Rendezvous with Rama

34. 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 Excellency had regretted that urgent and unavoidable business had kept him from attending the meeting, either in person or by video. Dr. Bose found it very hard to think 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. “Mere 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 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 possibility, 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 Davidson 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 per cent 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 environment and appear to be specialized 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…”