‘How?’ Calvert asked, reasonably enough.
‘You know – the way primitive hunters bring down fast-moving animals with a couple of weights whirling around at the end of a rope. It doesn’t even hurt them.’
‘That I doubt,’ said Norton. ‘But even if it worked, we can’t risk it. We don’t know how intelligent this creature is – and a trick like that could easily break its legs. Then we would be in real trouble – from Rama, Earth and everyone else.’
‘But I’ve got to have a specimen!’
‘You may have to be content with Jimmy’s flower – unless one of these creatures cooperates with you. Force is out. How would you like it if something landed on Earth and decided that you would make a nice specimen for dissection?’
‘I don’t want to dissect it,’ said Laura, not at all convincingly. ‘I only want to examine it.’
‘Well, alien visitors might have the same attitude towards you, but you could have a very uncomfortable time before you believed them. We must make no move that could possibly he regarded as threatening.’
He was quoting from Ship’s Orders, of course, and Laura knew it. The claims of science had a lower priority than those of space-diplomacy.
In fact, there was no need to bring in such elevated considerations; it was merely a matter of good manners. They were all visitors here, and had never even asked permission to come inside…
The creature seemed to have finished its inspection. It made one more high-speed circuit of the camp, then shot off at a tangent – towards the stairway.
‘I wonder how it’s going to manage the steps?’ Laura mused. Her question was quickly answered; the spider ignored them completely, and headed up the gently sloping curve of the ramp without slackening its speed.
‘Hub Control,’ said Norton. ‘You may have a visitor shortly; take a look at the Alpha Stairway Section Six. And incidentally, thanks a lot for keeping such a good watch on us.’
It took a minute for the sarcasm to sink in; then the Hub observer started to make apologetic noises.
‘Er – I can just see something, Skipper, now you tell me it’s there. But what is it?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ Norton answered, as he pressed the General Alert button. ‘Camp Alpha calling all stations. We’ve just been visited by a creature like a three-legged spider, with very thin legs, about two metres high, small spherical body, travels very fast with a spinning motion. Appears harmless but inquisitive. It may sneak up on you before you notice it. Please acknowledge.’
The first reply came from London, fifteen kilometres to the east.
‘Nothing unusual here, Skipper.’
The same distance to the west, Rome answered, sounding suspiciously sleepy.
‘Same here, Skipper. Uh, just a moment…’
‘What is it?’
‘I put my pen down a minute ago – it’s gone! What – oh!’
‘Talk sense!’
‘You won’t believe this, Skipper. I was making some notes – you know I like writing, and it doesn’t disturb anybody – I was using my favourite ball-point, it’s nearly two hundred years old – well, now it’s lying on the ground, about five metres away! I’ve got it – thank good-ness – it isn’t damaged.’
‘And how do you suppose it got there?’
‘Er – I may have dozed off for a minute. It’s been a hard day.’
Norton sighed, but refrained from comment; there were so few of them, and they had so little time in which to explore a world. Enthusiasm could not always overcome exhaustion, and he wondered if they were taking unnecessary risks. Perhaps he should not split his men up into such small groups, and try to cover so much territory. But he was always conscious of the swiftly passing days, and the unsolved mysteries around them. He was becoming more and more certain that something was about to happen, and that they would have to abandon Rama even before it reached perihelion – the moment of truth when any orbit change must surely take place.
‘Now listen, Hub, Rome, London – everyone,’ he said. ‘I want a report at every half-hour through the night. We must assume that from now on we may expect visitors at any time. Some of them may be dangerous, but at all costs we have to avoid incidents. You all know the directives on this subject.’
That was true enough; it was part of their training – yet perhaps none of them had ever really believed that the long-theorized ‘physical contact with intelligent aliens’ would occur in their lifetimes – still less that they would experience it themselves.
Training was one thing, reality another; and no one could be sure that the ancient, human instincts of self-preservation would not take over in an emergency. Yet it was essential to give every entity they encountered in Rama the benefit of the doubt, up to the last possible minute-and even beyond.
Commander Norton did not want to be remembered by history as the man who started the first interplanetary war. Within a few hours there were hundreds of the spiders, and they were all over the plain. Through the telescope, it could be seen that the southern continent was also in-fested with them – but not, it seemed, the island of New York.
They took no further notice of the explorers, and after a while the explorers took little notice of them – though from time to time Norton still detected a predatory gleam in his Surgeon-Commander’s eye. Nothing would please her better, he was sure, than for one of the spiders to have an unfortunate accident, and he would not put it past her to arrange such a thing in the interests of science.
It seemed virtually certain that the spiders could not be intelligent; their bodies were far too small to contain much in the way of brains, and indeed it was hard to see where they stored all the energy to move. Yet their behaviour was curiously purposeful and coordinated; they seemed to be everywhere, but they never visited the same place twice. Norton frequently had the impression that they were searching for something. Whatever it was, they did not seem to have discovered it.
They went all the way up to the central Hub, still scorning the three great stairways. How they managed to ascend the vertical sections, even under almost zero gravity, was not clear; Laura theorized that they were equipped with suction pads.
And then, to her obvious delight, she got her eagerly desired specimen. Hub Control reported that a spider had fallen down the vertical face and was lying, dead or incapacitated, on the first platform. Laura’s time up from the plain was a record that would never be beaten.
When she arrived at the platform, she found that, despite the low velocity of impact, the creature had broken all its legs. Its eyes were still? open, but it showed no reactions to any external tests. Even a fresh human corpse would have been livelier, Laura decided; as soon as she got her prize back to Endeavour, she started to work with her dissecting kit.
The spider was so fragile that it almost came to pieces without her assistance. She disarticulated the legs, then started on the delicate carapace, which split along three great circles and opened up like a peeled orange.
After some moments of blank incredulity – for there was nothing that she could recognize or identify – she took a series of careful photographs. Then she picked up her scalpel.
Where to start cutting? She felt like closing her eyes, and stabbing at random, but that would not have been very scientific.
The blade went in with practically no resistance. A second later, Surgeon-Commander Ernst’s most unlady-like yell echoed the length and breadth of Endeavour.
It took an annoyed Sergeant McAndrews a good twenty minqtes to calm down the startled simps.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR – His Excellency Regrets…
‘As you are all aware, gentlemen,’ said the Martian Ambassador, ‘a great deal has happened since our last meeting. We have much to discuss – and to decide. I’m therefore particularly sorry that our distinguished colleague from Mercury is not here.’
That last statement was not altogether accurate. Dr Bose was not particularly sorry that HE the Hermian Ambassador was absent. It would have been much more truthful to say that he was worried. All his diplomatic instincts told him that something was happening, and though his sources of information were excellent, he could gather no hints as to what it might be.
The Ambassador’s letter of apology had been cour-teous and entirely uncommunicative. His Excellency had regretted that urgent and unavoidable business had kept him from attending the meeting, either in per-son or by video. Dr Bose found it very hard to think of anything more urgent – or more important – than Ram a.
‘Two of our members have statements to make. 1 would first like to call on Professor Davidson.’