Rendezvous with Rama

5. 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—Lieutenant 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 grams of weight that Rama’s combined gravitational and centrifugal fields gave them were 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 pillboxes, so that they could move around without wasting propellants. The nearest pillbox was only ten metres 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 spoke so…

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 vacuum-welded 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?

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 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 pillbox 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.