could any man have known a moment such as this. Yet the comparison was almost ridiculously ludicrous.
Tutankhamen had been buried only yesterday—not even four thousand years ago; Rama might be older than mankind. That little tomb in the Valley of the Kings could have been lost in the corridors through which they had already passed, but the space that lay beyond this final seal was at least a million times greater. And as for the treasure it might hold—that was beyond imagination.
No one had spoken over the radio circuits for at least five minutes; the well-trained team had not even reported verbally when all the checks were complete. Mercer had simply given him the OK sign and waved him toward the open tunnel. It was as if everyone realized that this was a moment for history, not to be spoiled by unnecessary small talk. That suited Norton, for at the moment he, too, had nothing to say. He flicked on the beam of his flashlight, triggered his jets, and drifted slowly down the short corridor, trailing his safety line behind him. Only seconds later, he was inside.
Inside what? All before him was total darkness; not a glimmer of light was reflected back from the beam. He had expected this, but he had not really believed it. All the calculations had shown that the far wall was tens of kilometers away; now his eyes told him that this was indeed the truth. As he drifted slowly into that darkness, he felt a sudden need for the reassurance of his safety line, stronger than any he had ever experienced before, even on his first EVA. And that was ridiculous. He had looked out across the light-years and the megaparsecs without vertigo; why should he be disturbed by a few cubic kilometers of emptiness?
He was queasily brooding over this problem when the momentum damper at the end of the line braked him gently to a halt, with a barely perceptible rebound. He swept the vainly probing beam of the flashlight down from the nothingness ahead, to examine the surface from which he had emerged.
He might have been hovering over the center of a small crater, which was itself a dimple in the base of a much larger one. On either side rose a complex of terraces and ramps—all geometrically precise and obviously artificial—which extended for as far as the beam could reach. About a hundred meters away he could see the exits of the other two air-lock systems, identical with this one.
And that was all. There was nothing particularly exotic or alien about the scene. In fact, it bore a considerable resemblance to an abandoned mine. He felt a vague sense of disappointment; after all this effort, there should have been some dramatic, even transcendental, revelation. Then he reminded himself that he could see only a couple of hundred meters. The darkness beyond his field of view might yet contain more wonders than he cared to face.
He reported briefly to his anxiously waiting companions, then added: “I’m sending out the flare—two-minute delay. Here goes.”
With all his strength, he threw the little cylinder straight upward—or outward—and started to count seconds as it dwindled along the beam. Before he had reached the quarter minute, it was out of sight; when he had got to a hundred, he shielded his eyes and aimed the camera. He had always been good at estimating time; he was only two seconds off when the world exploded with light. And this time there was no cause for disappointment.
Even the millions of candle power of the flare could not light up the whole of this enormous cavity, but he could see enough to grasp its plan and appreciate its titanic scale. He was at one end of a hollow cylinder at least ten kilometers wide, and of indefinite length. From his viewpoint at the central axis, he could see such a mass of detail on the curving walls surrounding him that his mind could not absorb more than a minute fraction of it. He was looking at the landscape of an entire world by a single flash of lightning, and he tried by a deliberate effort of will to freeze the image in his mind.
All around him, the terraced slopes of crater rose up until they merged into the solid wall that rimmed the sky. No—that impression was false; he must discard the instincts both of Earth and of space, and reorientate himself to a new system of co-ordinates.