Rama 2 by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee

She nodded. “I presume you also know where to find the panel that opens this cover?”

“No, but I bet it’s not hard to find,” he said confidently. “And after we find this one, the avian lair opening will be duck soup because we’ll have the whole pattern.”

Ten minutes later Richard pushed on a metal plate and the third covering swung open. The descent into this third hole was down a wide staircase broken by occasional landings. Richard took Nicole’s hand as they walked down the stairs. They used their flashlights to find their way, as no lights illuminated their descent.

The water room was in the same place as in the other underground lairs. There were no sounds in the horizontal tunnels that led off from the central stairway at either of the two main levels. “I don’t think anyone lives here,” Richard said.

“At least not yet,” Nicole answered.

48 WELCOME EARTHLINGS

Richard was puzzled. In the first room off one of the top horizontal tunnels he had found an array of strange gadgets that he had decoded in less than an hour. He now knew how to regulate the lights and temperature throughout each particular portion of the underground lair. But if it was that easy, and all the lairs were similarly constructed, why did the avians not use the lights that had been provided? While they were eating breakfast Richard quizzed Nicole about the details of the avian lair.

“You’re overlooking more fundamental issues/’ Nicole said, as she took a bite of manna melon. “The avians aren’t that important by themselves. The real question is, where are the Ramans? And why did they put these holes under New York in the first place?”

“Maybe they’re all Ramans,” Richard replied. “The biots, the avians, the octospiders—maybe they all came originally from the same planet. At the beginning they were all one happy family. But as the years and generations passed, different species evolved in separate ways. Individual lairs were con­structed and the—”

“There are too many problems with that scenario,” Nicole interrupted. “First, the biots are definitely machines. The avians may or may not be. The octospiders almost certainly aren’t, although a technological level that could create this spaceship in the first place might have progressed further in artificial intelligence than we can possibly imagine. My intuitive sense, how­ever, says that those things are organic.”

“We humans would never be able to distinguish between a living creature and a versatile machine created by a truly advanced species.”

“I agree with that. But we can’t possibly resolve this argument by our­selves. Besides, there is another question that f want to discuss with you.”

“What’s that?” Richard asked.

“Did the avians and the octospiders and these underground regions exist also on Rama I? If so, how did the Norton crew miss them altogether? If not, why are they on this spacecraft and not the first one?”

Richard was quiet for several seconds. “I see where you’re heading,” he said finally. “The fundamental premise has always been that the Rama spacecraft were created millions of years ago, by unknown beings from an­other region of the galaxy, and that they were totally uninvolved with and disinterested in whatever they encountered during their trek. If they were created that long ago, why would two vehicles that were presumably built at virtually the same time have such striking differences?”

“I’m starting to believe that our colleague from Kyoto was right,” Nicole answered. “Maybe there is a meaningful pattern to all this. I’m fairly confi­dent that the Norton crew was thorough and accurate in its survey and that all the distinctions between Rama I and Rama II are indeed real. As soon as we acknowledge that the two spacecraft are different, we face a more diffi­cult issue. Why are they different?”

Richard had finished eating and was now pacing in the dimly lit tunnel. “There was a discussion just like this before it was decided to abort the mission. At the teleconference the main question was, why did the Ramans change course to encounter the Earth? Since the first spacecraft had not done so, it was considered hard evidence that Rama II was different. And the people participating in that meeting knew nothing of the avians or octospiders/’

“General Borzov would have loved the avians,” Nicole commented after a short silence. “He thought that flying was the greatest pleasure in the world.” She laughed. “He once told me that his secret hope in life was that reincarnation was on the level and that he would come back as a bird.”

“He was a fine man,” Richard said, stopping his pacing momentarily. “I don’t think we ever properly appreciated all his talents.”

As Nicole replaced part of the manna melon in her backpack and prepared to continue the exploration, she smiled at her peripatetic friend. “One more question, Richard?”

He nodded.

“Do you think we’ve met any Ramans yet? By that I mean the creatures who made this vehicle. Or any of their descendants.”

Richard shook his head vigorously. “Absolutely not/’ he said. “Maybe we’ve met some of their creations. Or even other species from the same planet. But we haven’t seen the main characters yet.”

They found the White Room off to the left of a horizontal tunnel at the second level below the surface. Until then the exploration had been almost boring. Richard and Nicole had walked down many tunnels and had peered into one empty room after another. Four times they had found a set of gadgets for regulating the lights and temperature. Until they reached the White Room, they had seen nothing else of interest.

Both Richard and Nicole were astonished when they entered a room whose walls were painted a crisp white. In addition to the paint, the room was fascinating because one corner was cluttered with objects that turned out, on closer inspection, to be quite familiar. There was a comb and a brush, an empty lipstick container, several coins, a collection of keys, and even something that looked like an old walkie-talkie. In another pile there was a ring and a wristwatch, a tube of toothpaste, a nail file, and a small keyboard with Latin letters. Richard and Nicole were stunned. “Okay, genius,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Explain all this, if you can.”

He picked up the tube of toothpaste, opened the cap, and squeezed. A white material came out. Richard put his finger in it and then placed the finger in his mouth. “Yuck,” he said, spitting out the paste. “Bring your mass spectrometer over here.”

While Nicole was examining the toothpaste with her sophisticated medi­cal instruments, Richard picked up each of the other objects. The watch in particular fascinated him. It was indeed keeping proper time, second by second, although its reference point was completely unknown. “Did you ever go to the space museum in Florida?” he asked Nicole.

“No,” she answered distractedly.

“They had a display of the common objects taken by the crew on the first Rama mission. This watch looks exactly like the one in the display—I re­member it well because I bought a similar one in the museum shop/’

Nicole walked over with a puzzled look on her face. “This stuff isn’t toothpaste, Richard. I don’t know what it is. The spectra are astonishing, with an abundance of super-heavy molecules.”

For several minutes the two cosmonauts rummaged in the odd collection of items, trying to make some sense out of their latest discovery. “One thing is certain,” Richard said as he was trying unsuccessfully to open up the walkie-talkie, “these objects are definitely associated with human beings. There’s simply too many of them for some kind of strange interspecies coincidence.”

“But how did they get here?” Nicole asked. She was trying to use the brush but its bristles were far too soft for her hair. She examined it in more detail. “This is not really a brush,” she announced. “It looks like a brush, and feels like a brush, but it’s useless in the hair.”

She bent down and picked up the nail file. “And this can’t be used to file any human’s fingernails.” Richard came over to see what she was talking about. He was still struggling with the walkie-talkie. He dropped it in disgust and took the nail file that Nicole had extended toward him.

“So these things look human, but aren’t?” he said, pulling the file against the end of his longest fingernail. The nail was unchanged. Richard gave the file back to Nicole. “What’s going on here?” he shouted in a frustrated tone.

“I remember reading a science fiction novel while I was at the university,” Nicole said a few seconds later, “in which an extraterrestrial species learned about human beings solely from our earliest television programs. When they finally met us, they offered cereal boxes and soaps and other objects the aliens had seen on our television commercials. The packages were all prop­erly designed, but the contents were either nonexistent or absolutely wrong.”