Rama 2 by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee

“That’s enough,” Nicole interrupted, pursing her lips in disgust. “The details of your personal life are really none of my business. I must decide what is best for you and for the mission.” She paused. “In any event, I must insist on a proper examination, including the normal pelvic internal image set. If you refuse, then I won’t authorize the abortion. And of course I’d be forced to make a complete report—”

Francesca laughed. “You don’t need to threaten me. I am not that stupid. If it will make you feel better to stick your fancy equipment between my legs, then be my guest. But let’s do it. I want this baby out of me before the sortie.”

Nicole and Francesca hardly exchanged a dozen words during the next hour. They went together to the small infirmary, where Nicole used her sensitive instruments to verify the existence and size of the embryo. She also tested Francesca for her acceptability to receive the abortion liquid. The fetus had been growing inside Francesca for five days. Who might you be? Nicole thought as she looked on the monitor at the microscopic image of the tiny sac embedded in the walls of the uterus. Even in the microscope on the probe there was no way to tell that the collection of cells was a living thing. But you are already alive. And much of your future is already programmed by your genes.

Nicole had the printer list for Francesca what she could expect physically once she had ingested the medicine. The fetus would be swept away, re­jected by her body, within twenty-four hours. There could possibly be some slight cramping with the normal menstruation that would follow immedi­ately.

Francesca drank the liquid without hesitation. As her patient was dressing, Nicole thought back to the time when she had first suspected her own pregnancy. Never once did I consider . , . And not just because her father was a prince. No. It was a question of responsibility. And love.

“I can tell what you’re thinking,” Francesca said when she was ready to leave. She was standing by the infirmary door. “But don’t waste your time. You have enough problems of your own.”

Nicole did not reply. “So tomorrow the little bastard will be gone,” Fran­cesca said coldly, her eyes tired and angry. “It’s a damn good thing. The world doesn’t need another half-black baby.” Francesca didn’t wait for Nicole’s response.

16 RAMA RAMA BURNING BRIGHT

The touchdown near the entry port to Rama was smooth and without incident. Following the precedent of Commander Norton seventy years ear­lier, General Borzov instructed Yamanaka and Turgenyev to guide the New­ton to a contact point just outside the hundred-meter circular disc centered on the spin axis of the giant cylinder. A set of low, pillbox-shaped structures temporarily held the spacecraft from Earth in place against the slight centrifugal force created by the spinning Rama. Within ten minutes strong attachments anchored the Newton firmly to its target.

The large disc was, as anticipated, the outer seal of the Raman air lock. Wakefield and Tabori departed from the Newton in their EVA gear and started searching for an embedded wheel. The wheel, which was the manual control for the air lock, was in exactly the predicted place. It turned as expected and exposed an opening in the outer shell of Rama. Since nothing about Rama II had yet varied from its predecessor in any way, the two cosmonauts continued with the entry procedure.

Four hours later, after considerable shuttling back and forth in the half kilometer of corridors and tunnels that connected the great hollow interior of the alien spaceship to the external air lock, the two men had finished opening the three redundant cylindrical doors. They had also deployed the transportation system that would ferry people and equipment from the New­ton to the inside of Rama. This ferry had been designed by the engineers on Earth to slide along the parallel grooves the Ramans had cut into the walls of the outer tunnels unknown ages ago.

After a short break for lunch, Yamanaka joined Wakefield and Tabori and the three of them constructed the planned Alpha communications relay station at the inside end of the tunnel. The patterns of the arrayed antennas had been carefully engineered so that, if the second Raman vehicle was identical to the first, two-way communication would be possible between cosmonauts located anywhere on the stairways or in the northern half of the Central Plain. The master communication plan called for the establishment of another major relay station, to be called Beta, near the Cylindrical Sea; the pair of stations would provide strong links everywhere in the Northern Hemicylinder and would even extend to the island of New York.

Brown and Takagishi took their positions in the control center once the operation of the Alpha relay station was verified. The countdown to interior drone deployment proceeded. Takagishi was obviously both nervous and excited as he finished his preflight tests with his drone. Brown seemed re­laxed, even casual, as he completed his final preparations. Francesca Sabatini was sitting in front of the multiple monitors, ready to select the best images for real-time transmission to the Earth.

General Borzov himself announced the major events in the sequence. He paused for a dramatic breath before issuing the command to activate the two drones. The drones then flew away into the dark emptiness of Rama. Sec­onds later the main screen in the control center, whose picture came directly from the drone being commanded by David Brown, was flooded with light as the first flare ignited. When the light became more manageable, the outline of the first wide-angle shot could be seen. It had always been planned that this initial picture would be a composite of the Northern Hemisphere, cover­ing all the territory from the bowl-shaped end where they had entered down to the Cylindrical Sea at the midpoint of the artificial world. The sharp image that was eventually frozen on the screen was overwhelming. It was one thing to read about Rama and to conduct simulations inside its replica; it was quite another to be anchored to the gigantic spaceship near the orbit of Venus, and to be taking a first look inside. . . .

That the vista was familiar barely lessened the wonder of the image. In the end of the crater-shaped bowl, starting from the tunnels, a complex of terraces and ramps fanned out until they reached the main body of the spinning cylinder. Trisecting this bowl were three wide ladders, resembling broad railroad tracks, each of which later expanded into enormous stairways with more than thirty thousand steps each. The ladder/stairway combina­tions resembled three equally spaced ribs of an umbrella and provided a way to ascend (or descend) from the flat bottom of the crater to the vast Central Plain wrapped around the wall of the spinning cylinder.

The northern half of the Central Plain spread out to fill most of the picture on the screen. The huge expanse was broken into rectangular fields that had irregular dimensions except immediately around the “cities.” The three cities in the wide-angle image, clusters of tall slim objects, resembling manmade buildings, that were connected by what looked like highways run­ning along the edges of the fields, were immediately recognized by the crew as the Paris, Rome, and London named by the first Raman explorers. Equally striking in the image were the long straight grooves or valleys of the Central Plain. These three linear trenches, ten kilometers long and a hundred meters wide, were equally spaced around the curve of Rama. During the first Raman encounter these valleys had been the sources of the light that had filled the “worldlet” shortly after the melting of the Cylindrical Sea.

The strange sea, a body of water running completely around the huge cylinder, was at the far edge of the image. It was still frozen, as expected, and in its center was the mysterious island of towering skyscrapers that had been called New York since its original discovery. The skyscrapers stretched off the end of the picture, the looming towers beckoning to be visited.

The entire crew stared silently at the image for almost a minute. Then Dr. David Brown started hooting. “All right, Rama,” he said in a proud voice. “You see, all you disbelievers,” he shouted loud enough for everyone to hear, “it is exactly like the first one.” Francesca’s video camera turned to record Brown’s exultation. Most of the rest of the crew were still speechless, trans­fixed by the details on the monitor.

Meanwhile, Takagishi’s drone was transmitting narrow-angle photos of the area just under the tunnel. These images were featured on the smaller screens around the control center. The pictures would be used to reverify the designs of the communication and transportation infrastructure to be estab­lished inside Rama. This was the real “job” of this phase of the mission— comparing the thousands of pictures that would be taken by these drones to the existing camera mosaics from Rama I. Although most of the comparisons could be done digitally (and therefore automatically), there would always be differences that would require human explanation. Even if the two space­ships were identical, the differing light levels at the times the images were taken would create some artificial miscompares.