him to turn around, so he would have
to retreat backwards.

Hub Control was delighted with his discovery, when he had described the
flower and scanned it from every available angle.  There was no
objection when he said: 'I'm going after it." Nor did he expect there to
be; his life was now his own, to do with as he pleased.

He stripped off all his clothes, grasped the smooth metal rods, and
started to wriggle into the framework.  It was a tight fit; he felt like
a prisoner escaping through the bars of his cell.  When he had inserted
himself completely into the lattice he tried backing out again, just to
see if there were any problems.  It was considerably more difficult,
since he now had to use his outstretched arms for pushing instead of
pulling, but he saw no reason why he should get helplessly trapped.

Jimmy was a man of action and impulse, not of introspection.  As he
squirmed uncomfortably along the narrow corridor of rods, he wasted no
time asking himself just why he was performing so quixotic a feat.  He
had never been interested in flowers in his whole life, yet now he was
gambling his last energies to collect one.

It was true that this specimen was unique, and of enormous scientific
value.

But he really wanted it because it was his last link with the world of
life and the planet of his birth.

Yet when the flower was in his grasp, he had sudden qualms.  Perhaps it
was the only flower that grew in the whole of Rama; was he justified in
picking it?

If he needed any excuse, he could console himself with the thought that
the Ramans themselves had not included it in their plans.  It was
obviously a freak, growing ages too late - or too soon.  But he did not
really require an excuse, and his hesitation was only momentary.  He
reached out, grasped the stem, and gave a sharp jerk.

The flower came away easily enough; he also collected two of the leaves,
then started to back slowly through the lattice.  Now that he had only
one free hand, progress was extremely difficult, even painful, and he
soon had to pause to regain his breath.  It was then that he noticed
that the feathery leaves were closing, and the headless stem was slowly
unwinding itself from its supports.

As he watched with a mixture of fascination and dismay he saw that the
whole plant was steadily retreating into'the ground, like a mortally
injured snake crawling back into its hole.

I've murdered something beautiful, Jimmy told himself.  But then Rama
had killed him.  He was only collecting what was his rightful due.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Terminal Feloci

Commander Norton had never yet lost a man, and he had no intention of
starting now.  Even before Jimmy had set off for the South Pole, he had
been considering ways of rescuing him in the event of accident; the
problem, however, had turned out to be so difficult that he had found no
answer.  All that he had managed to do was to eliminate every obvious
solution.

How does one climb a half-kilometer vertical cliff; even in reduced
gravity?

With the right equipment - and training - it would be easy enough.  But
there were no piton-guns aboard Endeavour, and no one could think of any
other practical way of driving the necessary hundreds of spikes into
that hard, mirror surface.

He had glanced briefly at more exotic solutions, some frankly crazy.

Perhaps a simp, fitted with suction pads, could make the ascent.  But
even if this scheme was practical, how long would it take to manufacture
and test such equipment - and to train a simp to use it?  He doubted if
a man would have the necessary strength to perform the feat.

Then there was more advanced technology.  The EVA propulsion units were
tempting, but their thrust was too small, since they were designed for
zero-gee operation.  They could not possibly lift the weight of a man,
even against Rama's modest gravity.

Could an EVA thrust be sent up on automatic control, carrying only a
reqcue line?  He had tried out this idea on Sergeant Myron, who had
promptly shot it down in TERMINAL VELOCITY 17, flames.  There were, the
engineer pointed out, severe stability problems; they might be solved,
but it would take a long time - much longer than they could afford.

What about balloons?  There seemed a faint possibility here, if they
could devise an envelope and a sufficiently compact source of heat. This
was the only approach that Norton had not dismissed, when the problem
suddenly ceased to be one of theory, and became a matter of life and
death, dominating the news in all the inhabited worlds.

While Jimmy was making his trek along the edge of the Sea, half the
crackpots in the solar system were trying to save him.  At Fleet
Headquarters, all the suggestions were considered, and about one in a
thousand was forwarded to Endeavour.  Dr. Carlisle Perera's arrived
twice once via the Survey's own network, and once by PLANETCOM, RAMA
PRIORITY. It had taken the scientist approximately five minutes of
thought and one millisecond of computer time.

At first, Commander Norton thought it was a joke in very poor taste.
Then he saw the sender's name and the attached calculations, and did a
quick doubletake.

He handed the message to Karl Mercer.

'What do you think of this?" he asked, in as non-committal a tone of
voice as he could manage.

Karl read it swiftly, then said, 'Well I'm damned I He's right, of
course." 'Are you sure?, 'He was right about the storm, wasn't he?  We
should have thought of this; it makes me feel a fool." 'You have
company.  The next problem is - how do we break it to Jimmy?" 'I don't
think we should ...  until the last possible minute.  That's how I'd
prefer it, if I was in his place.  just tell him we're on the way."
Though he could look across the full width of the Cylindrical Sea, and
knew the general direction from which Resolution was coming, Jimmy did
not spot the tiny craft until it had already passed New York.

It seemed incredible that it could carry six men - and whatever
equipment they had brought to rescue him.

When it was only a kilometer away, he recognized Commander Norton, and
started waving.  A little later the skipper spotted him, and waved back.

'Glad to see you're in good shape, Jimmy,' he radioed.  'I promised we
wouldn't leave you behind.  Now do you believe me?" Not quite, Jimmy
thought; until this moment he had still wondered if this was all a
kindly plot to keep up his morale.  But the Commander would not have
crossed the Sea just to say goodbye; be must have worked out some thing.

'I'll believe you, Skipper,' he said, 'when I'm down there on the deck.
Now will you tell me how I'm going to make it?" Resolution was now
slowing down, a hundred metres from the base of the cliff; as far as
Jimmy could tell, she carried no unusual equipment - though he was not
sure what he had expected to see.

'Sorry about that, Jimmy - but we didn't want you to have too many
things to worry about."

Now that sounded ominous; what the devil did he mean?

Resolution came to a halt, fifty metres out and five hundred below;
Jimmy had almost a bird's-eye view of the Commander as he spoke into his
microphone.

'This is it, Jimmy.  You'll be perfectly safe, but it will require
nerve.  We know you've got plenty of that.

You're going to jump."

'Five hundred metres P 'Yes, but at only half a gee."

'So - have you ever fallen two hundred and fifty on Earth?" 'Shut up, or
I'll cancel your next leave.  You should have worked this out for
yourself ...

it's just a question of terminal velocity.  In this atmosphere, you
can't reach more than ninety kilometres an hour whether you fall two
hundred or two thousand metres.  Ninety's a little high for comfort, but
we can trim it some more.  This is what you'll have to do, so listen
carefully..." 'I will,'said Jimmy.  'It had better be good." He did not
interrupt the Commander again, and made no comment when Norton had
finished.

Yes, it made sense, and was so absurdly simple that it would take genius
to think of it.  -And, perhaps, someone who did not expect to do it
himself ...

Jimmy had never tried high-diving, or made a delayed parachute drop,
which would have given him some psychological preparation for this feat.
One could tell a man that it was perfectly safe to walk a plank across
an abyss yet even if the structural calculations were impeccable, he
might still be unable to do it.  Now Jimmy understood why the Commander
had been so evasive about the details of the rescue.  He had been given
no time to brood, or to think of objections.

'I don't want to hurry you,' said Norton's persuasive voice from half a
kilometer below.

'But the sooner the better." Jimmy looked at his precious souvenir, the
only flower in Rama.  He wrapped it very carefully in his grimy
handkerchief, knotted the fabric, and tossed it over the edge of the
cliff.

It fluttered down with reassuring slowness, but it also took a very long
time getting smaller, and smaller, and smaller, until he could no longer
see it.  But then Resolution surged forward, and he knew that it had
been spotted.

'Beautifull' exclaimed the Commander enthusiastically.  'I'm sure
they'll name it after you.

OK - we're waiting...

Jimmy stripped off his shirt - the only upper garment anyone ever wore
in this now tropical climate - and stretched it thoughtfully.  Several
times on his trek he had almost discarded it; now it might help to save
his life.

For the last time, he looked back at the hollow world he alone had
explored, and the distant, ominous pinnacles of the Big and Little
Horns.  Then, grasping the shirt firmly with his right hand, he took a
running jump as far out over the cliff as he could.

Now there was no particular hurry; he had a full twenty seconds in which
to enjoy the experience.  But he did not waste any time, as the wind
strengthened around him and Resolution slowly expanded in his field of
view.  Holding his shirt with both hands, he stretched his arms above
his head, so that the rushing air filled the garment and blew it into a
hollow tube.

As a parachute, it was hardly a success; the few kilometres an hour it
subtracted from his speed was useful, but not vital.  It was doing a
much more important job keeping his body vertical, so that he would
arrow straight into the sea.

He still had the impression that he was not moving at all, but that the
water below was rushing up towards him.  Once he had committed himself,
he had no sense of fear; indeed, he felt a certain indignation against
the skipper for keeping him in the dark.  Did he really think that he
would be scared to jump, if he had to brood over it too long?

At the very last moment, he let go of his shirt, took a deep breath, and
grabbed his mouth and nose with his hands.  As he had been instructed,
he stiffened his body into a rigid bar, and locked his feet together. He
would enter the water as cleanly as a falling spear ...

'It will be just the same,' the Commander had promised, 'as stepping off
a diving board on Earth.  Nothing to it - if you make a good entry."
'And if I don't?" he had asked.

'Then you'll have to go back and try again." Something slapped him
across the feet - hard, but not viciously.  A million slimy hands were
tearing at his body; there was a roaring in his ears, a mounting
pressure - and even though his eyes were tightly closed, he could tell
that darkness was falling as he arrowed down into the depths of the
Cylindrical Sea.

With all his strength, he started to swim upwards towards the fading
light.

He could not open his eyes for more than a single blink; the poisonous
water felt like acid when he did so.  He seemed to have been struggling
for ages, and more than once he had a nightmare fear that he had lost
his orientation and was really swimming downwards.  Then he would risk
another quick glimpse, and every time the light was stronger.

His eyes were still clenched tightly shut when he broke water.  He
gulped a precious mouthful of air, rolled over on his back, and looked
around.

Resolution was heading towards him at top speed; within seconds, eager
hands had grabbed him and dragged him aboard.

'Did you swallow any water?" was the Commander's anxious question.

'I don't think so." 'Rinse out with this, anyway.  That's fine.  How do
you feel F 'I'm not really sure.  I'll let you know in a minute.  Oh ...
thanks, everybody." The minute was barely up when Jimmy was only too
sure how he felt.

'I'm going to be sick,' he confessed miserably.  His rescuers were
incredulous.

'In a dead calm - on a flat sea?" protested Sergeant Barnes, who seemed
to regard Jimmy's plight as a direct reflection on her skill.

'I'd hardly call it flat,' said the Commander, waving his arm around the
band of water that circled the sky.  'But don't be ashamed - you may
have swallowed some of that stuff.  Get rid of it as quickly as you
can." Jimmy was still straining, unheroically and unsuccessfully, when
there was a sudden flicker of light in the sky behind them.  All eyes
turned towards the South Pole, 176 RENDEZVOUS wi rH RAMA and Jimmy
instantly forgot his sickness.  The Horns had started their firework
display again.

There were the kilometer-long streamers of fire, dancing from the
central spike to its smaller companions.  Once again they began their
stately rotation, as if invisible dancers were winding their ribbons
around an electric maypole.

But Dow they began to accelerate, moving faster and faster until they
blurred into a flickering cone of light.

It was a spectacle more awe-inspiring than any they had vet seen here,
and it brought with it a distant crackling roar which added to the
impression of overwhelming power.  The display lasted for about five
minutes; then it stopped as abruptly as if someone had turned a switch.

'I'd like to know what the Rama Committee make of that,' Norton muttered
to no one in particular.  'Has anyone here got any theories?" There was
no time for an answer, because at that moment Hub Control called in
great excitement.

'Resolution!  Are you OK?  Did you feel that?" 'Feel what?" 'We think it
was an earthquake - it must have happened the minute those fireworks
stopped." 'Any damage?" 'I don't think so.  It wasn't really violent -
but it shook us up a bit." 'We felt nothing at all.  But we wouldn't,
out here in the Sea." 'Of course, silly of me.  Anyway, everything seems
quiet now ...  until next time." 'Yes, until the next time,' Norton
echoed.  The mystery of Rama was steadily growing; the more they
discovered about it, the less they understood.

There was a sudden shout from the helm.

'Skipper - look - up there in the sky!" Norton lifted his eyes, swiftly
scanning the circuit of the Sea.  He saw nothing, until his gaze had
almost reached the zenith, and he was staring at the other side of the
world.

'My God,' he whispered slowly, as he realized that the next time' was
already almost here.

A tidal wave was racing towards them, down the eternal curve of the
Cylindrical Sea.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The Wave

Yet even in that moment of shock, Norton's first concern was for his
ship.

'Endeavour!" he called.  'Situation report I' 'All OK, Skipper,' was the
reassuring answer from the Exec.  'We felt a slight tremor, but nothing
that could cause any damage.  There's been a small change of attitude -
the bridge says about point two degrees.  They also think the spin rate
has altered slightly - we'll have an accurate reading on that in a
couple of minutes." So it's beginning to happen, Norton told himself,
and a lot earlier than we expected; we're still a long way from
perihelion, and the logical time for an orbit change.  But some kind of
trim was undoubtedly taking place - an there might be more shocks to
come.

Meanwhile, the effects of this first one were all too obvious, up there
on the curving sheet of water which seemed perpetually falling from the
sky.  The wave was still about ten kilometres away, and stretched the
full width of the Sea from northern to southern shore.  Near the land,
it was a foaming wall of white, but in deeper water it was a barely
visible blue line, moving much faster than the breakers on either flank.
The drag of the shoreward shallows was already bending it into a bow,
with the central portion getting further and further ahead.

'Sergeant,' said Norton urgently.  'This is your jo b.

What can we do?" Sergeant Barnes had brought the raft completely to T H
E W A V E 179 rest and was studying the situation intently.  Her
expression, Norton was relieved to see, showed no trace of alarm rather
a certain zestful excitement, like a skilled athlete about to accept a
challenge.

'I wish we had some soundings,' she said.  'If we're in deep water,
there's nothing to worry about." 'Then we're all right.  We're still
four kilometres from shore." 'I hope so, but I want to study the
situation." She applied power again, and swung Resolution around until
it was just under way, heading directly towards the approaching wave.
Norton judged that the swiftly moving central portion would reach them
in less than five minutes, but he could also see that it presented no
serious danger.  It was only a racing ripple a fraction of a metre high,
and would scarcely rock the boat.  The walls of foam lagging far behind
it were the real menace.

Suddenly, in the very centre of the Sea, a line of breakers appeared.
The wave had clearly hit a submerged wall, several kilometres in length,
not far below the surface.  At the same time, the breakers on the two
flanks collapsed, as they ran into deeper water.

Anti-slosh plates, Norton told himself.  Exactly the same as in
Endeavour's own propellant tanks - but on a thousand-fold greater scale.
There must be a complex pattern of them all around the Sea, to damp out
any waves as quickly as possible.  The only thing that matters now is:
are we right on top of one?

Sergeant Barnes was one jump ahead of him.  She brought Resolution to a
full stop and threw out the anchor.  It hit bottom at only five metres.

'Haul it up I' she called to her crewmates.  'We've got to get away from
here I' Norton agreed heartily; but in which direction?  The Sergeant
was headed full speed towards the wave, which was now only five
kilometres away.  For the first time, he could hear the sound of its
approach - a distant, unmistakable roar which he had never expected to
hear inside 18o Rama.  Then it changed in intensity; the central portion
was collapsing once more - and the flanks were building up again.

He tried to estimate the distance between the submerged baffles,
assuming that they were spaced at equal intervals.  If he was right,
there should be one more to come; if they could station the raft in the
deep water between them, they would be perfectly safe.

Sergeant Barnes cut the motor, and threw out the anchor again.  It went
down thirty metres without hitting bottom.

'We're OK,' she said, with a sigh of relief.  'But I'll keep the motor
running." Now there were only the lagging walls of foam along the coast;
out here in the central Sea it was calm again, apart from the
inconspicuous blue ripple still speeding towards them.  The Sergeant was
just holding Resolution on course towards the disturbance, ready to pour
on full Power at a moment's notice.

Then, only two kilometres ahead of them, the Sea started to foam once
more.

It humped up in white-maned fury, and now its roaring seemed to fill the
world.

Upon the sixteen-kilometer-high wave of the Cylindrical Sea, a smaller
ripple was superimposed, like an avalanche thundering down a mountain
slope.  And that ripple was quite J large enough to kill them.

Sergeant Barnes must have seen the expressions on the faces of her
crewmates.  She shouted above the roar: 'What are you scared about? I've
ridden bigger ones than this." That was not quite true; nor did she add
that her earlier experience had been in a well-built surf-boat, not an
improvised raft.  'But if we have to jump, wait until I tell you. Check
your lifejackets." She's magnificent, thought the Commander - obviously
enjoying every minute, like a Viking warrior going into battle.  And
she's probably right - unless we've miscalculated badly.

The wave continued to rise, curving upwards and over.

THE WAVE 18i The slope above them probably exaggerated its height, but
it looked enormous an irresistible force of nature that would overwhelm
everything in its path.

Then, within seconds, it collapsed, as if its foundations had been
pulled out from underneath it.  It was over the submerged barrier, in
deep water again.

When it reached them a minute later Resolution merely bounced up and
down a few times before Sergeant Barnes swung the raft around and set
off at top speed towards the north.

'Thanks, Ruby - that was splendid.  But will we get home before it comes
round for the second time?" 'Probably not; it will be back in about
twenty minutes.  But it will have lost all its strength then; we'll
scarcely notice it." Now that the wave had passed, they could relax and
enjoy the voyage - though no one would be completely at case until they
were back on land.  The disturbance had left the water swirling round in
random eddies, and had also stirred up a most peculiar acidic smell
-'like crushed ants', as Jimmy aptly put it.  Though unpleasant, the
odour caused none of the attacks of sea-sickness that might have been
expected; it was something so alien that human physiology could not
respond to it.

A minute later, the wave front hit the next underwater barrier, as it
climbed away from them and up the sky.  This time, seen from the rear,
the spectacle was unimressive and the voyagers felt ashamed of their
previous P fears.  They began to feel themselves masters of the
Cylindrical Sea.

The shock was therefore all the greater when, not more than a hundred
metres away, something like a slowly rotating wheel began to rear up out
of the water.

Glittering metallic spokes.  five metres long, emerged dripping from the
sea, spun for a moment in the fierce Raman glare, and splashed back into
the water.  It was as if a giant starfish with tubular arms had broken
the surface.

At first sight, it was impossible to tell whether it was an animal or a
machine.  Then it flopped over and lay halfawash, bobbing up and down in
the gentle aftermath of the wave.

Now they could see that there were nine arms, apparently jointed,
radiating from a central disc.  Two of the arms were broken, snapped off
at the outer joint.  The others ended at a complicated collection of
manipulators that reminded Jimmy very strongly of the crab he had
encountered.  The two creatures came from the same line of evolution -
or the same drawing-board.

At the middle of the disc was a small turret, bearing three large eyes.
Two were closed, one open - and even that appeared to be blank and
unseeing.  No one doubted that they were watching the death-throes of
some strange monster, tossed up to the surface by the submarine
disturbance that had just passed.

Then they saw that it was not alone.  Swimming round it, and snapping at
its feebly moving limbs, were two small beasts like overgrown lobsters.
They were efficiently chopping up the monster, and it did nothing to
resist, though its own claws seemed quite capable of dealing with the
attackers.

Once again, Jimmy was reminded of the crab that had demolished
Dragonfly.

He watched intently as the onesided conflict continued, and quickly
confirmed his impression.

'Look, Skipper,' he whispered.  'Do you see - they're not eating it.
They don't even have any mouths.  They're simply chopping it to pieces.
That's exactly what happened to Dragonfly." 'You're right.  They're
dismantling it - like - like a broken machine." Norton wrinkled his
nose.  'But no dead machine ever smelled like that I' Then another
thought struck him.

'My God - suppose they start on us I Ruby, get us back to shore as
quickly as you can I' Resolution surged forward with reckless disregard
for the life of her.  power cells.  Behind them, the nine spokes of the
great starfish - they could think of no better name THE WAVE 183 for it
- were clipped steadily shorter, and presently the weird tableau sank
back into the depths of the Sea.

There was no pursuit, but they did not breathe comfortably again until
Resolution had drawn up to the landing stage and they had stepped
thankfully ashore.  As he looked back across that mysterious and now
suddenly sinister band of water, Commander Norton grimly determined that
no one would ever sail it again.  There were too many unknowns, too many
dangers ...

He looked back upon the towers and ramparts of New York, and the dark
cliff of the continent beyond.  They were safe now from inquisitive man.

He would not tempt the gods of Rama again.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Spider

From now on, Norton had decreed, there would always be at least three
people at Camp Alpha, and one of them would always be awake.  In
addition, all exploring parties would follow the same routine.
Potentially dangerous creatures were on the move inside Rama, and though
none had shown active hostility, a prudent commander would take no
chances.

As an extra safeguard, there was always an observer up on the Hub,
keeping watch through a powerful telescope.  From this vantage point,
the whole interior of Rama could be surveyed, and even the South Pole
appeared only a few hundred metres away.  The territory round any group
of explorers was to be kept under regular observation; in this way, it
was hoped to eliminate any possibility of surprise.  It was a good plan
- and it failed completely.

After the last meal of the day, and just before the -2.oo hour sleep
period, Norton, Rodrigo, Calvert and Laura Ernst were watching the
regular evening news telecast specially beamed to them from the
transmitter at Inferno, Mercury.  They had been particularly interested
in seeing Jimmy's film of the Southern continent, and the return across
the Cylindrical Sea - an episode which had excited all viewers.
Scientists, news commentators, and members of the Rama Committee had
given their opinions, most of them contradictory.  No one could agree
whether the crab-like creature Jimmy had encountered was an animal, a
machine, a genuine Raman - or some SPIDER 185 thing that fitted none of
these categories.

They had just watched, with a distinctly queasy feeling, the giant
starfish being demolished by its predators en they discovered that they
were no longer alone.  wh There was an intruder in the camp.

Laura Ernst noticed it first.  She froze in sudden shock, then said:
'Don't move, Bill.  Now look slowly to the right." Norton turned his
head.  Ten metres away was a slender-legged tripod surmounted by a
spherical body no larger than a football.  Set around the body were
three large, expressionless eyes, apparently giving 36o degrees of
vision, and trailing beneath it were three whiplike tendrils.  The
creature was not quite as tall as a man, and looked far too fragile to
be dangerous, but that did not excuse their carelessness in letting it
sneak up on them unawares.  It reminded Norton of nothing so much as a
three-legged spider, or daddy-long-legs, and he wondered how it had
solved the problem - never challenged by any creature on Earth - of
tripedal locomotion.

'What do you make of it, Doc?" he whispered, turning off the voice of
the TV newscaster.

'Usual Raman three-fold symmetry.  I don't see how it could hurt us,
though those whips might be unpleasant and they could be poisonous, like
a coelenterate's.  Sit tight and see what it does." After regarding them
impassively for several minutes, the creature suddenly moved - and now
they could understand why they had failed to observe its arrival.

It was fast, and it covered the ground with such an extraordinary
spinning motion that the human eye and mind had real difficulty in
following it.

As far as Norton could judge - and only a high-speed camera could settle
the matter - each leg in turn acted as a pivot around which the creature
whirled its body.  And he was not sure, but it also seemed to him that
every few steps' it reversed its direction of spin, while the three
whips flickered over the ground like lightning as it moved.  Its top
speed - though this also was very hard to estimate - was at least thirty
kilometres an hour.

It swept swiftly round the camp, examining every item of equipment,
delicately touching the improvised beds and chairs and tables,
communication gear, food cons tainers, Electrosans, cameras, water
tanks, tools - there seemed to be nothing that it ignored, except the
four watchers.  Clearly, it was intelligent enough to draw a distinction
between humans and their inanimate property; its actions gave the
unmistakable impression of an extremely methodical curiosity or
inquisitiveness.

'I wish I could examine it!" Laura exclaimed in frustration, as the
creature continued its swift pirouette.  'Shall we try to catch it?"
'How?"Calvert asked, reasonably enough.

'You know - the way primitive hunters bring down fastmoving animals with
a couple of weights whirling around at the end of a rope.  It doesn't
even hurt them." 'That I doubt,' said Norton.  'But even if it worked,
we can't risk it.  We don't know how intelligent this creature is - and
a trick like that could easily break its legs.  Then we would be in real
trouble - from Rama, Earth and everyone else." 'But I've got to have a
specimen I' 'You may have to be content with Jimmy's flower unless one
of these creatures cooperates with you.  Force is out.  How would you
like it if something landed on Earth and decided that ou would make a
nice specimen for y dissection?" 'I don't want to dissect it,' said
Laura, not at all convincingly.  'I only want to examine it." 'Well,
alien visitors might have the same attitude towards you, but you could
have a very uncomfortable time before you believed them.  We must make
no move that could possibly he regarded as threatening." He was quoting
from Ship's Orders, of course, and Laura knew it.  The claims of science
had a lower priority than those of space-diplomacy.

SPIDER 187 In fact, there was no need to bring in such elevated
considerations; it was merely a matter of good manners.  They were all
visitors here, and had never even asked permission to come inside ...

The creature seemed to have finished its inspection.  It made one more
highspeed circuit of the camp, then shot off at a tangent - towards the
stairway.

J wonder how it's going to manage the steps?" Laura mused.  Her question
was quickly answered; the spider ignored them completely, and headed up
the gently sloping curve of the ramp without slackening its speed.

'Hub Control,' said Norton.  'You may have a visitor shortly; take a
look at the Alpha Stairway Section Six.  And incidentally, thanks a lot
for keeping such a good watch on us." It took a minute for the sarcasm
to sink in; then the Hub observer started to make apologetic noises.

'Er - I can just see something, Skipper, now you tell me it's there. But
what is it?" 'Your guess is as good as mine,' Norton answered, as he
pressed the General Alert button.  'Camp Alpha calling all stations.
We've just been visited by a creature like a three-legged spider, with
very thin legs, about two metres high, small spherical body, travels
very fast with a spinDing motion.  Appears harmless but inquisitive.  It
may sneak up on you before you notice it.  Please acknowledge." The
first reply came from London, fifteen kilometres to the east.

'Nothing unusual here, Skipper." The same distance to the west, Rome
answered, sounding suspiciously sleepy.

'Same here, Skipper.  Uh, just a moment..." 'What is it?" 'I put my pen
down a minute ago - it's gone I What ohl' 'Talk sense I' 'You won't
believe this, Skipper.  I was making some notes - you know I like
writing, and it doesn't disturb anybody - I was using my favourite
ball-point, it's nearly two hundred years old - well, now it's lying on
the ground, about five inetres away I I've got it - thank goodness - it
isn't damaged." 'And how do you suppose it got thereF 'Er - I may have
dozed off for a minute.  It's been a hard day." Norton sighed, but
refrained from comment; there were so few of them, and they bad so
little time in which 1 to explore a world.  Enthusiasm could not always
overcome exhaustion, and he wondered if they were taking unnecessary
risks.  Perhaps he should not split his men up into such small groups,
and try to cover so much territory.  But he was always conscious of the
swiftly passing days, and the unsolved mysteries around them.

He was becoming more and more certain that something was about to
happen, and that they would have to abandon Rama even before it reached
perihelion - the moment of truth when any orbit change must surely take
place.

'Now listen, Hub, Rome, London - everyone,' he said.  'I want a report
at every half-hour through the night.  We must assume that from now on
we may expect visitors at any time.  Some of them may be dangerous, but
at all costs we have to avoid incidents.  You all know the directives on
this subject." That was true enough; it was part of their training yet
perhaps none of them had ever really believed that 1 the long-theorized
'physical contact with intelligent aliens' would occur in their
lifetimes - still less that they would experience it themselves.

Training was one thing, reality another; and no one could be sure that
the ancient, human instincts of selfpreservation would not take over in
an emergency.

Yet it was essential to give every entity they encountered in Rama the
benefit of the doubt, up to the last possible minute - and even beyond.

Commander Norton did not want to be remembered SPIDER x89 by history as
the man who started the first interplanetary war.

Within a few hours there were hundreds of the spiders, and they were all
over the plain.  Through the telescope, it could be seen that the
southern continent was also infested with them - but not, it seemed, the
island of New York.

They took no further notice of the explorers, and after a while the
explorers took little notice of them - though from time to time Norton
still detected a predatory gleam in his Surgeon-Commander's eye. Nothing
would please her better, he was sure, than for one of the spiders to
have an unfortunate accident, and he would not put it past her to
arrange such a thing in the interests of science.

It seemed virtually certain that the spiders could not be intelligent;
their bodies were far too small to contain much in the way of brains,
and indeed it was hard to see where they stored all the energy to move.
Yet their behaviour was curiously purposeful and coordinated; they
seemed to be everywhere, but they never visited the same place twice.
Norton frequently had the impression that they were searching for
something.  Whatever it was, they did not seem to have discovered it.

They went all the way up to the central Hub, still scorning the three
great stairways.  How they managed to ascend the vertical sections, even
under almost zero gravity, was not clear; Laura theorized that they were
equipped with suction pads.

And then, to her obvious delight, she got her eagerly desired specimen.
Hub Control reported that a spider had fallen down the vertical face and
was lying, dead or incapacitated, on the first platform.  Laura's time
up from the plain was a record that would never be beaten.

When she arrived at the platform, she found that, despite the low
velocity of impact, the creature had broken all its legs.  Its eyes were
still open, but it showed no reactions to any external tests.  Even a
fresh human corpse Igo would have been livelier, Laura decided; as soon
as she got her prize back to Endeavour, she started to work with her
dissecting kit.

The spider was so fragile that it almost came to pieces without her
assistance.  She disarticulated the legs, then started on the delicate
carapace, which split along three great circles and opened up like a
peeled orange.

After some moments of blank incredulity - for there was nothing that she
could recognize or identify - she took a series of careful photographs.
Then she picked up her scalpel.

Where to start cutting?  She felt like closing her eyes, and stabbing at
random, but that would not have been very scientific.

The blade went in with practically no resistance.  A second later,
SurgeonCommander Ernst's most unladylike yell echoed the length and
breadth of Endeavour.

It took an annoyed Sergeant McAndrews a good twenty minutes to calm down
the startled simps.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

His Excellency Regrets ...

'As you are all aware, gentlemen,' said the Martian Ambassador, 'a great
deal has happened since our last meeting.  We have much to discuss - and
to decide.  I'm therefore particularly sorry that our distinguished
colleague from Mercury is not here." That last statement was not
altogether accurate.  Dr. Bose was not particularly sorry that HE the
Hermian Ambassador was absent.  It would have been much more truthful to
say that he was worried.  All his diplomatic instincts told him that
something was happening, and though his sources of information were
excellent, he could gather no hints as to what it might be.

The Ambassador's letter of apology had been courteous and entirely
uncommunicative.  His Excelle ncy had regretted that urgent and
unavoidable business had kept him from attending the meeting, either in
perif son or by video.  Dr. Bose found it very hard to t1iink of
anything more urgent or more important - than Rama.

'Two of our members have statements to make.  I would first like to call
on Professor Davidson." There was a rustle of excitement among the other
scientists on the Committee.  Most of them had felt that the astronomer,
with his well-known cosmic viewpoint, was not the right man to be
Chairman of the Space Advisory Council.

He sometimes gave the impression that the activities of intelligent life
were an unfortunate irrelevance in the majestic universe of stars and
galaxies, and that it was bad manners to pay too much attention to it.
This had not endeared him to exobiologists such as Dr. Perera, who took
exactly the opposite view.  To them, the only purpose of the Universe
was the production of intelligence, and they were apt to talk sneeringly
about purely astronomical phenomena.  There dead matter' was one of
their favourite phrases.

'Mr Ambassador,' the scientist began, 'I have been analysing the curious
behaviour of Rama during the last few days, and would like to present my
conclusions.  Some of them are rather startling." Dr. Perera looked
surprised, then rather smug.  He strongly approved of anything that
startled Professor Davidson.

'First of all, there was the remarkable series of events when that young
lieutenant flew over to the Southern hemisphere.  The electrical
discharges themselves, though spectacular, are not important; it is easy
to show that they contained relatively little energy.  But they
coincided with a change in Rama's rate of spin, and its attitude - that
is, its orientation in space.  This must have involved an enormous
amount of energy; the discharges which nearly cost Mr er Pak his life
were merely a minor by-product - perhaps a nuisance that had to be
minimized by those giant lightning conductors at the ,g South Pole.

'I draw two conclusions from this.  When a spacecraft and we must call
Rama a spacecraft, despite its fantastic size - makes a change of
attitude, that usually means it is about to make a change of orbit.  We
must therefore take seriously the views of those who believe that Rama
may be preparing to become another planet of our sun, instead of going
back to the stars.

'If this is the case, Endeavour must obviously be prepared to cast off -
is that what spaceships do?  - at a moment's notice.  She may be in very
serious danger while she is still physically attached to Rama.  I
imagine that Commander Norton is already well aware of this possi HIS
EXCELLENCY REGRETS ...  193 bility, but I think we should send him an
additional warning., 'Thank you very much, Professor Davidson.  Yes - Dr
Solomons?" 'I'd like to comment on that,' said the science historian.
'Rama seems to have made a change of spin Without using any jets or
reaction devices.  This leaves only two possibilities, it seems to me.

'The first one is that it has internal gyroscopes, or their equivalent.

They must be enormous; where are they?

'The second possibility - which would turn all our physics upside down -
is that it has a reactionless propulsion system.  The so-called Space
Drive, which Professor Davidon doesn't believe in.  If this is the case,
Rama may be able to do almost anything.  We will be quite unable to
anticipate its behaviour, even on the gross physical level." The
diplomats were obviously somewhat baffled by this exchange, and the
astronomer refused to be drawn.  He had gone out on enough limbs for one
day.

'I'll stick to the laws of physics, if you don't mind, until I'm forced
to give them up.  If we've not found any gyroscopes in Rama, we may not
have looked hard enough, or in the right place." Ambassador Bose could
see that Dr. Perera was getting impatient.  Normally, the exobiologist
was as happy as anyone else to engage in speculation; but now, for the
first time, he had some solid facts.  His long-impoverished science had
become wealthy overnight.

'Very well - if there are no other comments - I know that Dr. Perera has
some important information." 'Thank you, Mr Ambassador.  As you've all
seen, we have at last obtained a specimen of a Raman life-form, and have
observed several others at close quarters.  Surgeon-Commander Ernst,
Endeavour's medical officer, has sent a full report on the spider-like
creature she dissected.  'I must say at once that some of her results
are baffling, and in any other circumstances I would have refused to
believe them.

'The spider is definitely organic, though its chemistry differs from
ours in many respects - it contains considerable quantities of light
metals.  Yet I hesitate to call it an animal, for several fundamental
reasons.

'In the first place, it seems to have no mouth, no stomach, no gut - no
method of ingesting food!  Also no air intakes, no lungs, no blood, no
reproductive system ...

'You may wonder what it has got.  Well, there's a simple musculature,
controlling its three legs and the three whiplike tendrils or feelers.
There's a brain - fairly complex, mostly concerned with the creature's
remarkably developed triocular vision.  But eighty percent of the body
consists of a honeycomb of large cells, and this is what gave Dr. Ernst
such an unpleasant surprise when she started her dissection.  If she'd
been luckier she might have recognized it in time, because it's the one
Raman structure that does exist on Earth - though only in a handful of
marine animals.

'Most of the spider is simply a battery, very much like that found in
electric cells and rays.  But in this case, it's apparently not used for
defence.

It's the creature's source of energy.  And that is why it has no
provisions for eating and breathing; it doesn't need such primitive
arrangements.  And incidentally, this means that it would be perfectly
at home in a vacuum ...

'So we have a creature which, to all intents and purposes, is nothing
more than a mobile eye.  It has no organs of manipulation; those
tendrils are much too feeble.  If I had been given its specifications, I
would have said it was merely a reconnaissance device.

'Its behaviour certainly fits that description.  All the spiders ever do
is to run around and look at things.

That's all they can do 'But the other animals are different.  The crab,
the starfish, the sharks for want of better words - can obviously
"manipulate their environmentand appear to be special HIS EXCELLENCY
REGRETS ...

ized for various functions.  I assume that they are also electrically
powered since, like the spider, they appear to have no mouths.

'I'm sure you'll appreciate the biological problems raised by all this.

Could such creatures evolve naturally?  I really don't think so.  They
appear to be designed like machines, for specific jobs.  If I had to
describe them, I would say that they are robots - biological robots -
something that has no analogy on Earth.

'If Rama is a spaceship, perhaps they are part of its crew.  As to how
they are born - or created - that's something I can't tell you.  But I
can guess that the answer's over there in New York.  If Commander Norton
and his men can wait long enough, they may encounter increasingly more
complex creatures, with unpredictable behaviour.  Somewhere along the
line they may meet the Ramans themselves - the real makers of this
world.

'And when that happens, gentlemen, there will be no doubt about it at
all..."

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Special Delivery

Commander Norton was sleeping soundly when his personal communicator
dragged him away from happy dreams.  He had been holidaying with his
family on Mars, flying past the awesome, snow-capped peak of Nix
Olympica - mightiest volcano in the solar system.  Little Billie had
started to say something to him; now he would never know what it was.

The dream faded; the reality was his executive officer, up on the ship.

'Sorry to wake you, Skipper,' said Lieutenant-Commander Kirchoff.
'Triple A priority from Headquarters." 'Let me have it,' Norton answered
sleepily.

'I can't.  It's in code - Commander's Eyes Only." Norton was instantly
awake.  He had received such a message only three times in his whole
career, and on each occasion it had meant trouble.

'Damn I' he said.  'What do we do now?" His Exec did not bother to
answer.  Each understood the problem perfectly; it was one that Ship's
Orders had never anticipated.  Normally, a commander was never more than
a few minutes away from his office and the code book in his personal
safe.  If he started now, Norton might get back to the ship - exhausted
- in four or five hours.  That was not the way to handle a Class AAA
Priority.

'Jerry,' he said at length.  'Who's on the switchboard?" 'No one; I'm
making the call myself." 'Recorder off F SPECIAL DELIVERY 197 'By an odd
breach of regulations, yes." Norton smiled.  Jerry was the best Exec he
had ever worked with.  He thought of everything.

'OK.  You know where my key is.  Call me back." He waited as patiently
as he could for the next ten minutes, trying without much success - to
think of other problems.  He hated wasting mental effort; it was very
unlikely that he could out-guess the message that was coming, and he
would know its contents soon enough.  Then he would start worrying
effectively.

When the Exec called back, he was obviously speaking under considerable
strain.

'It's not really urgent Skipper - an hour won't make any difference. But
I prefer to avoid radio.  I'll send it down by messenger." 'But why -
oh, very well - I trust your judgement.  Who will carry it through the
airlocks?" 'I'm going myself; I'll call you when I reach the Hub."
'Which leaves Laura in charge-, 'For one hour, at the most.  I'll get
right back to the ship." A medical officer did not have the specialized
training to be acting commander, any more than a commander could be
expected to do an operation.  In emergencies, both jobs had sometimes
been successfully switched; but it was not recommended.  Well, one order
had already been broken tonight'...

'For the record, you never leave the ship.  Have you woken Laura?" 'Yes.
She's delighted with the opportunity." 'Lucky that doctors are used to
keeping secrets.  Oh have you sent the acknowledgement?" 'Of course, in
your name." 'Then I'll be waiting." Now it was quite impossible to avoid
anxious anticipations.  'Not really urgent - but I prefer to avoid
radio..." One thing was certain.  The Commander was not going to get
much more sleep this night.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Blot Watcher

Sergeant Pieter Rousseau knew why he had volunteered for this job; in
many ways, it was a realization of a childhood dream.  He had become
fascinated by telescopes when he was only six or seven years old, and
much of his youth had been spent collecting lenses of all shapes and
sizes.  These he had mounted in cardboard tubes, making instruments of
ever-increasing power until he was familiar with the moon and planets,
the nearer space-stations, and the entire landscape within
thirty-kilometres of his home.

He had been lucky in his place of birth, among the mountains of
Colorado; in almost every direction, the view was spectacular and
inexhaustible.  He had spent hours exploring, in perfect safety, the
peaks which every year took their toll of careless climbers.  Though he
had seen much, he had imagined even more; he had liked to pretend that
over each crest of rock, beyond the reach of his telescope, were magic
kingdoms full of wonderful creatures.  And so for years he had avoided
visiting the places his lenses brought to him, because he knew that the
reality could not live up to the dream.

Now, on the central axis of Rama, he could survey marvels beyond the
wildest fantasies of his youth.  A whole world lay spread out before him
- a small one, it was true, yet a man could spend an entire lifetime
exploring four thousand square kilometres, even when it was dead and
changeless.

W7 But now life, with all its infinite possibilities, had come to Rama.
If the biological robots were not living creatures, they were certainly
very good imitations.

No one knew who invented the word 'biot'; it seemed to come into instant
use, by a kind of spontaneous generation.  From his vantage point on the
Hub, Pieter was Biot-Watcher-in-Chief, and he was beginning - so he
believed - to understand some of their behaviour patterns.

The Spiders were mobile sensors, using vision - and probably touch - to
examine the whole interior of Rama.  At one time there had been hundreds
of them rushing around at high speed, but after less than two days they
had disappeared; now it was quite unusual to see even one.

They had been replaced by a whole menagerie of much more impressive
creatures; it had been no minor task, thinking of suitable names for
them.  There were the Window Cleaners, with large padded feet, who were
apparently polishing their way the whole length of Rama's six artificial
suns.  Their enormous shadows, cast right across the diameter of the
world, sometimes caused temporary eclipses on the far side.

The crab that had demolished Dragonfly seemed to be a Scavenger.  A
relay chain of identical creatures had approached Camp Alpha and carried
off all the debris that had been neatly stacked on the outskirts; they
would have carried off everything else if Norton and Mercer had not
stood firm and defied them.  The confrontation had been anxious but
brief; thereafter, the Scavengers seemed to understand what they were
allowed to touch, and arrived at regular intervals to see if their
services were required.  It was a most convenient arrangement, and
indicated a high degree of intelligence - either on the part of the
Scavengers themselves, or some controlling entity elsewhere.

Garbage disposal on Rama was very simple; everything was thrown into the
Sea, where it was, presumably, broken down into forms that could be used
again.

The 200 RENDEZVOUS wi rH RAMA process was rapid; Resolution had
disappeared overnight, to the great annoyance of Ruby Barnes.  Norton
had consoled her by pointing out that it had done its job magnificently
- and he would never have allowed anyone to use it again.  The Sharks
might not be as discriminating as the Scavengers.

No astronomer discovering an unknown planet could have been happier that
Pieter when he spotted a new type of biot and secured a good photo of it
through his telescope.  Unfortunately, it seemed that all the
interesting species were over at the South Pole, where they were
performing mysterious tasks round the Horns.  Something that looked like
a centipede with suction pads could be seen from time to time exploring
Big Horn itself, while round the lower peaks Pieter had caught a glimpse
of a burly creature that could have been a cross between a hippopotamus
and a bulldozer.  And there was even a double-necked giraffe, which
apparently acted as a mobile crane.

Presumably, Rama, like any ship, required testing, checking and
repairing after its immense voyage.  The crew was already hard at work;
when would the passengers appear?

Biot classifying was not Pieter's main job; his orders were to keep
watch on the two or three exploring parties that were always out, to see
that they did not get into trouble, and to warn them if anything
approached.  He alternated every six hours with anyone else who could be
spared, though more than once he had been on duty for twelve hours at a
stretch.  As a result, he now knew the geography of Rama better than any
man who would ever live.  It was as familiar to him as the Colorado
mountains of his youth.

When Jerry Kirchoff emerged from Airlock Alpha, Pieter knew at once that
something unusual was happening.  Personnel transfers never occurred
during the sleeping period, and it was now past midnight by Mission
Time.  Then Pieter remembered how short-handed they were, and was
shocked by a much more startling irregularity.

'Jerry - who's in charge of the ship?" 'I am,' said the Exec coldly, as
he flipped open his helmet.  'You don't think I'd leave the bridge while
I'm on watch, do you?" He reached into his suit carry-all, and pulled
out a small can still bearing the label: CONCENTRATED ORANCE JUICE: TO
MAKE FIVE LITRES.

'You're good at this Pieter.  The skipper is waiting for it." Pieter
hefted the can, then said, 'I hope you've put enough mass inside it -
sometimes they get stuck on the first terrace." 'Well, you're the
expert." That was true enough.  The Hub observers bad bad plenty of
practice, sending down small items that had been forgotten or were
needed in a hurry.  The trick was to get them safely past the
low-gravity region, and then to see that the Coriolis effect did not
carry them too far away from the Camp during the eightkilometre roll
downhill.

Pieter anchored himself firmly, grasped the can, and hurled it down the
face of the cliff.  He did not aim directly towards Camp Alpha, but
almost thirty degrees away from it.

Almost immediately, air resistance robbed the can of its initial speed,
but then the pseudo-gravity of Rama took over and it started to move
downwards at a constant velocity.  It hit once near the base of the
ladder, and did a slowmotion bounce which took it clear of the first
terrace.

'It's OK now,'said Pieter."Like to make a bet?" 'No,' was the prompt
reply.

'You know the odds." 'You're no sportsman.  But I'll tell you now - it
will stop within three hundred inetres of the Camp." 'That doesn't sound
very close." 'You might try it some time.  I once saw Joe miss by a
couple of kilometres."

X02 The can was no longer bouncing; gravity had become strong enough to
glue it to the curving face of the North Dome.  By the time it had
reached the second terrace it was rolling along at twenty or thirty
kilometres an hour, and had reached very nearly the maximum speed that
friction would allow.

'Now we'll have to wait,' said Pieter, seating himself at the telescope,
so that he could keep track of the messenger.  'It will be there in ten
minutes.  Ah, here comes the skipper - I've got used to recognizing
people from this angle - now he's looking up at us." 'I believe that
telescope gives you a sense of power." 'Oh, it does.  I'm the only
person who knows everything that's happening in Rama.  At least, I
thought I did,' he added plaintively, giving Kirchoff a reproachful
look.

'If it will keep you happy, the skipper found he'd run out of
toothpaste." After that, conversation languished; but at last Pieter
said: 'Wish you'd taken that bet ...  he's only got to walk fifty metres
...  now he sees it ...  mission complete." 'Thanks, Pieter - a very
good job.  Now you can go back to sleep." 'Sleepl I'm on watch until
0400." 'Sorry - you must have been sleeping.  Or how else could you have
dreamed all this?" SPACE SURVEY HQ TO COMMANDER SSV ENDEAVOUR.  PRIORITY
AAA.

CLASSIFICATION YOUR EYES ONLY.  NO PERMANENT RECORD.

SPACEGUARD REPORTS ULTRA HIGH SPEED VEHICLE APPARENTLY LAUNCHED MERCURY
TEN TO TWELVE DAYS AGO ON RAMA INTERCEPT.

IF NO ORBIT CHANGE ARRIVAL PREDICTED DATE 322 DAYS 15 HOURS.  MAY BE
NECESSARY YOU EVACUATE BEFORE THEN.  WILL ADVISE FURTHER.

C IN C Norton read t ' he message half a dozen times to memorize the
date.  It was hard to keep track of time inside Rama; he had to look at
his calendar watch to see that it was now Day 315.  That might leave
them only one week ...

The message was chilling, not only for what it said, but for what it
implied.  The Hermians had made a clandestine launch - that in itself a
breach of Space Law.  The conclusion was obvious; their 'vehicle' could
only be a missile.

But why?  It was inconceivable - well, almost inconceivable - that they
would risk endangering Endeavour, so presumably he would receive ample
warning from the Hermians themselves.  In an emergency, he could leave
at a few hours' notice, though he would do so only under extreme
protest, at the direct orders of the Commanderin-Chief.

Slowly, and very thoughtfully, he walked across to the improvised
life-support complex and dropped the message into an electrosan.  The
brilliant flare of laser light bursting out through the crack beneath
the seat-cover told him that the demands of security were satisfied.  It
was too bad, he told himself, that all problems could not be disposed of
so swiftly and hygienically.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Missile

The missile was still five million kilometres away when the glare of its
plasma braking jets became clearly visible in Endeavour's main
telescope.  By that time the secret was already out, and Norton had
reluctantly ordered the second and perhaps final evacuation of Rama; but
he had no intention of leaving until events gave him no alternative.

When it had completed its braking manoeuvre, the unwelcome guest from
Mercury was only fifty kilometres from Rama, and apparently carrying out
a survey through its TV cameras.  These were clearly visible - one fore
and one aft - as were several small omniantennas and one large
directional dish, aimed steadily at the distant star of Mercury.

Norton wondered what instructions were coming down that beam, and what
information was going back.

Yet the Hermians could learn nothing that they did not already know; all
that Endeavour had discovered had been broadcast throughout the solar
system.  This spacecraft - which had broken all speed records to get
here could only be an extension of its makers' will, an instruinent of
their purpose.  That purpose would soon be known, for in three hours the
Hermian Ambassador to the United Planets would be addressing the General
Assembly.

Officially, the missile did not yet exist.  It bore no identification
marks, and was not radiating on any standard beacon frequency.  This was
a serious breach of law, moo MISSILE 205 but even SPACECUARD had not yet
issued a formal protest.  Everyone was waiting, with nervous impatience,
to see what Mercury would do next.

It had been three days since the missile's existence and origin - had
been announced; all that time, the Hermians had remained stubbornly
silent.  They could be very good at that, when it suited them.

Some psychologists had claimed that it was almost impossible to
understand fully the mentality of anyone born and bred on Mercury.
Forever exiled from Earth by its threetimes-more-powerful gravity,
Hermians could stand on the Moon and look across the narrow gap to the
planet of their ancestors - even of their own parents but they could
never visit it.  And so, inevitably, they claimed that they did not want
to.

The pretended to despise the soft rains, the rolling fields, the lakes
and seas, the blue skies - all the things that they could know only
through recordings.  Because their planet was drenched with such solar
energy that the day time temperature often reached six hundred degrees,
they affected a rather swaggering roughness that did not bear a moment's
serious examination.  In fact, they tended to be physically weak, since
they could only survive if they were totally insulated from their
environment.  Even if he could have tolerated the gravity, a Hermian
would have been quickly incapacitated by a hot day in any equatorial
country on Earth.

Yet in matters that really counted, they were tough.  The psychological
pressures of that ravening star so close at hand, the engineering
problems of tearing into a stubborn planet and wrenching from it all the
necessities of life - these had produced a spartan and in many ways
highly admirable culture.  You could rely on the Hermians; if they
promised something, they would do it though the bill might be
considerable.  It was their own joke that, if the sun ever showed signs
of going nova, they would contract to get it under control - once the
fee had been settled.  It was a non-Hermian joke that any child -.0000
2o6 who showed signs of interest in art, philosophy or abstract
mathematics was ploughed straight back into the hydroponic farms.  As
far as criminals and psychopaths were concerned, this was not a joke at
all.  Crime was one of the luxuries that Mercury could not afford.

Commander Norton bad been to Mercury once, had becn enormously impressed
- like most visitors - and had acquired many Hermian friends.  He had
fallen in love with a girl in Port Lucifer, and had even contemplated
signing a three-year contract, but parental disapproval of anyone from
outside the orbit of Venus had been too strong.  It was just as well.

'Triple A message from Earth, Skipper,' said the bridge.  'Voice and
back-up text from Commander-inChief.  Ready to accept?" 'Check and file
text; let me have the voice." 'Here it comes." Admiral Hendrix sounded
calm and mattcr-of-fact, as if he was issuing a routine fleet order,
instead of handling a situation unique in the history of space.  But
then, he was not ten kilometres from the bomb.

'C-in-C to Commander, Endeavour.  This is a quick summary of the
situation as we see it now.  You know that the General Assembly meets at
14.oo and you'll be listening to the proceedings.  It is possible that
you may then have to take action immediately, without consultation;
hence this briefing.

'We've analysed the photos you have sent us; the vehicle is a standard
space-probe, modified for high-impulse and probably laserriding for
initial boost.  Size and mass are consistent with fusion bomb in the 500
to 1,000 megaton range; the Hermians use up to ioo megatons routinely in
their mining operations, so they would have had no difficulty in
assembling such a warhead.

'Our experts also estimate that this would be the minimum size necessary
to assure destruction of Rama.  If it was detonated against the thinnest
part of the shell underneath the Cylindrical Sea - the hull would be rup
MISSILE 207 tured and the spin of the body would complete its
disintegration.

'We assume that the Hermians, if they are planning such an act, will
give you ample time to get clear.  For your information, the gamma-ray
flash from such a bomb could be dangerous to you up to a range of a
thousand kilometres.

'But that is not the most serious danger.  The fragments of Rama,
weighing tons and spinning off at almost a thousand kilometres an hour,
could destroy you at an unlimited distance.  We therefore recommend that
you proceed along the spin axis, since no fragments will be thrown off
in that direction.  Ten thousand kilometres should give an adequate
safety margin.

'This message cannot be intercepted; it is going by
multiple-pseudo-random routing, so I can talk in clear English.  Your
reply may not be secure, so speak with discretion and use code when
necessary.  I will call you immediately after the General Assembly
discussion.  Message concluded.

C-in-C, out."

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

General Assembly

According to the history books - though no one could really believe it -
there had been a time when the old United Nations had 172 members.  The
United planets had only seven; and that was sometimes bad enough.  In
order of distance front the Sun, they were Mercury, Earth, Luna, Mars,
Ganymede, Titan and Triton.

The list contained numerous omissions and ambiguities which presumably
the future would rectify.  Critics never tired of pointing out that most
of the United Planets were not planets at all, but satellites.  And how
ridiculous that the four giants, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
were not included ...

But no one lived on the Gas Giants, and quite possibly no one ever
would.

The same might be true of the other major absentee, Venus.  Even the
most enthusiastic of planetary engineers agreed that it would take
centuries to tame Venus; meanwhile the Hermians kept their eyes on her,
and doubtless brooded over long-range plans.

Separate representation for Earth and Luna had also been a bone of
contention; the other members argued that it put too much power in one
corner of the solar system.  But there were more people on the Moon than
all the other worlds except Earth itself - and it was the meeting place
of the UP.  Moreover, Earth and Moon hardly ever agreed on anything, so
they were not likely to constitute a dangerous bloc.

Mars held the asteroids in trust - except for the Icarian group
(supervised by Mercury) and a handful with peri GENERAL ASSEMBLY 209
helions beyond Saturn - and thus claimed by Titan.  One day the larger
asteroids, such as Pallas, Vesta, Juno and Ceres, would be important
enough to have their own ambassadors, and membership of the UP would
then reach two figures.

Ganymede represented not only Jupiter - and therefore more mass than all
the rest of the solar system put together - but also the remaining fifty
or so Jovian satellites, if one included temporary captures from the
asteroid belt (the lawyers were still arguing over this).  In the same
way, Titan took care of Saturn, its rings and the other thirty-plus
satellites.

The situation for Triton was even more complicated.  The large moon of
Neptune was the outermost body in the solar system under permanent
habitation; as a result, its ambassador wore a considerable number of
hats.  He represented Uranus and its eight moons (none yet occupied);
Neptune and its other three satellites; Pluto and its solitary moon; and
lonely, moonless Persephone.  If there were planets beyond Persephone,
they too would be Triton's responsibility.

And as if that was not enough, the Ambassador for the Outer Darkness, as
he was sometimes called, had been heard to ask plaintively: 'What about
comets?" It was generally felt that this problem could be left for the
future to solve.

And yet, in a very real sense, that future was already here.  By some
definitions, Rama was a comet; they were the only other visitors
from-the interstellar deeps, and many had travelled on hyperbolic orbits
even closer to the Sun than Rama's.  Any space-lawyer could make a very
good case out of that and the Hermian Ambassador was one of the best.

'We recognize His Excellency the Ambassador for Mercury."

As the delegates were arranged counter-clockwise in order of distance
from the sun, the Hermian was on the President's extreme right.  Up to
the very last minute, he had been interfacing with his computer; now he
removed the synchronizing spectacles which allowed no one else to read
the message on the display screen.

He picked up his sheaf of notes, and rose briskly to his feet.

'Mr President, distinguished fellow delegates, I would like to begin
with a brief summary of the situation which now confronts us." From some
delegates, that phrase 'a brief summary' would have evoked silent groans
among all listeners; but everyone knew that Hermians meant exactly what
they said.

'The giant spaceship, or artificial asteroid, which has been christened
Rama was detected over a year ago, in the region beyond Jupiter.  At
first it was believed to be a natural body, moving on a hyperbolic orbit
which would take it round the sun and on to the stars.

'When its true nature was discovered, the Solar Survey Vessel Endeavour
was ordered to rendezvous with it.  I am sure we will all congratulate
Commander Norton and his crew for the efficient way in which they have
carried out their unique assignment.

'At first, it was believed that Rama was dead - frozen for so many
hundreds of thousands of years that there was no possibility of revival.
This may still be true, in a strictly biological sense.  There seems
general agreement, among those who have studied the matter, that no
living organism of any complexity can survive more than a very few
centuries of suspended animation.  Even at absolute zero, residual
quantum effects eventually erase too much cellular information to make
revival possible.  It therefore appeared that, although Rama was of
enormous archaeological importance, it did not present any major
astropolitical problems.

'It is now obvious that this was a very naive attitude, though even from
the first there were some who pointed out that Rama was too precisely
aimed at the Sun for pure chance to be involved.

'Even so, it might have been argued - indeed, it was GENERAL ASSEMBLY
argued - that here was an experiment that had failed.  Rama had reached
the intended target, but the controlling intelligence had not survived.
This view also seems very simple-minded; it surely underestimates the
entities we are dealing with.

'What we failed to take into account was the possibility of
non-biological survival.  If we accept Dr. Perera's v Y er Plausible
theory, which certainly fits all the facts, the creatures who have been
observed inside Rama did not exist until a short time ago.  Their
patterns, or templates, were stored in some central information bank,
and when the time was ripe they were manufactured from available raw
materials - presumably the metallo-organic soup of the Cylindrical Sea.
Such a feat is still somewhat beyond our own ability, but does not
present any theoretical problems.  We know that solid state circuits,
unlike living matter, can store information without loss, for indefinite
periods of time.

'So Rama is now in full operating condition, serving the purpose of its
builders - whoever they may be.  From our point of view, it does not
matter if the Ramans themselves have all been dead for a million years,
or whether they too will be re-created, to join their servants, at any
moment.  With or without them, their will is being done - and will
continue to be done.

'Rama has now given proof that its propulsion system is still operating.

In a few days, it will be at perihelion, where it would logically make
any major orbit change.  We may therefore soon have a new planet -
Moving through the solar space over which my government has
jurisdiction.  Or it may, of course, make additional changes and occupy
a final orbit at any distance from the sun.  It could even become a
satellite of a major planet such as Earth ...

'We are therefore, fellow delegates, faced with a whole spectrum of
possibilities, some of them very serious indeed.  It is foolish to
pretend that these creatures must be benevolent and will not interfere
with us in any way.

If they come to our solar system, they need something from it.  Even if
it is only scientific knowledge - consider how that knowledge may be
used ...

'What confronts us now is a technology hundreds perhaps thousands - of
years in advance of ours, and a culture which may have no points of
contact whatsoever.

We have been studying the behaviour of the biological robots - the biots
- inside Rama, as shown on the films that Commander Norton has relayed,
and we have arrived T J at certain conclusions which we wish to pass on
to you.

'On Mercury we are perhaps unlucky in having no indigenous life-forms to
observe.  But, of course, we have a complete record of terrestrial
zoology, and we find in it one striking parallel with Rama.

'This is the termite colony.  Like Rama, it is an artificial world with
a controlled environment.  Like Rama, its functioning depends upon a
whole series of specialized biological machines - workers, builders,
farmers - warriors.  And although we do not know if Rama has a queen, I
suggest that the island known as New York serves a similar function.

'Now, it would obviously be absurd to press this analOgy too far; it
breaks down at many points.  But I put it to you for this reason.

'What degree of cooperation or understanding would ever be possible
between human beings and termites?  When there is no conflict of
interest, we tolerate each other.  But when either needs the other's
territory or resources, no quarter is given.

'Thanks to our technology and our intelligence, we can always win, if we
are sufficiently determined.  But sometimes it is not easy, and there
are those who believe that, in the long run, final victory may yet go to
the termites ...

'With this in mind, consider now the appalling threat that Rama may - I
do not say must - present to human civilization.  What steps have we
taken to counter it, if the worst eventuality should occur?  None
whatsoever; we Al `Z I, GENERAL ASSEMBLY 213 have merely talked and
speculated and written learned papers.

'Well, my fellow delegates, Mercury has done more than this.  Acting
under the provisions of Clause 34 of the Space Treaty Of 2057, which
entitled us to take any steps necessary to protect the integrity of our
solar space, we have dispatched a high-energy nuclear device to Rama. We
will indeed be happy if we never have to utilize it.  But now, at least,
we are not helpless - as we were before.

'It may be argued that we have acted unilaterally, without prior
consultation.  We admit that.  But does anyone here imagine - with all
respect, Mister President that we could have secured any such agreement
in the time available?  We consider that we are acting not only for
ourselves, but for the whole human race.  All future generations may one
day thank us for our foresight.

'We recognized that it would be a tragedy - even a crime - to destroy an
artifact as wonderful as Rama.  If there is any way in which this can be
avoided, without risk to humanity, we will be very happy to hear of it.
We have not found one, and time is running out.

'Within the next few days, before Rama reaches perihelion, the choice
will have to be made.  We will, of course, give ample warning to
Endeavour - but we would advise Commander Norton always to be ready to
leave at an hour's notice.

It is conceivable that Rama may undergo further dramatic transformations
at any moment.

'That is all, Mister President, fellow delegates.  I thank you for your
attention.  I look forward to your cooperation."

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Command Decision F

'Well, Rod, how do the Hermians fit into your theology 'Only too well,
Commander,' replied Rodrigo with a humourless smile.  'It's the age-old
conflict between the forces of good and the forces of evil.  And there
arc times when men have to take sides in such a conflict." I thought it
would be something like that, Norton told himself.  This situation must
have been a shock to Boris, gned himself to passive acqui but he would
not have resi escence.  The Cosmo-Christers were very energetic,
competent people.  Indeed, in some ways they were remarkably like the
Hermians.

'I take it you have a plan, Rod." Yes, Commander.  It's really quite
simple.  We merely have to disable the bomb." 'Oh.  And how do you
propose to do that?" 'With a small pair of wire-cutters." If this had
been anyone else, Norton would have assumed that they were joking.  But
not Boris Rodrigo.

'Now just a minute[ It's bristling with cameras.  Do you suppose the
Hermians will just sit and watch you?" 'Of course; that's all they can
do.  When the signal reaches them, it will be far too late.  I can
easily finish the job in ten minutes." 'I see.  They certainly will be
mad.  But suppose the bomb is booby-trapped so that interference sets it
off ?, 'That seems very unlikely; what would be the purpose?  This bomb
was built for a specific deepspace mission, and it will be fitted with
all sorts of safety devices to COMMAND DECISION215 prevent detonation
except on a positivecommand.  But that's a risk I'm prepared to take -
andit can be done without endangering the ship.  I've worked everything
out." 'I'm sure you have,' said Norton.

The idea was fascinating - almost seductive in its appeal; he
particularly liked the idea of the frustrated Hermians, and would give a
good deal to see their reactions when they realized too late - what was
happening to their deadly toy.

But there were other complications, and they seemed to multiply as
Norton surveyed the problem.

He was facing by far the most difficult, and the most crucial, decision
in his entire career.

And that was a ridiculous understatement.  He was faced with the most
difficult decision any commander had ever had to make; the future of the
entire human race might well depend upon it.  For just suppose the
Hermians were right?

When Rodrigo had left, he switched on the DO NOT DISTURB sign; he could
not remember when he had last used it, and was mildly surprised that it
was working.  Now, in the heart of his crowded, busy ship, he was
completely alone - except for the portrait of Captain James Cook, gazing
at him down the corridors of time.

It was impossible to consult with Earth; he had already been warned that
any messages might be tapped - pehaps by relay devices on the bomb
itself.  That left the whole responsibility in his hands.

There was a story he had heard somewhere about a President of the United
States - was it Roosevelt or Perez?  - who had a sign on his desk saying
'The buck stops here'.  Norton was not quite certain what a buck was,
but he knew when one had stopped at his desk.

He could do nothing, and wait until the Hermians advised him to leave.
How would that look in the histories of the future?  Norton was not
greatly concerned with posthumous fame or infamy, yet he would not care
to be remembered for ever as the accessory to a cosmic crime _12 it16
which it had been in his power to prevent.

And the plan was flawless.  As he had expected, Rodrigo had worked out
every detail, anticipated every possibility even the remote danger that
the bomb might be triggered when tampered with.  If that happened,
Endeavour could still be safe, behind the shield of Rama.  As for
Lieutenant Rodrigo himself, he seemed to regard the possibility of
instant apotheosis with complete equanimity.

Yet, even if the bomb was successfully disabled, that would be far from
the end of the matter.  The Hermians might try again - unless some way
could be found of stopping them.  But at least weeks of time would have
been bought; Rama would be far past perihelion before another missile
could possibly reach it.  By then, hopefully, the worst fears of the
alarmists might have been disproved.  Or the reverse ...

To act, or not to act - that was the question.  Never before had
Commander Norton felt such a close kinship with the Prince of Denmark.
Whatever he did, the possibilities for good and evil seemed in perfect
balance.  He was faced with the most morally difficult of all decisions.
If his choice was wrong, he would know very quickly.  But if he was
correct - he might never be able to prove it ...

It was no use relying any further on logical arguments and the endless
mapping of alternative futures.  That way, one could go round and round
in circles for ever.  The time had come to listen to his inner voices.

He returned the calm, steady gaze across the centuries.  .1 agree with
you, Captain,' he whispered.  'The human race has to live with its
conscience.

Whatever the Hermians argue, survival is not everything." He pressed the
call button for the bridge circuit and said slowly, 'Lieutenant Rodrigo
- I'd like to see you." Then he closed his eyes, hooked his thumbs in
the restraining straps of his chair, and prepared to enjoy a few moments
of total relaxation.

It might be some time before he would experience it again.

CHAPTER FORTY

Saboteur

The scooter had been stripped of all unnecessary equipinent; it was now
merely an open framework holding together propulsion, guidance and
life-support systems.

Even the seat for the second pilot had been removed, for every
kilogramme ofextra mass had to be paid for in mission time.

That was one of the reasons, though not the most important, why Rodrigo
had insisted on going along.  It was such a simple job that there was no
need for any extra hands, and the mass of a passenger would cost several
minutes of flight time.  Now the stripped-down scooter could accelerate
at over a third of a gravity; it could make the trip from Endeavour to
the bomb in four minutes.  That left six to spare; it should be
sufficient.

Rodrigo looked back only once when he had left the ship; he saw that, as
planned, it had lifted from the central axis and was thrusting gently
away across the spinning disc of the North Face.  By the time he reached
the bomb, it would have placed the thickness of Rama between them.

He took his time, flying over the polar plain.  There was no hurry here,
because the bomb's cameras could not yet see him, and he could therefore
conserve fuel.  Then he drifted over the curving rim of the world - and
there was the missile, glittering in sunlight fiercer even than that
shining on the planet of its birth.

Rodrigo had already punched in the guidance instruc x18 tions.  He
initiated the sequence; the scooter spun on its gyros, and came up to
full thrust in a matter of seconds.  At first the sensation of weight
seemed crushing; then Rodrigo adjusted to it.  He had, after all,
comfortably endured twice as much inside Rama - and had been born under
three times as much on Earth.

The huge, curving exterior wall of the fifty-kilometer cylinder was
slowly falling away beneath him as the scooter aimed itself directly at
the bomb.  Yet it was impossible to judge Rama's size, since it was
completely 11 smooth and featureless - so featureless, indeed, that it
was difficult to tell that it was spinning.

One hundred seconds into the mission; he was approaching the halfway
point.

The bomb was still too far away to show any details, but it was much
brighter against the jet-black sky.  It was strange to see no stars not
even brilliant Earth or dazzling Venus; the dark filters which protected
his eyes against the deadly glare made that impossible.  Rodrigo guessed
that he was breaking a record; probably no other man had ever engaged in
extra-vehicular work so close to the sun.  It was lucky for him that
solar activity was low.

At two minutes ten seconds the flip-over light started flashing, thrust
dropped to zero, and the scooter spun through 18o degrees.  Full thrust
was back in an instant, but now he was decelerating at the same mad rate
of three metres per second squared - rather better than that, in fact,
since he had lost almost half his propellent mass.  The bomb was
twenty-five kilometres away; he would be there in another two minutes.
He had hit a top speed of fifteen hundred kilometres an hour - which,
for a spacescooter, was utter insanity, and probably another record. But
this was hardly a routine EVA, and he knew precisely what he was doing.

The bomb was growing; and now he could see the main antenna, holding
steady on the invisible star of Mercury.  Along that beam, the image of
his approaching scooter had been flashing at the speed of light for the
last Yl three minutes.  There were still two to go, before it reached
Mercury.

What would the Hermians do, when they saw him?  There would be
consternation, of course; they would realize instantly that he had made
a rendezvous with the bomb several minues before they even knew he was
on the way.  Probably some stand-by observer would call higher authority
- that would take more time.  But even in the worst possible case - even
if the officer on duty had authority to detonate the bomb, and pressed
the button medlately - it would take another five minutes for the signal
to arrive.

Though Rodrigo was not gambling on it - CosmoChristers never gambled -
he was quite sure that there would be no such instantaneous reaction.
The Hermians would hesitate to destroy a reconnaissance vehicle fro In
Endeavour, even if they suspected its motives.  They would certainly
attempt some form of communication first - and that would mean more
delay.

And there was an even better reason; they would not waste a gigaton bomb
on a mere scooter.  Wasted it would be, if it was detonated twenty
kilometres from its target.  They would have to move it first.  Oh, he
had plenty of time ...  but he would still assume the very worst.

He would act as if the triggering impulse would arrive in the shortest
possible time - just five minutes.

As the scooter closed in across the last few hundred metres, Rodrigo
quickly matched the details he could now see with those he had studied
in the photographs taken at long range.  What had been only a collection
of Pictures became hard metal and smooth plastic - no longer abstract,
but a deadly reality.

The bomb was a cylinder about ten metres long and three in diameter - by
a strange coincidence, almost the same proportions as Rama itself.  It
was attached to the framework of the carrier vehicle by an open
lattice-work of short I-beams.

For some reason, probably to do with the location of the centre of mass,
it was supported at right 220 SABOTEUR 221 angles to the axis of the
carrier, so that it conveyed an appropriately sinister hammer-head
impression.  It was indeed a hammer, one powerful enough to smash a
world.

From each end of the bomb, a bundle of braided cables 4r, ran along the
cylindrical side and disappeared through the lattice-work into the
interior of the vehicle.  All communication and control was here; there
was no antenna of any kind on the bomb itself.  Rodrigo had only to cut
those two sets of cables and there would be nothing here but harmless
inert metal.

Although this was exactly what he had expected, it still seemed a little
too easy.  He glanced at his watch; it would be another thirty seconds
before the Hermians, even if they had been watching when he rounded the
edge of Rama, could know of his existence.  He had an absolutely certain
five minutes for uninterrupted work and a ninety-nine percent
probability of much longer than that.

As soon as the scooter had drifted to a complete halt, Rodrigo grappled
it to the missile framework so that the two formed a rigid structure.
That took only seconds; he had already chosen his tools, and was out of
the pilot's seat at once, only slightly hampered by the stiffness of his
heavy-insulation suit.

The first thing he found himself inspecting was a small metal plate
bearing the inscription: DEPARTMENT OF POWER ENGINEERING Section D, 47,
Sunset Boulevard, VulcanoPOlis, 17464 For information apply to Mr Henry
K.  Jones Rodrigo suspected that, in a very few minutes, Mr Jones might
be rather busy.

The heavy wire-cutters made short work of the cable.  As the first
strands parted, Rodrigo gave scarcely a thought to the fires of hell
that were pent up only centimetres away; if his actions triggered them,
he wouldn ever know.

He glanced again at his watch;'this had taken less than a minute, which
meant that he was on schedule.  Now for the back-up cable - and then he
could head for home, in full view of the furious and frustrated
Hermians.

He was just beginning to work on the second cable assembly when he felt
a faint vibration in the metal he was touching.  Startled, he looked
back along the body of the missile.

The characteristic blue-violet glow of a plasma thruster in action was
hovering round one of the attitude control jets.  The bomb was preparing
to move.

The message from Mercury was brief, and devastating.  It arrived two
minutes after Rodrigo had disappeared around the edge of Rama.

COMMANDER ENDEAVOUR FROM MERCURY SPACE CONTROL, INFERNO WEST.  YOU HAVE
ONE HOUR FROM RECEIPT OF THIS MESSAGE TO LEAVE VICINITY OF RAMA. SUGGEST
YOU PROCEED MAXIMUM ACCELERATION ALONG SPIN AXIS.  REQUEST
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.

MESSAGE ENDS.

Norton read it with sheer disbelief, then anger.  He felt a childish
impulse to radio back that all his crew were inside Rama, and it would
take hours to get everyone out.  But that would achieve nothing - except
perhaps to test the will and nerve of the Hermians.

And why, several days before perihelion, had they decided to act?  He
wondered if the mounting pressure of public opinion was becoming too
great, and they decided to present the rest of the human race with a
fait accompli.  It seemed an unlikely explanation; such sensitivity
would have been uncharacteristic.

There was no way in which he could recall Rodrigo, for the scooter was
now in the radio shadow of Rama and would be out of contact until they
were in line of sigb t again.  That would not be until the mission was
completed - or had failed.

He would have to wait it out; there was still plenty of time - a full
fifty minutes.  Meanwhile, he had decided on the most effective answer
to Mercury.

77*He would ignore the message completely, and see what the Hermians did
next.i Rodrigo's first sensation, when the bomb started to move, was not
one of physical fear; it was something much more devastating.  He
believed that the universe operated according to strict laws, which not
even God Himself could disobey - much less the Hermians.  No message
couldi travel faster than light; he was five minutes ahead of anything
that Mercury could do.

This could only be a coincidence - fantastic, and perhaps deadly, but no
more than that.  By chance, a control signal must have been sent to the
bomb at about the time he was leaving Endeavour; while he was travelling
fifty kilometres, it had covered eighty million.

Or perhaps this was only an automatic change of attitude, to counter
over-heating somewhere in the vehicle.

There were places where the skin temperature approached fifteen hundred
degrees, and Rodrigo had been very careful to keep in the shadows as far
as possible.

A second thruster started to fire, checking the spin given by the first.
No, this was not a mere thermal adjustment.  The bomb was re-orientating
itself, to point towards Rama ...

Useless to wonder why this was happening at this precise moment in time.
There was one thing in his favour; the missile was a low acceleration
device.  A tenth of a gee was the most that it could manage.  He could
hang on.

He checked the grapples attaching the scooter to the bomb framework, and
re-checked the safety line on his own suit.  A cold anger was growing in
his mind, addingt to his determination.  Did this manoeuvre mean that
the Hermians were going to explode the bomb without warning, giving
Eneavour no chance to escape?  That seemed incredible - an act not only
of brutality but of folly, calculated to turn the rest of the solar
system against them.  And what would have made them ignore the solemn
promise of their own Ambassador?

MFhatever their plan, they would not get away with it.

The second message from Mercury was identical with the first, and
arrived ten minues later.  So they had extended the deadline - Norton
still had one hour.

And they had obviously waited until a reply from Endeavour could have
reached them before calling him again.

Now there was another factor; by this time they must have seen Rodrigo,
and would have had several minutes in which to take action.  Their
instructions could already be on the way.  They could arrive at any
second.

He should be preparing to leave.  At any moment, the sky-filling bulk of
Rama might become incandescent along the edges, blazing with a transient
glory that would far outshine the sun.

When the main thrust came on, Rodrigo was securely anchored.  Only
twenty seconds later, it cut off again.  He did a quick mental
calculation; the delta vee could not have been more than fifteen
kilometres an hour.  The bomb would take over an hour to reach Rama;
perhaps it was only moving in close to get a quicker reaction.  If so,
that was a wise precaution; but the Hermians had left it too late.

Rodrigo glanced at his watch, though by now he was almost aware of the
time without having to check.  On Mercury, they would now be seeing him
heading purposefully towards the bomb, and less than two kilometres away
from it.  They could have no doubt of his intentions, and would be
wondering if he had already carried them out.

The second set of cables went as easily as the first; like 49 any good
Workman, Rodrigo had chosen his tools well.

The bomb was disarmed; or, to be more accurate, it could no longer be
detonated by remote command.

Yet there was one other possibility, and he could not afford to ignore
it.  There were no external contact fuses, but there might be internal
ones, armed by the shock of impact.  The Hermians still had control over
their vehicle's movements, and could crash it into Rama whenever they
wished.

Rodrigo's work was not yet completely finished.

Five minutes from now, in that control room somewhere on Mercury, they
would see him crawling back along the exterior of the missile, carrying
the modestlysized wire-cutters that had neutralized the mightiest weapon
ever built by man.  He was almost tempted to wave at the camera, but
decided that it would seem undignified; after all, he was making
history, and millions would watch this scene in the years to come.
Unless, of course, the Hermians destroyed the recording in a fit of
pique; he would hardly blame them.

He reached the mounting of the long-range antenna, and drifted
hand-over-hand along it to the big dish.  His faithful cutters made
short work of the multiplex feed system, chewing up cables and laser
wave guides alike.  When he made the last snip, the antenna started to
swing slowly around; the unexpected movement took him by surprise, until
he realized that he had destroyed its automatic lock on Mercury.  just
five minutes from now, the Hermians would lose all contact with their
servant.

Not only was it impotent; now it was blind and deaf.

Rodrigo climbed slowly back to the scooter, released the shackles, and
swung it round until the forward bumpers were pressing against the
missile, as close as possible to its centre of mass.

He brought thrust up to full power, and held it there for twenty
seconds.

Pushing against many times its own mass, the scooter responded very
sluggishly.  When Rodrigo cut the thrust back to zero, he took a careful
reading of the bomb's new velocity vector.

It would miss Rama by a wide margin - and it could be located again with
precision at any future time.  It was, after all, a very valuable piece
of equipment.

Lieutenant Rodrigo was a man of almost pathological honesty.  He would
not like the Hermians to accuse him of losing their property.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Hero

'Darling,' began Norton, 'this nonsense has cost us more than a day, but
at least it's given me a chance to talk to you.

'I'm still in the ship, and she's heading back to station at the polar
axis.  We picked up Rod an hour ago, looking as if he'd just come off
duty after a quiet watch.

I suppose neither of us will ever be able to visit Mercury again, and
I'm wondering if we're going to be treated as heroes or villains when we
get back to Earth.  But my conscience is clear; I'm sure we did the
right thing.  I wonder if the Rainans will ever say "thank you".

'We can stay here only two more days; unlike Rama, we don't have a
kilometer-thick skin to protect us from the sun.  The hull's already
developing dangerous hotspots and we've had to put out some local
screening.  I'm sorry - I didn't want to bore you with my problems ...

'So there's time for just one more trip into Rama, and I intend to make
the most of it.  But don't worry - I'm not taking any chances." He
stopped the recording.  That, to say the least, was stretching the
truth.  There was danger and uncertainty about every moment inside Rama;
no man could ever feel really at home there, in the presence of forces
beyond his understanding.  And on this final trip, now that he knew they
would never return and that no future operations would be jeopardized,
he intended to press his luck just a little further.

'In forty-eight hours, then, we'll have completed this HERO 227 mission.
What happens then is still uncertain; as you know, we've used virtually
all our fuel getting into this orbit.  I'm still waiting to hear if a
tanker can rendezvous with us in time to get back to Earth, or whether
we'll have to make planet-fall at Mars.

Anyway, I should be home by Christmas.  Tell junior I'm sorry I can't
bring a baby biot; there's no such animal ...

'We're all fine, but we're very tired.  I've earned a long leave after
all this, and we'll make up for lost time.  Whatever they say about me,
you can claim you're married to a hero.  How many wives have a husband
who saved a world?" As always, he listened carefully to the tape before
duping it, to make sure that it was applicable to both his families.  It
was strange to think that he did not know which of them he would see
first; usually, his schedule was determined at least a year in advance,
by the inexorable movements of the planets themselves.

But that was in the days before Rama; now nothing would ever be the same
again.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Temple of Glass

'If we try it,' said Karl Mercer, 'do you think the biots will stop us?"
'They may; that's one of the things I want to find out.

Why are you looking at me like that?" Mercer gave his slow, secret grin,
which was liable to be set off at any moment by a private joke he might
or might .mod not share with his shipmates.

'I was wondering, Skipper, if you think you own Rama.  Until now, you've
vetoed any attempt to cut into buildings.  Why the switch?  Have the
Hermians, given you ideas?" Norton laughed, then suddenly checked
himself.  It was a shrewd question, and he was not sure if the obvious
answers were the right ones.

'Perhaps I have been ultra-cautious - I've tried to avoid trouble.  But
this is our last chance; if we're forced to retreat we won't have lost
much." 'Assuming that we retreat in good order." 'Of course.  But the
biots have never shown hostility; and except for the Spiders, I don't
believe there's anything here that can catch us - if we do have to run
for it." 'You may run, Skipper, but I intend to leave with dignity.  And
incidentally, I've decided why the biots are so polite to us." 'It's a
little late for a new theory." 'Here it is, anyway.  They think we're
Ramans.  They can't tell the difference between one oxy-eater and
another." 'I don't believe they're that stupid." 'It's not a matter of
stupidity.  They've been programmed for their particular jobs, and we
simply don't come into their frame of reference." 'Perhaps you're right.
We may find out - as soon as we start to work on London." Joe Calvert
had always enjoyed those old bank-robbery movies, but he had never
expected to be involved in one.  Yet this was, essentially, what he was
doing now.

The deserted streets of 'London' seemed full of menace, though he knew
that was only his guilty conscience.  He did not really believe that the
sealed and windowless structures ranged all around them were full of
watchful inhabitants, waiting to emerge in angry hordes as soon as the
invaders laid a hand on their property.  In fact, he was quite certain
that this whole complex - like all the other towns - was merely some
kind of storage area.

Yet a second fear, also based on innumerable ancient crime dramas, could
be better grounded.  There might be no clanging alarm bells and
screaming sirens, but it was reasonable to assume that Rama would have
some kind of warning system.

How otherwise did the biots know when and where their services were
needed?

'Those without goggles, turn your backs,' ordered Sergeant Myron.  There
was a smell of nitric oxides as the air itself started to burn in the
beam of the laser torch, and a steady sizzling as the fiery knife sliced
towards secrets that had been hidden since the birth of man.

Nothing material could resist this concentration of power, and the cut
proceeded smoothly at a rate of several metres a minute.  In a
remarkably short time, a section large enough to admit a man had been
sliced out.

As the cut-away section showed no signs of moving, Myron tapped it
gently then harder - then banged on it with all his strength.  It fell
inwards with a hollow, reverberating crash.

23( Once again, as he had done during that very first eninto Rama,
Norton remembered the archaeologist A trance who had opened the old
Egyptian tomb.

He did not expect to see the glitter of gold; in fact, he had no
preconceived ideas at all, as he crawled through the opening, his
flashlight held in front of him.

A Greek temple made of glass that was his first impression.  The
building was filled with row upon row of it vertical crystalline
columns, about a metre wide and stretching from floor to ceiling.

There were hundreds of them, marching away into the darkness beyond the
reach of his light.

Norton walked towards the nearest column and directed his beam into its
interior.  Refracted as through a cylindrical lens, the light fanned out
on the far side to be focused and refocused, getting fainter with each
repetition, in the array of pillars beyond.  He felt that he win as the
middle of some complicated demonstration in optics.

'Very pretty,' said the practical Mercer, 'but what does it mean?  Who
needs a forest of glass pillars?" Norton rapped gently on one column. It
sounded solid, though more metallic than crystalline.  He was completely
baffled, and so followed a piece of useful advice he had heard long ago:
'When in doubt, say nothing and move on." As he reached the next column,
which looked exactly like the first, he heard an exclamation of surprise
from Mercer.

"could have sworn this pillar was empty - now there's something inside
it." Norton glanced quickly back.

'Where?" he said.  'I don't see anything." He followed the direction of
Mercer's pointing finger.  it was aimed at nothing; the column was still
completely transparent.

'You can't see it?" said Mercer incredulously.  'Come around this side.
Damn - now I've lost it I' 'What's going on here?" demanded Calvert.  It
was AL several minutes before he got even the first approximation to an
answer.

The columns were not transparent from every angle or under all
illuminations.  As one walked around them, objects would suddenly flash
into view, apparently embedded in their depths like flies in amber - and
would then disappear again.  There were dozens of them, all different.
They looked absolutely real and solid, yet many seemed to occupy the
identical volume of space.

'Holograms,' said Calvert.  'Just like a museum on Earth." That was the
obvious explanation, and therefore Norton viewed it with suspicion.  His
doubts grew as he examined the other columns, and conjured up the images
stored in their interiors.

Hand-tools (though for huge and peculiar hands), containers, small
machines with keyboards that appeared ito have been made for more than
five fingers, scientific nstruments, startlingly conventional domestic
utensils, including knives and plates which apart from their size would
not have attracted a second glance on any terrestrial table ...  they
were all there, with hundreds of less identifiable objects, often
jumbled up together in the same pillar.  A museum, surely, would have
some logical arrangement, some segregation of related items.  This
seemed to be a completely random collection of hardware.

They had photographed the elusive images inside a score of the crystal
pillars when the sheer variety of items gave Norton a clue.  Perhaps
this was not a collection, but a catalogue, indexed according to some
arbitrary but perfectly logical system.  He thought of the wild
juxtapositions that any dictionary or alphabetized list will give, and
tried the idea on his companions.

'I see what you mean,' said Mercer.  'The Ramans might be equally
surprised to find us putting - ah - camshafts next to cameras." 'Or
books beside boots', added Calvert, after several seconds' hard
thinking.  One could play this game for hours, he decided, with
increasing degrees of impropriety.

'That's the idea,' replied Norton.  'This may be an indexed catalogue
for 3-D images templates - solid blueprints, if you like to call them
that." 'For what purpose?" 'Well, you know the theory about the biots
...  the idea that they don't exist until they're needed and then
they're created - synthesized - from patterns stored somewhere?" 'I
see,' said Mercer slowly and thoughtfully.  'So when a Raman needs a
left-handed blivet, he punches out the ode number, and a copy is
manufactured from correct c the pattern in here." 'Something like that.
But please don't ask me about the practical details." The pillars
through which they had been moving had been steadily growing in size,
and were now more than two metres in diameter.  The images were
correspondingly larger; it was obvious that, for doubtless excellent
reasons, the Ramans believed in sticking to a one-to-one scale.  Norton
wondered how they stored anything really big, if this was the case.

To increase their rate of coverage, the four explorers had now spread
out through the crystal columns and were taking photographs as quickly
as they could get their cameras focused on the fleeting images.  This
was an astonishing piece of luck, Norton told himself, though he felt
that he had earned it; they could not possibly have made a better choice
than this Illustrated Catalogue of Raman Artifacts.  And yet, in another
way, it could hardly have been more frustrating.

There was nothing actually here, except impalpable patterns of light and
darkness; these apparently solid objects did not really exist.

Even knowing this, more than once Norton felt an almost irresistible
urge to laser his way into one of the pillars, so that he could have
something material to take _AW back to Earth.  It was the same impulse,
he told himself wryly, that would prompt a monkey to grab the reflection
of a banana in a mirror.

He was photographing what seemed to be some kind of optical device when
Calvert's shout started him running through the pillars.

'Skipper - Karl - Will - look at this I' Joe was prone to sudden
enthusiasms, but what he had found was enough to justify any amount of
excitement.

Inside one of the two-metre columns was an elaborate harness, or
uniform, obviously made for a verticallystanding creature, much taller
than a man.  A very narrow central metal band apparently surrounded the
waist, thorax or some division unknown to terrestrial zoology.  From
this rose three slim columns, tapering outwards and ending in a
perfectly circular belt, an impressive metre in diameter.  Loops equally
spaced along it could only be intended to go round upper limbs or arms.

Three of them ...

There were numerous pouches, buckles, bandoliers from which tools (or
weapons?) protruded, pipes and electrical conductors, even small black
boxes that would have looked perfectly at home in an electronics lab on
Earth.  The whole arrangement was almost as complex as a spacesuit,
though it obviously provided only partial covering for the creature
wearing it.

And was that creature a Raman?  Norton asked himself.  We'll probably
never know; but it must have been intelligent - no mere animal could
cope with all that sophisticated equipment.

'About two and a half metres high,' said Mercer thoughtfully, 'not
counting the head whatever that was like." 'With three arms - and
presumably three legs.  The same plan as the Spiders, on a much more
massive scale.  Do you suppose that's a coincidence?" 'Probably not.  We
design robots in our own image; we might expect the Ramans to do the
same." Joe Calvert, unusually subdued, was looking at the display with
something like awe.

'Do you suppose they know we're here?" he half-whispered.

'I doubt it,' said Mercer.  'We've not even reached their threshold of
consciousness - though the Hermians certainly had a good try." They were
still standing there, unable to drag themselves away, when Pieter called
from the Hub, his voice full of urgent concerti.

'Skipper - you'd better get outside." 'What is it - biots heading this
way?" 'No - something much more serious.  The lights are going out."

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Retreat

When he hastily emerged from the hole they had lasered it seemed to
Norton that the six suns of Rama were as brilliant as ever.  Surely, he
thought, Pieter must have made a mistake ...  that's not like him at all
...

But Pieter had anticipated just this reaction.

'It happened so slowly,' he explained apologetically, 'that it was a
long time before I noticed any difference.  But there's no doubt about
it - I've taken a meter reading.  The light level's down forty percent."
Now, as his eyes readjusted themselves after the gloom of the glass
temple, Norton could believe him.  The long day of Rama was drawing to
its close.

It was still as warm as ever, yet Norton felt himself shivering.  He had
known this sensation once before, durIng a beautiful summer day on
Earth.  There had been an inexplicable weakening of light as if darkness
was falling from the air, or the sun had lost its strength - though
there was not a cloud in the sky.

Then he remembered; a partial eclipse was in progress.

'This is it,' he said grimly.  'We're going home.  Leave all the
equipment behind - we won't need it again." Now, he hoped, one piece of
planning was about to prove its worth.  He had selected London for this
raid because no other town was so close to a stairway; the foot of Beta
was only four kilometres away.

They set off at the steady, loping trot which was the most comfortable
mode of travelling at half a gravity.  Norton set a pace which, he
estimated, would get them to the edge of the plain without exhaustion,
and in the minimum of time.  He was acutely aware of the eight
kilometres they would still have to climb when they had reached Beta,
but he would feel much safer when they had actually started the ascent.

The first tremor came when they had almost reached the stairway.  It was
very slight, and instinctively Norton turned towards the south,
expecting to see another display of fireworks around the Horns.

But Rama never seemed to repeat itself exactly; if there were any
electrical discharges above those needle-sharp mountains, they were too
faint to be seen.

'Bridge,' he called, 'did you notice that?"

'Yes, Skipper - very small shock.  Could be another attitude change.
We're watching the rate gyro - nothing yet.  Just.a minute!  Positive
readingl Can just detect it - less than a microradian per second, but
holding." So Rama was beginning to turn, though with almost
imperceptible slowness.  Those earlier shocks might have been a false
alarm - but this, surely, was the real thing.

'Rate increasing - five microrad.  Hello, did you feel that shock?" 'We
certainly did.  Get all the ship's systems operational.  We may have to
leave in a hurry." 'Do you expect an orbit change already?  We're still
a long way from perihelion." 'I don't think Rama works by our textbooks.
Nearly at Beta.  We'll rest there for five minutes." Five minutes was
utterly inadequate, yet it seemed an age.  For there was now no doubt
that the light was failing, and failing fast.

Though they were all equipped with flashlights, the thought of darkness
here was now intolerable; they had grown so psychologically accustomed
to the endless day that it was hard to remember the conditions under
which they had first explored this world.  They felt an overwhelming
urge to escape - to get out into the light of the RETREAT 237 Sun, a
kilometer away on the other side of these cylindrical walls.

'Hub Control I' called Norton.  'Is the searchlight operating?  We may
need it in a hurry."

'Yes, Skipper.  Here it comes." A reassuring spark of light started to
shine eight kilometres above their heads.  Even against the now fading
day of Rama, it looked surprisingly feeble; but it had served them
before, and would guide them once again if they needed it.

This, Norton was grimly aware, would be the longest and most
nerve-wracking climb they had ever done.  Whatever happened, it would be
impossible to hurry; if they over-exerted themselves, they would simply
collapse somewhere on that vertiginous slope, and would have to wait
until their protesting muscles permitted them to continue.

By this time, they must be one of the fittest crews that had ever
carried out a space mission; but there were limits to what flesh and
blood could do.

After an hour's steady plodding they had reached the fourth section of
the stairway, about three kilometres from the plain.  From now on ' it
would be much easier; gravity was already down to a third of Earth
value.  Although there had been minor shocks from time to time, no other
unusual phenomena had occurred, and there was still plenty of light.
They began to feel more optimistic, and even to wonder if they had left
too soon.  One thing was certain, however; there was no going back. They
had all walked for the last time on the plain of Rama.

It was while they were taking a ten-minute rest on the fourth platform
that Joe Calvert suddenly exclaimed: 'What's that noise, Skipper?"
'Noise I - I don't hear anything." 'High-pitched whistle - dropping in
frequency, you must hear it." 'Your ears are younger than mine - oh, now
I do." The whistle seemed to come from everywhere.  Soon it C *38 was
loud, even piercing, and falling swiftly in pitch.  Then it suddenly
stopped.

A few seconds later it came again, repeating the same sequence.  It had
all the mournful, compelling quality of a lighthouse siren sending out
its warnings into the fogshrouded night.  There was a message here, and
an urgent one.  It was not designed for their ears, but they understood
it.  Then, as if to make doubly sure, it was reinforced by the lights
themselves.

They dimmed almost to extinction, then started to flash.  Brilliant
beads, like ball lightning, raced along the six narrow valleys that had
once illuminated this world.  They moved from both Poles towards the Sea
in a synchronized, hypnotic rhythm which could have only one meaning.
'To the Sea!" the lights were calling, 'To the Seal' And the summons was
hard to resist; there was not a man who did not feel a compulsion to
turn back, and to seek oblivion in the water of Rama.

'Hub Control I' Norton called urgently.  'Can you see what's happening?"
The voice of Pieter came back to him; he sounded awed, and more than a
little frightened.

'Yes, Skipper.  I'm looking across at the Southern continent.  There are
still scores of biots over there - including some big ones.  Cranes,
Bulldozers lots of Scavengers.  And they're all rushing back to the Sea
faster than I've ever seen them move before.  There goes a Crane - right
over the edge!  just like Jimmy, but going down a lot quicker ...  it
smashed to pieces when it hit ...  and here come the Sharks - they're
tearing into it ...  ugh; it's not a pleasant sight ...

'Now I'm looking at the plain.  Here's a Bulldozer that seems to have
broken down ...  it's going round and round in circles.  Now a couple of
Crabs are tearing into it, pulling it to pieces ...  Skipper, I think
you'd better get back right away." 'Believe me,' Norton said with deep
feeling, 'we're coming just as quickly as we can."

RETREAT 239 Rama was battening down the hatches, like a ship preparing
for a storm.

That was Norton's overwhelming impression, though he could not have put
it on a logical basis.  He no longer felt completely rational; two
compulsions were warring in his mind - the need to escape, and the
desire to obey those bolts of lightning that still flashed across the
sky, ordering him to join the biots in their march to the sea.

One more section of stairway - another ten-minute pause, to let the
fatigue poisons drain from his muscles.  Then on again - another two
kilometres to go, but let's try not to think about thatThe maddening
sequence of descending whistles abruptly ceased.  At the same moment,
the fireballs racing along the slots of the Straight Valleys stopped
their sea ward strobing; Rama's six linear suns were once more
continuous bands of light.

But they were fading fast, and sometimes they flickered, as if
tremendous jolts of energy were being drained from waning power sources.
From time to time, there were slight tremors underfoot; the bridge
reported thai Rama was still swinging with imperceptible slowness, like
a compass needle responding to a weak magnetic field This was perhaps
reassuring; it was when Rama stopped its swing that Norton would really
begin to worry.

All the biots had gone, so Pieter reported.  In the whole interior of
Rama, the only movement was that of human beings, crawling with painful
slowness up the curving face of the north dome.

Norton had long since overcome the vertigo he had felt on that first
ascent, but now a new fear was beginning to creep into his mind.  They
were so vulnerable here, on this endless climb from plain to Hub.
Suppose that, when it had completed its attitude change, Rama started to
accelerate?

Presumably its thrust would be along the axis.  If it was in the
northward direction, that would be no problem; they would be held a
little more firmly against the slope which they were ascending.  But if
it was towards the south, they might be swept off into space, to fall
back eventually on the plain far below.

He tried to reassure himself with the thought that any possible
acceleration would be very feeble.  Dr. Perera's calculations had been
most convincing; Rama could not possibly accelerate at more than a
fiftieth of a gravity, or the Cylindrical Sea would climb the southern
cliff and flood an entire continent.

But Perera had been in a comfortable study back on Earth, not with
kilometers of overhanging metal apparently about to crash down upon his
head.  And perhaps Rama was designed for periodic floodingNo, that was
ridiculous.  It was absurd to imagine that all these trillions of tons
could suddenly start moving with sufficient acceleration to shake him
loose.  Nevertheless, for all the remainder of the ascent, Norton never
let himself get far from the security of the handrail.

Lifetimes later, the stairway ended; only a few hundTed metres of
vertical, recessed ladder were left.  It was no longer necessary to
climb this section since one man at the Hub, hauling on a cable, could
easily hoist another against the rapidly diminishing gravity.  Even at
the bottom of the ladder a man weighed less than five kilos; at the top,
practically zero.

So Norton relaxed in the sling, grasping a rung from time to time to
counter the feeble Coriolis force still trying to push him off the
ladder.  He almost forgot his knotted muscles, as he had his last view
of Rama.

It was about as bright now as a full moon on Earth; the overall scene
was perfectly clear, but he could no longer make out the finer details.
The South Pole was now partially obscured by a glowing mist; only the
peak of Big Horn protruded through it - a small, black dot, seen exactly
head-on.

The carefully-mapped but still unknown continent beyond the Sea was the
same apparently random patchwork that it had always been.  It was too
foreshortened, and too RETREA r 241 full of complex detail, to reward
visual examination, and Norton scanned it only briefly.

He swept his eyes round the encircling band of the Sea, and noticed for
the first time a regular pattern of disturbed water, as if waves were
breaking over reefs set at geometrically precise intervals.

Rama's manoeuvring was having some effect, but a very slight one.  He
was sure that Sergeant Barnes would have sailed forth happily under
these conditions, had he asked her to cross the Sea in her lost
Resolution.

New York, London, Paris, Moscow, Rome ...  he said farewell to all the
cities of the northern continent, and hoped the Ramans would forgive him
for any damage he had done.  Perhaps they would understand that it was
all in the cause of science.

Then, suddenly, he was at the Hub, and eager hands reached out to grab
him, and to hurry him through the airlocks.  His overstrained legs and
arms were trembling so uncontrollably that he was almost unable to help
himself, and he was content to be handled like a half-paralysed invalid.

The sky of Rama contracted above him, as he descended into the central
crater of the Hub.

As the door of the inner airlock shut off the view for ever, he found
himself thinking: 'How strange that night should be falling, now that
Rama is closest to the sun!"

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Space Drive

A hundred kilometres was an adequate safety margin, Norton had decided.
Rama was now a huge black rectangle, exactly broadside-on, eclipsing the
sun.  He had used this opportunity to fly Endeavour completely into
shadow, so that the load could be taken off the ship's cooling systems
and some overdue maintenance could be carried out. Rama's protective
cone of darkness might disappear at any moment, and he intended to make
as much use of it as he could.

Rama was still turning; it had now swung through almost fifteen degrees,
and it was impossible to believe that some major orbit change was not
imminent.  On the United Planets, excitement had now reached a pitch of
hysteria, but only a faint echo of this came to Endeavour.  Physically
and emotionally, her crew was exhausted; apart from a skeleton watch,
everyone had slept for twelve hours after take-off from the North Polar
Base.  On doctor's orders, Norton himself had used electro-sedation;
even so, he had dreamed that he was climbing an infinite stairway.

The second day back on ship, everything had almost returned to normal;
the exploration of Rama already seemed part of another life.  Norton
started to deal with the accumulated office work and to make plans for
the future; but he refused the requests for interviews that had somehow
managed to insinuate themselves into the Survey and even SPACEGUARD
radio circuits.  There were no messages from Mercury, and the UP General
Assembly SPACE DRIVE 243 had adjourned its session, though it was ready
to meet again at an hour's notice.

Norton was having his first good night's sleep, thirty hours after
leaving Rama, when he was rudely shaken back to consciousness.  He
cursed groggily, opened a bleary eye at Karl Mercer - and then, like any
good commander, was instantly wide awake.

'It's stopped turning?" 'Yes.  Steady as a rock." 'Let's go to the
bridge." The whole ship was awake; even the simps knew that something
was afoot, and made anxious, meeping noises until Sergeant McAndrews
reassured them with swift hand-signals.

Yet as Norton slipped into his chair and fastened the restraints round
his waist, he wondered if this might be yet another false alarm.

Rama was now foreshortened into a stubby cylinder, and the searing rim
of the sun had peeked over one edge.  Norton jockeyed Endeavour gently
back into the umbra of the artificial eclipse, and saw the pearly
splendour of the corona reappear across a background of the brighter
stars.  There was one huge prominence, at least half a million
kilometres high, that had climbed so far from the sun that its upper
branches looked like a tree of crimson fire.

So now we have to wait, Norton told himself.  The important thing is not
to get bored, to be ready to react at a moment's notice.  to keep all
the instruments aligned and recording, no matter how long it takes ...

That was strange.  The star field was shifting, almost as if he had
actuated the Roll thrusters.  But he had touched no controls, and if
there had been any real movement, he would have sensed it at once.

'Skipper!" said Calvert Urgently from the Nav position, we're rolling -
look at the stars I But I'm getting no instrument readings!" 'Rate gyros
operating?" 'Perfectly normal - I can see the zero jitter.  But we're
rolling several degrees a second I' 'That's impossible' IWO00e 'Of
course it is - but look for yourself When all else failed, a man had to
rely on eyeball instrumentation.  Norton could not doubt that the star
field was indeed slowly rotating - there went Sirius, across the rim of
the port.  Either the universe, in a reversion of pre-Copernican
cosmology, had suddenly decided to revolve around Endeavour; or the
stars were standing still, and the ship was turning.

The second explanation seemed rather more likely, yet it involved
apparently insoluble paradoxes.  If the ship was really turning at this
rate, he would have felt it literally by the seat of his pants, as the
old saying went.

And the gyros could not all have failed, simultaneously and
independently.

Only one answer remained.  Every atom of Endeavour must be in the grip
of some force and only a powerful gravitational field could produce this
effect.  At least, no other known field ...

Suddenly, the stars vanished.  The blazing disc of the sun had emerged
from behind the shield of Rama, and its glare had driven them from the
sky.

'Can you get a radar reading?  What's the doppler?" Norton was fully
prepared to find that this too was inoperative, but he was wrong.

7171 Rama was under way at last, accelerating at the modest rate Of
0.015 gravities.  Dr. Perera, Norton told himself, would be pleased; he
had predicted a maximum of o-oR.

And Endeavour was somehow caught in its wake like a piece of flotsam,
whirling round and round behind a speeding ship ...

Hour after hour, that acceleration held constant; Rama was falling away
from Endeavour at steadily increasing speed.  As its distance grew, the
anomalous behaviour of the ship slowly ceased; the normal laws of
inSPACE DRIVE 245 ertia started to operate again.  They could only guess
aL the energies in whose backlash they had been briefly caught, and
Norton was thankful that he had stationed Endeavour at a safe distance
before Rama had switched on its drive.

As to the nature of that drive, one thing was now certain, even though
all else was mystery.  There were no jets of gas, no beams of ions or
plasma thrusting Rama into its new orbit.  No one put it better than
SergeantProfessor Myron when he said" in shocked disbelief: 'There goes
Newton's Third Law It was Newton's Third'law, however, upon which
Endeavour had to depend the next day, when she used her outvery last
reserves of propellent to bend her own orbit ould wards from the sun.
The change was slight, but it w increase her perihelion distance by ten
million kilometres.

That was the difference between running the ship's cooling system at
ninety-five percent capacity - and a certain fiery death.

When they had completed their own manoeuvre, Rama was two hundred
thousand kilometres away, and difficult to see against the glare of the
sun.  But they could still obtain accurate radar measurements of its
orbit; and the more they observed, the more puzzled they became.

They checked the figures over and over again, until there was no
escaping from the unbelievable conclusion.

It looked as if all the fears of the Herinians, the heroics of Rodrigo,
and the rhetoric of the General Assembly, had been utterly in vain.

What a cosmic irony, said Norton as he looked at his final figures, if
after a million years of safe guidance Rama's computers had made one
trifling error - perhaps changing the sign of an equation from plus to
minus.

Everyone had been so certain that Rama would lose speed, so that it
could be captured by the sun's gravity and thus become a new planet of
the solar system.  It was doing just the opposite.

It was gaining speed - and in the worst possible direc-

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

tion.

Rama was falling ever more swiftly into the sun.

Phoenix IF 4 As the details of its new orbit became more and more
clearly defined, it was hard to see how Rama could possibly escape
disaster.  Only a handful of comets had ever passed as close to the sun;
at perihelion, it would be less than half a million kilometres above
that inferno of fusing hydrogen.  No solid material could withstand the
temperature of such an approach; the tough alloy that comprised Rama's
hull would start to melt at ten times that distance.

Endeavour had now passed its own perihelion, to everyone's relief, and
was slowly increasing its distance from the sun.  Rama was far ahead on
its closer, swifter orbit, and already appeared well inside the
outermost fringes of the corona.  The ship would have a grandstand view
of the drama's final stage.

Then, five million kilometres from the sun, and still accelerating, Rama
started to spin its cocoon.  Until now, it had been visible under the
maximum power of Endeavour's telescopes as a tiny bright bar; suddenly
it began to scintillate, like a star seen through horizon mists.  It
almost seemed as if it was disintegrating; when lie saw the image
breaking up, Norton felt a poignant sense of grief at the loss of so
much wonder.  Then he realized that Rama was still there, but that it
was surrounded by a shimmering haze.

And then it was gone.  In its place was a brilliant.  starlike object,
showing n( visible disc - as if Rama had suddenly contracted into a tiny
ball.

It was some time before they realized what had happened.  Rama had
indeed disappeared: it was now surrounded by a perfectly reflecting
sphere, about a hundred kilometres in diameter.  All that they could now
see was the reflection of the sun itself, on the curved portion that was
closest to them.  Behind this protective bubble, Rama was presumably
safe from the solar inferno.

As the hours passed, the bubble changed its shape.  The image of the sun
became elongated, distorted.  The sphere was turning into an ellipsoid,
its long axis pointed in the direction of Rama's flight.  It was then
that the first anomalous reports started coming in from the robot
observatories, which, for almost two hundred years, had been keeping a
permanent watch on the sun.

Something was happening to the solar magnetic field, in the region
around Rama.  The million-kilometer-long lines of force that threaded
the corona, and drove its wisps of fiercely ionized gas at speeds which
sometimes defied even the crushing gravity of the sun, were shaping
themselves around that glittering ellipsoid.  Nothing was yet visible to
the eye, but the orbiting instruments reported every change in magnetic
flux and ultraviolet radiation.

And presently, even the eye could see the changes in the corona.  A
faintlyglowing tube or tunnel, a hundred thousand kilometres long, had
appeared high in the outer atmosphere of the sun.  It was slightly
curved, bending along the orbit which Rama was tracing, and Rama itself
- or the protective cocoon around it was visible as a glittering head
racing faster and faster down that ghostly tube through the corona.

For it was still gaining speed; now it was moving at more than two
thousand kilometres a second, and there was no question of it ever
remaining a captive of the sun.  Now, at last, the Raman strategy was
obvious; they had come so close to the sun merely to tap its energy at
the source, and to speed themselves even faster on the way to their
ultimate unknown goal ...

OEM.

PHOENIX 249 And presently it seemed that they were tappin g MO re than
energy.  No one could ever be certain of this, because the nearest
observing instruments were thirty million kilometres away, but there
were definite indications that matter was flowing from the sun into Rama
itself, as if it was replacing the leakages and losses of ten thousand
centuries in space.

Faster and faster Rama swept around the sun moving now more swiftly than
any object that had ever travelled through the solar system.  In less
than two hours, its direction of motion had swung through more than
ninety degrees, and it had given a final, almost contemptuous proof of
its total lack of interest in all the worlds whose peace of mind it had
so rudely disturbed.

It was dropping out of the Ecliptic,.  down into the southern sky, far
below the plane in which all the planets move.  Though that, surely,
could not be its ultimate goal, it was aimed squarely at the Greater
Magellanic Cloud, and the lonely gulfs beyond the Milky Way.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Interlude

'Come in,' said Commander Norton absentmindedly at the quiet knock on
his door.

'Some news for you, Bill.  I wanted to give it first, before the crew
gets into the act.  And anyway, it's my department." W Norton still
seemed far away.  He was lying with his hands clasped under his head,
eyes half shut, cabin light low - not really drowsing, but lost in some
reverie or private dream.

He blinked once or twice, and was suddenly back in his body.

'Sorry Laura - I don't understand.  What's it all about?" 'Don't say
you've forgotten I' 'Stop teasing, you wretched woman.  I've had a few
things on my mind recently." Surgcon-Commander Ernst slid a captive
chair across in its slots and sat down beside him.

'Though interplanetary crises come and go, the wheels of Martian
bureaucracy grind steadily away.  But I suppose Rama helped.  Good thing
you didn't have to get permission from the Hermians as well." Light was
dawning.

'Oh - Port Lowell has issued the perinio' 'Better than that - it's
already being acted on." Laura glanced at the slip of paper in her hand.
'Immediate,' she read.  'Probably right now, your new son is being
conceived.  Congratulations."

INTERLUDE 251 'Thank you.  I hope he hasn't minded the wait." Like every
astronaut, Norton had been sterilized when he entered the service; for a
man who would spend years in space, radiation-induced mutation was not a
risk - it was a certainty.  The spermatazoon that had just delivered its
cargo of genes on Mars, two hundred million kiloinetres away, had been
frozen for thirty years, awaiting its moment of destiny.

Norton wondered if he would be home in time for the birth.  He had
earned rest, relaxation - such normal family life as an astronaut could
ever know.  Now that the mission was essentially over, he was beginning
to unwind, and to think once more about his own future, and that of both
his families.  Yes, it would be good to be home for a while, and to make
up for lost time - in many ways ...

'This visit,' protested Laura rather feebly, 'was purely in a
professional capacity." 'After all these years,' replied Norton, , we
know each other better than that.

Anyway, you're off duty now." 'Now what are you thinking?" demanded
Surgeon-Commander Ernst, very much later.

'You're not becoming sentimental, I hope." 'Not about us.  About Rama.
I'm beginning to miss it." 'Thanks very much for the compliment." Norton
tightened his arms around her.  One of the nicest things about
weightlessness, he often thought, was that you could really hold someone
all night, without cutting off the circulation.  There were those who
claimed that love at one gee was so ponderous that they could no longer
enjoy it.

'It's a well-known fact, Laura, that men, unlike women, have two-track
minds.  But seriously - well, more seriously I do feel a sense of loss."
'I can understand that." 'Don't be so clinical; that's not the only
reason.  Oh, never mind." He gave up.  It was not easy to explain, even
to himself.

He had succeeded beyond all reasonable expectation; what his men had
discovered in Rama would keep scientists busy for decades.  And, above
all, he had done it without a single casualty.

But he had also failed.  One might speculate endlessly, but the nature
and the purpose of the Ramans was still utterly unknown.  They had used
the solar system as a refuelling stop - as a booster station - call it
what you will, and had then spurned it completely, on their way to more
important business.  They would probably never even know that the human
race existed; such monumental indifference was worse than any deliberate
insult.

When Norton had glimpsed Rama for the last time, a tiny star hurtling
outwards beyond Venus, he knew that part of his life was over.  He was
only fifty-five, but he felt he had left his youth down there on the
curving plain, among mysteries and wonders now receding inexorably
beyond the reach of man.

Whatever honours and achievements the future brought him, for the rest
of his life he would be haunted by a sense of anticlimax, and the
knowledge of opportunities missed.

So he told himself; but even then, he should have known better.

And on far-off Earth, Dr. Carlisle Perera had as yet told no one how he
had woken from a restless sleep with the message from his subconscious
still echoing in his brain: The Ramans do everything in threes.

Rama 2, Arthur C.  Clarke and Genhy Lee HUMANITY HAS A SECOND DATE WITH
DESTINY ...

is hailed not only as one of Arthur C.  Clarke's all-time bestselling
novels, but as one of the most popular classics of modern science
fiction.  Published in I973, it is the only sf novel ever to scoop all
the major awards - five in the English language, including the Hugo, the
Nebula and the British SF Award.  It told of how, in the year 213o, a
mysterious and apparently untenanted alien spaceship, Rama, entered our
solar system.  By the end of the novel, many wonders had been uncovered
but few of its mysteries had been solved ...

Now, the Ramans return - in an enthralling and longawaited sequel as
brilliantly imaginative as its predecessor.

Rama 2 is set in 22oo, four years after a second approaching spacecraft
has been detected.  Not knowing what to expect, benevolence or
hostility, Earth mounts an expedition determined this time to unveil
some of the mysteries of the Ramans.  Outwardly Rama 2 may be identical
to its predecessor, but will it prove to be just another deadship?

'Arthur C.  Clarke is one of the truly prophetic figures of the space
age ...  The colossus of science fiction' New Yorker An Orbit Book
Science Fiction  CRADLE Arthur C.  Clarke and Gentg Lee In a
mind-blowing mix ol'scientific speculation and thriller, two seemingly
unconnected events trigger off the discovery of nothing less than the
secret of humanity's existence ...

Written in conjunction with author and senior NASA scientist Gentry Lee,
CRADLE reaffin-ns Arthur C.

Clarke's clear-sighted vision of past, present and future, and will
become a classic to rank with 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, and CHILDHOOD'S
END.

b An Orbit Book Science Fiction LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY ORDER FORM
Little, Brown and Company, PO Box 50, Harlow, Essex CM17 ODZ Tel: 01279
438150Fax: 01279 439376 0The Hammer of GodArthur C.  ClarkeJC4.99 0The
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Clarke and Gentry LeeC6.99 ElThe Garden of RamaArthur C.  Clarke and
Gentry LeeE6.99 0Rama 2Arthur C.  Clarke and Gentry Leea.99 Arthur C.
Clarke ElAgainst/Beyond the Fall of Night and Gregory BenfordE4.99
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