Rama 2 by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee

The room was immense. It extended into the distance farther than the resolution of the video devices carried by the robots. The ceiling was about twenty meters high and the two side walls were separated by more than fifty meters. Several other similar spherical objects encased in spongy masses could be seen scattered about the room in the distance. A lattice, stretching almost all the way across the room but stopping five meters above the floor, dangled from the high ceiling in the foreground. Another lattice could barely be discerned a hundred meters or so behind the first one.

Richard and Nicole discussed what the robots should do next. There were no other exits from either the subway station or the large room. A panoramic image around the room revealed nothing nearby of interest except the sphere embedded in its spongy exterior, Nicole wanted to bring the robots back and leave the lair altogether. Richard’s curiosity demanded at least a cursory investigation of one of the spherical objects.

The two robots were able, with some difficulty, to climb around and through the webbed material to reach the sphere in the center. The ambient temperature increased as they neared the sphere. One of the purposes of the external material was clearly to absorb heat. When the robots reached the nested sphere, their internal monitors flashed a warning that the outside temperatures exceeded their safe operating limits.

Richard moved quickly. Directing the robots on a nearly continuous basis, he determined that the sphere was virtually impenetrable and was probably made of a thick metal alloy with a very hard surface. Falstaff banged on the sphere several times with his arm; the resulting sound damped quickly, indi­cating the sphere was full, possibly with a liquid. The two robots were weav­ing their way out of the sponge webbing when their audio systems picked up the sound of brushes dragging against metal.

Richard tried to speed up their escape. Hal was able to increase his pace but Falstaff, whose subsystem temperatures had risen too high during his proximity to the sphere, was prevented by his own internal processor logic from accelerating his actions. The brush sound continued to grow louder.

The computer monitor on the ledge between the two cosmonauts was changed to split screen. Prince Hal reached the edge of the sponge, hit the floor, and headed for the subway without waiting for his companion. Falstaff continued to climb slowly through the webbing. ” Tis too much work for a drinking man,” he mumbled, as he crawled over another barrier.

The dragging metal sound abruptly stopped and Falstaff’s camera re­corded an image of a long, skinny object with black and gold stripes. Mo­ments later the camera frame went to all black and the little robot’s “Termi­nal Fault Imminent” alarm began to sound. Richard and Nicole had one more fleeting glimpse of a picture from Falstaff; it showed what might have been a giant eye, from up close, a black gelatinous mixture tinged with blue. Then all transmissions from the robot, including emergency telemetry, abruptly ceased.

Meanwhile Hal had entered the waiting subway. During the several sec­onds before the subway left the station, the ominous dragging sound was heard again. But the subway departed anyway, with the robot inside, and started speeding through the tunnel toward the two cosmonauts. Richard and Nicole breathed a sigh of relief.

Not more than a second later a loud sound like breaking glass was picked up by Prince Hal’s audio system. Richard commanded the robot to turn in the direction of the sound and Hal’s camera photographed a solitary black and gold tentacle in midair. The tentacle had broken the window and was moving inexorably toward the robot. Both Richard and Nicole realized what was happening at the same moment. The thing was on top of the subway! And it was coming toward them!

Nicole was climbing the spikes in a flash. Richard wasted several valuable seconds picking up his computer monitor and putting all his equipment in the backpack. He heard Prince Hal’s Terminal Fault Imminent alarm when he was halfway up the spikes. Richard turned around to look just as the subway pulled into the tunnel below him.

What he saw made his blood run cold. On top of the subway was a large dark creature whose central body, if that’s indeed what it was, was flattened against the roof. Striped tentacles extended in all directions. Four of them had pierced the windows of the train and grabbed the robot. The thing quickly climbed off the subway and wrapped one of its eight tentacles around the lowest spikes. Richard didn’t watch anymore. He clambered up the rest of the cylinder and started racing through the tunnel at the top, following the steps of Nicole far ahead of him in the distance.

As he ran, Richard noticed that the tunnel was curving slightly to the right. He reminded himself that even though this was not the same tunnel they had used before, it should still lead them to the ramps. After several hundred meters Richard stopped to listen for the sound of his pursuer. He heard nothing. Richard had just taken two deep breaths and started to run again when his ears were assaulted by a terrible wail in front of him. It was Nicole. Oh shit, he thought, as he rushed forward to find her.

47 PROGRESSIVE MATRICES

Never, never in my entire life,” Nicole said to Richard, “have I ever seen anything that terrified me like that.” The two cosmonauts were sitting with their backs against the bottom of one of the skyscrapers surrounding the western plaza. They were both still breathing heavily, exhausted from their frantic escape. Nicole took a long drink of water.

“I had just started to relax/’ she continued. “I could hear you behind me —and nothing else. I decided I would stop in the museum and wait for you to catch up. It hadn’t yet occurred to me that we were in the ‘other’ tunnel.

“It should have been obvious, of course, because the opening was on the wrong side. But I wasn’t thinking logically at the moment. . . . Anyway, I stepped inside the room, the lights came on, and there he was, not more than three meters in front of me. I thought my heart had stopped alto­gether. . . .”

Richard remembered Nicole running into his arms in the tunnel and sobbing for several seconds. “It’s Takagishi . . . stuffed like a deer or a tiger … in the opening to the right,” she had said in fits and starts. After Nicole had regained her composure, the two of them had walked back down the tunnel together. Inside the opening, standing upright just opposite the en­trance, Richard had been shocked to see Newton cosmonaut Shigeru Takagi­shi. He was dressed in his flight suit and looked exactly as he had the last time they had seen him at the Beta campsite. His face was fixed in a pleasant smile and his arms were at his sides.

“What the hell?” Richard had said, blinking twice, his curiosity only slightly stronger than his terror. Nicole had averted her eyes. Even though she had seen the sight before, the stuffed Takagishi was much too lifelike for her.

They had only stayed in the large room for a minute. Alien taxidermy had also performed wonders on an avian with a broken wing that was hanging from the ceiling next to Takagishi. Against the wall behind the Japanese scientist was Richard and Nicole’s hut that had disappeared the day before. The hexagonal electronics board from the Newton portable science station was on the floor next to Takagishi’s feet, not far from a full-scale model of a bulldozer biot. Other biot replicas were scattered around the room.

Richard had started to study the varied collection of biots in the room when they had faintly heard the familiar dragging noise coming from behind them in the tunnel. They had not wasted any more time. Their flight down the tunnel and up the ramps had been broken only by a brief stop at the cistern to replenish their supply of fresh water.

“Dr. Takagishi was a gentle, sensitive man,” Nicole was saying to Richard, “with passionate feelings about his work. Just before launch I visited him in Japan and he told me that his lifelong ambition had been to explore a second Rama spacecraft.”

“It’s a shame he had to die such an unpleasant death,” Richard grimly replied. “I guess that octospider, or one of its friends, must have dragged him down here for a visit to the taxidermist almost immediately. They cer­tainly wasted no time putting him on display.”

“You know, I don’t think they killed him,” Nicole said. “Maybe I’m hopelessly naive, but I didn’t see any evidence of foul play in his … his statue.”

“You think they just scared him to death?” Richard retorted sarcastically.

“Yes,” said Nicole firmly. “At least it’s possible.” She spent the next five minutes explaining Takagishi’s heart situation to Richard.