Rama 3 – The Garden of Rama by Clarke, Arthur C.

Inside the rectangular structure are four webbed hammocks secured against the walls. Each of these fascinating creations has been individually crafted for a specific member of our family. The hammocks for Michael and Richard are at each end of the tank; Simone and I have webbed

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beds in the middle, with her tiny hammock being right beside mine.

Of course Richard has already examined the entire arrangement in detail. Because there is a cover to the tank and the hammocks are set down into the cavity between half a meter and a meter from the top, he has concluded (hat the tank closes and is then probably filled with a fluid. But why was it built? Are we going to undergo some set of experiments? Richard is certain that we are about to be tested in some way, but Michael says that our being used as guinea pigs is “inconsistent with the Raman personality” we have observed heretofore. I had to laugh at his comment. Michael has now spread his incurable religious optimism to encompass the Ramans as well. He always assumes, like Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss, that we are living in the best of all possible universes.

The foreman mantis hung around, mostly watching from (he walkway of the tank, until each of the four of us had actually lain upon his or her hammock. Richard pointed out that although the hammocks had been positioned at varying depths along the walls, we each will “sink” to approximately the same level when occupying the webbed beds. The webbing is slightly elastic, reminiscent of the lattice material we have encountered before in Rama. While I was “testing” my hammock this afternoon, its bounce reminded me of both the fear and the exhilaration during my fantastic lattice harness ride across the Cylindrical Sea. When I closed my eyes it was easy to see myself again just above the water, suspended beneath the three great avians who were carrying me to freedom.

Along the lair wall, behind the tank from the point of view of our living area, there is a set of thick pipes that are connected directly to the tank. We suspect that their purpose is to carry some kind of fluid that fills up the volume of the tank. 1 guess we will find out soon enough.

So what do we do now? All three of us agree that we should just wait. Doubtless we will eventually be expected to spend some time in this tank. But we have to assume that we will be told when it is the proper time.

32 ARTHUR C. CLARKE AND GENTRY LEE 10 June 2201

Richard was right. He was certain that the intermittent, low-frequency whistle early yesterday was announcing another mission phase transition. He even suggested that maybe we should go over to the new tank and be prepared to take positions on our individual hammocks. Michael and I both argued with him, insisting that there was not “nearly enough information” to jump to such a conclusion.

We should have followed Richard’s advice. Essentially we ignored the whistle and went on with our normal (if that term can ever be used for our existence inside this spacecraft of extraterrestrial origin) routine. About three hours later, the foreman mantis appeared suddenly in the doorway of our main room and scared me out of my wits. It pointed down the corridor with its peculiar fingers and made it clear that we were to move with some dispatch.

Simone was still asleep and not at all happy when I woke her up. She was also hungry, but the mantis biot would not let me take the time to feed her. So Simone was crying fitfully as we were herded across our lair to the tank.

A second mantis was waiting on the walkway that rings the lip of the tank. It was holding our transparent helmets in its strange hands. It must also have been the inspector, for this second mantis would not let us descend to our hammocks until it checked to ensure that the helmets were properly placed over our heads. The plastic or glass compound that forms the helmet front is remarkable; we can see perfectly through it. The bottoms of the helmets are also extraordinary. They are made of a sticky, rubberlike compound that adheres to the skin very tightly and creates an impermeable seal.

We had only been lying on our hammocks for thirty seconds when a powerful surge pressed us down against the webbed elements with such force that we sank halfway into the empty tank. An instant later tiny threads (they seemed to grow out of the hammock material) wrapped themselves around the trunks of our bodies, leaving only

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our arms and necks free. I glanced over at Simone to see if she was crying; she had a big smile on her face.

The tank had already begun to fill with a light green liquid. In less man a minute we were surrounded by the fluid. Its density was very close to our own, for we half floated on its surface. Soon thereafter the top of the tank closed. I became frightened as the liquid continued to fill the volume. Although I considered it unlikely that we were in any actual danger, 1 was relieved when the liquid stopped rising, leaving us a few centimeters of breathing space beneath the lid.

All this time the strong acceleration continued. Luckily it wasn’t completely dark inside the tank. There were tiny lights scattered around the tank cover. I could see Simone next to me, her body bouncing like a buoy, and I could even see Richard in the distance.

We were inside the tank for slightly more than two hours. Richard was extremely excited when we were finished. He told Michael and me that he was certain we had just completed a “test” to see how we could withstand “excessive” forces.

‘ “They are not satisfied with the paltry accelerations that we have been experiencing heretofore,” he exuberantly informed us. “The Ramans want to really increase the velocity. To accomplish that, the spacecraft must be subjected to long duration, high gee forces. This tank has been designed to provide us with enough cushioning that our biological construction can accommodate the unusual environment.”

Richard spent all day doing calculations and a few hours ago showed us his preliminary reconstruction of yesterday’s “acceleration event.” “Look at this,” he shouted, barely able to contain himself. “We made an equivalent velocity change of seventy kilometers per second during that short two-hour period. That is absolutely monstrous for a spacecraft the size of Rama! We were accelerating at close to ten gees the entire time.” He then grinned at us. “This ship has one hell of an overdrive mode.”

When we finished the test in the tank, I inserted a new set of biometry probes in all of us, including Simone. I

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have not seen any unusual responses, at least nothing that has triggered a warning, but I admit that I am stiil a little concerned about how our bodies will react to the stress. A few minutes ago Richard chided me. “The Ramans are certainly watching too,” he said, indicating that he thought the biometry was unnecessary. “I bet they are taking their own data through those threads.”

5

19June2201 \^v vocabulary is inadequate / V Ito describe my experiences of the iast several days. The word amazing, for example, falls far short of conveying the true sense of how extraordinary these long hours in the tank have been. The only remotely similar experiences in my life were both induced by the ingestion of catalytic chemicals, first during the Poro ceremony in the Ivory Coast when I was seven years old and then, more recently, after drinking Omen’s vial while I was at the bottom of the pit in Rama. But both those trips or visions or whatever were isolated incidents and comparatively short in duration. My recent episodes in the tank have lasted for hours.

Before throwing myself totally into a description of the world inside my mind, I should summarize first the “real” events of the past week so that the hallucinatory episodes can be placed in context. Our daily life has now evolved into a repeating pattern. The spacecraft continues to maneuver, but in two separate modes: “regular,” when the floor shakes and everything moves but a quasi-normal life can be lived, and “overdrive,” when Rama accelerates at

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a ferocious rate that Richard now estimates is in excess of eleven gees.

When die spacecraft is in overdrive, the four of us must be inside the tank. The overdrive periods last for just under eight hours out of each twenty-seven-hour, six-minute cycle in the repetitive pattern. We are clearly intended to sleep during the overdrive segments. The tiny lights above our heads in the closed tank are extinguished after the first twenty minutes of each segment and we lie mere in the total darkness until five minutes before the end of the eight-hour period.