Rendezvous With Rama - Arthur C. Clarke Page 0,14

why hibernation techniques will work for only a few centuries—and we’re dealing with time spans a thousandfold longer.

“So the Pandorans and their sympathizers have nothing to worry about. For my part, I’m sorry. It would have been wonderful to have met another intelligent species.

“But at least we have answered one ancient question. We are not alone. The stars will never again be the same to us.”

CHAPTER 10

DESCENT INTO DARKNESS

Commander Norton was sorely tempted, but, as captain, his first duty was to his ship. If anything went badly wrong on this initial probe, he might have to run for it.

So that left his second officer, Lieutenant Commander Mercer, as the obvious choice. Norton willingly admitted that Karl was better suited for the mission.

The authority on life-support systems, Mercer had written some of the standard textbooks on the subject. He had personally checked out innumerable types of equipment, often under hazardous conditions, and his biofeedback control was famous. At a moment’s notice he could cut his pulse rate by fifty per cent, and reduce respiration to almost zero for up to ten minutes. This useful little trick had saved his life on more than one occasion.

Yet despite his great ability and intelligence, he was almost wholly lacking in imagination. To him, the most dangerous experiments or missions were simply jobs that had to be done. He never took unnecessary risks, and he had no use at all for what was commonly regarded as courage.

The two mottoes on his desk summed up his philosophy of life. One asked, WHAT HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN? The other said, HELP STAMP OUT BRAVERY. The fact that he was widely regarded as the bravest man in the fleet was the only thing that ever made him angry.

Given Mercer, that automatically selected the next man: his inseparable companion, Lieutenant Joe Calvert. It was hard to see what the two had in common. The lightly built, rather highly strung navigation officer was ten years younger than his stolid and imperturbable friend, who certainly did not share his passionate interest in the art of the primitive cinema.

But no one can predict where the lightning will strike, and years ago Mercer and Calvert had established an apparently stable liaison. That was common enough. Much more unusual was the fact that they also shared a wife back on Earth, who had borne each of them a child. Norton hoped that he could meet her one day; she must be a most remarkable woman. The triangle had lasted for at least five years, and still seemed to be an equilateral one.

Two men were not enough for an exploring team. Long ago it had been found that three was the optimum—for if one man was lost, two might still escape where a single survivor would be doomed. After a good deal of thought, Norton had chosen Technical Sergeant Willard Myron. A mechanical genius who could make anything work, or design something better if it wouldn’t, Myron was the ideal man to identify alien pieces of equipment. On a long sabbatical from his regular job as associate professor at Astrotech, the Sergeant had refused to accept a commission on the grounds that he did not wish to block the promotion of more deserving career officers. No one took this explanation seriously, and it was generally agreed that Will rated zero for ambition. He might make it to space sergeant, but he would never be a full professor. Myron, like countless NCO’s before him, had discovered the ideal compromise between power and responsibility.

As they drifted through the last air lock and floated out along the weightless axis of Rama, Calvert found himself, as he so often did, in the middle of a movie flashback. He sometimes wondered if he should attempt to cure himself of this habit, but he could not see that it had any disadvantages. It could make even the dullest situations interesting and—who could tell?—one day it might save his life. He would remember what Fairbanks or Connery or Hiroshi had done in similar circumstances.

This time, he was about to go over the top, in one of the early twentieth-century wars; Mercer was the sergeant, leading a three-man patrol on a night raid into no man’s land. It was not too difficult to imagine that they were at the bottom of an immense shell crater, though one that had somehow become neatly tailored into a series of ascending terraces. The crater was flooded with light from three widely spaced plasma arcs, which gave an