Turning his back to the searchlight and shielding his eyes from its glare. Norton tried to peer into the crystalline depths, as one may attempt to gaze through the ice of a frozen lake. But he could see nothing; even when he tried the concentrated beam of his own helmet-lamp. he was no more successful. This stuff was translucent, but not transparent. If it was a frozen liquid, it had a melting-point very much higher than water.
He tapped it gently with the hammer from his geology kit; the tool rebounded with a dull, unmusical ‘dunk’. He tapped harder, with no more result, and was about to exert his full strength when some impulse made him de-sist.
It seemed most unlikely that he could crack this material; but what if he did? He would be like a vandal, smashing some enormous plate-glass window. There would be a better opportunity later, and at least he had discovered valuable information. It now seemed more unlikely than ever that this was a canal; it was simply a peculiar trench that stopped and started abruptly, but led nowhere. And if at any time it had carried liquid, where were the stains, the encrustations of dried-up sedi-ment, that one would expect? Everything was bright and clean, as if the builders had left only yesterday…
Once again he was face to face with the fundamental mystery of Rama, and this time it was impossible to evade it. Commander Norton was a reasonably imaginative man, but he would never have reached his present position if he had been liable to the wilder flights of fancy. Yet now, for the first time, he had a sense – not exactly of foreboding, but of anticipation. Things were not what they seemed; there was something very, very odd about a place that was simultaneously brand new – and a million years old.
Very thoughtfully, he began to walk slowly along the length of the little valley, while his companions. still holding the rope that was attached to his waist, followed him along the rim. He did not expect to make any further discoveries, but he wanted to let his curious emotional state run its course. For something else was worrying him; and it had nothing to do with the inexplicable newness of Rama.
He had walked no more than a dozen metres when it hit him like a thunderbolt.
He knew this place. He had been here before. Even on Earth, or some familiar planet, that experience is disquieting, though it is not particularly rare. Most men have known it at some time or other, and usually they dismiss it as the memory of a forgotten photograph, a pure coincidence – or, if they are mystically inclined, some form of telepathy from another mind, or even a flashback from their own future.
But to recognize a spot which no other human being can possibly have seen – that is quite shocking. For several seconds, Commander Norton stood rooted to the smooth crystalline surface on which he had been walking, trying to straighten out his emotions. His well-ordered universe had been turned upside down, and he had a dizzying glimpse of those mysteries at the edge of existence which he had successfully ignored for most of his life.
Then, to his immense relief, common sense came to the rescue. The disturbing sensation of d�j�-vu faded out, to be replaced by a real and identifiable memory from his youth.
It was true – he had once stood between such steeply sloping walls, watching them drive into the distance until they seemed to converge at a point indefinitely far ahead. But they had been covered with neatly trimmed grass; and underfoot had been broken stone, not smooth crystal.
It had happened thirty years ago, during a summer vacation in England. Largely because of another student (he could remember her face – but he had forgotten her name) he had taken a course of industrial archaeology, then very popular among science and engineering gradu-ates. They had explored abandoned coal-mines and cot-ton mills, climbed over ruined blast-furnaces and steam-engines, goggled unbelievingly at primitive (and still dangerous) nuclear reactors, and driven priceless’ turbine-powered antiques along restored motor roads.
Not everything that they saw was genuine; much had been lost during the centuries, for men seldom bother to preserve the commonplace articles of everyday life. But where it was necessary to make copies, they had been re-constructed with loving care.
And so young Bill Norton had found himself bowling along, at an exhilarating hundred kilometres an hour, while he furiously shovelled precious coal into the firebox of a locomotive that looked two hundred years old, but was actually younger than he was. The thirty-kilometre stretch of the Great Western Railway, however, was quite genuine, though it had required a good deal of excavat-ing to get it back into commission.
Whistle screaming, they had plunged into a hillside and raced through a smoky, flame-lit darkness. An astonishingly long time later, they had burst out of the tunnel into a deep, perfectly straight cutting between steep grassy banks. The long-forgotten vista was almost identical with the one before him now.
‘What is it, Skipper?’ called Lt Rodrigo. ‘Have you found something?’
As Norton dragged himself back to present reality, some of the oppression lifted from his mind. There was mystery here – yes; but it might not be beyond human understanding. He had learned a lesson, though it was not one that he could readily impart to others. At all costs, he must not let Rama overwhelm him. That way lay failure – perhaps even madness.
‘No,’ he answered, ‘there’s nothing down here. Haul me up – we 11 head straight to Paris.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN – Storm Warning
‘I’ve called this meeting of the Committee,’ said His Excellency the Ambassador of Mars to the United Planets, ‘because Dr Perera has something important to tell us. He insists that we get in touch with Commander Norton right away, using the priority channel we’ve been able to establish after, I might say, a good deal of difficulty. Dr Perera’s statement is rather technical, and before we come to it I think a summary of the present position might be in order; Dr Price has prepared one. Oh yes – some apologies for absence. Sir Lewis Sands is unable to be with us because he’s chairing a conference, and Dr Taylor asks to be excused?
He was rather pleased about that last abstention. The anthropologist had rapidly lost interest in Rama, when it became obvious that it would present little scope for him. Like many others, he had been bitterly disappointed to find that the mobile worldlet was dead; now there would be no opportunity for sensational books and viddies about Raman rituals and behavioural patterns. Others might dig up skeletons and classify artifacts; that sort of thing did not appeal to Conrad Taylor. Perhaps the only discovery that would bring him back in a hurry would be some highly explicit works of art, like the notorious fres-coes of Thera and Pompeii. –
Thelma Price, the archaeologist, took exactly the opposite point of view. She preferred excavations and ruins uncluttered by inhabitants who might interfere with dispassionate, scientific studies. The bed of the Mediterranean had been ideal – at least until the city planners and landscape artists had started getting in the way. And Rama would have been perfect, except for the maddening detail that it was a hundred million kilometres away and she would never be able to visit it in person.
‘As you all know,’ she began, ‘Commander Norton has completed one traverse of almost thirty kilometres, without encountering any problems. He explored the curious trench shown on your maps as the Straight Valley; its purpose is still quite unknown, but it’s clearly important as it runs the full length of Rama – except for the break at the Cylindrical Sea – and there are two other identical structures 120 degrees apart round the circumference of -the world.
‘Then the party turned left – or East, if we adopt the North Pole convention – until they reached Paris. As you’ll see from this photograph, taken by a telescope camera at the Hub, it’s a group of several hundred buildings, with wide streets between them.
‘Now these photographs were taken by Commander Norton’s group when they reached the site. If Paris is a city, it’s a very peculiar one. Note that none of the buildings have windows, or even doors! They are all plain rectangular structures, an identical thirty-five metres high. And they appear to have been extruded out of the ground – there are no seams or joints – look at this closeup of the base of a wall – there’s a smooth transition into the ground.
‘My own feeling is that this place is not a residential area, but a storage or supply depot. In support of that theory, look at this photo
‘These narrow slots or grooves, about five centimetres wide, run along all the streets, and there’s one leading to every building – going straight into the wall .There’s a striking resemblance to the street-car tracks of the early twentieth century; they are obviously part of some transport system.