Rendezvous with Rama r-1

by Arthur Charles Clarke

  “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 crossroads 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 thought-provoking 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 birdcages. 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 of carefully levelled earth, the first he had ever seen in 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 creatures 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. They looked very bleak and desolate, like leafless trees in 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 kilometre 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 contamination 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, and they glittered with such metallic blues, violets and greens, that they seemed more like the wings of a butterfly 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 latticework 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.

  31. Terminal Velocity

  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-kilometre 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 rescue line? He had tried out this idea on Sergeant Myron, who had promptly shot it down in 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 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 double take.

  He handed the message to Karl Mercer.

  “What do you think of this?” he asked, in as noncommittal a tone of voice as he could manage.

  Karl read it swiftly, then said, “Well I’m damned! 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 kilometre 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; he must have worked out something. “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!”

  “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 a 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 kilometre 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.

  “Beautiful!” 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 risked 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 fe
w 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…