Rendezvous with Rama

11. Men, Women and Monkeys

Some women, Commander 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 space accident had been caused by acute crew distraction, after the transit of a well-upholstered 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 passion, she knew that he felt it, and everyone was happy.

“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 kilogram-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 worked out a very conservative profile—based on the assumption 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 the whole way on the first attempt?”

“If we had plenty of time, I’d be cautious. But time is 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!”

“—for ten minutes—”

“I’ll settle for that—”

“—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 can’t both go. As for Herr Doctor Professor Sergeant Myron, Laura says he’s still two kilos overweight. Even shaving off that moustache 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 per cent, 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, Blondie, Goldie and Brownie had family trees whose branches included the most intelligent of the Old and New World monkeys, plus synthetic genes that had 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 well equipped 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 signs 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, low-grade 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.