Rendezvous With Rama - Arthur C. Clarke Page 0,20

work; and on a spaceship, that was a matter of vital importance.

Unlike the monkeys who were their nearest relatives, Endeavour’s simps were docile, obedient, and uninquisitive. Being cloned, they were also sexless, which eliminated awkward behavioral problems. Carefully house-trained vegetarians, they were clean and didn’t smell. They would have made perfect pets, except that nobody could possibly have afforded them.

Despite these advantages, having simps on board involved certain problems. They had to have their own quarters—inevitably labeled “The Monkey House.” Their little mess room was always spotless, and was well equipped, with TV, games equipment, and programmed teaching machines. To avoid accidents, they were absolutely forbidden to enter the ship’s technical areas; the entrances to all these were color-coded in red, and the simps were conditioned so that it was psychologically impossible for them to pass these visual barriers.

There was also a communications problem. Though they had an equivalent IQ of sixty, and could understand several hundred words of English, they were unable to talk. It had proved impossible to give useful vocal cords to either apes or monkeys, and they therefore had to express themselves in sign language.

The basic signs were obvious and easily learned, so that everyone on board ship could understand routine messages. But the only man who could speak fluent Simplish was their handler: Chief Steward McAndrews.

It was a standing joke that Sergeant Ravi McAndrews looked rather like a simp—which was hardly an insult, for with their short, tinted pelts and graceful movements they were very handsome animals. They were also affectionate, and everyone on board had his favorite. Norton’s was the aptly named Goldie.

But the warm relationship one could so easily establish with simps created another problem, often used as a powerful argument against their employment in space. Since they could be trained only for routine, low-grade tasks, they were worse than useless in an emergency; they could then be a danger to themselves and to their human companions. In particular, teaching them to use spacesuits had proved impossible, the concepts involved being quite beyond their understanding.

No one liked to talk about it, but everybody knew what had to be done if a hull was breached or the order came to abandon ship. It had happened only once; then, the simp handler had carried out his instructions more than adequately. He was found with his charges, killed by the same poison. Thereafter, the job of euthing was transferred to the chief medical officer, who, it was felt, would have less emotional involvement.

Norton was thankful that this responsibility, at least, did not fall upon the captain’s shoulders. He had known men he would have killed with far fewer qualms than Goldie.

CHAPTER 12

THE STAIRWAY OF THE GODS

In the clear, cold atmosphere of Rama, the beam of the searchlight was completely invisible. Three kilometers down from the central hub, the hundred-meter-wide oval of light lay across a section of that colossal stairway. A brilliant oasis in the surrounding darkness, it was sweeping slowly toward the curved plain still five kilometers below; and in its center moved a trio of antlike figures, casting long shadows before them.

It had been, just as they had hoped and expected, a completely uneventful descent. They had paused briefly at the first platform, and Norton had walked a few hundred meters along the narrow, curving ledge before starting the slide down to the second level. Here they had discarded their oxygen gear and reveled in the strange luxury of being able to breathe without mechanical aids. Now they could explore in comfort, freed from the greatest danger that confronts a man in space, and forgetting all worries about suit integrity and oxygen reserve.

By the time they had reached the fifth level, and there was only one more section to go, gravity had reached almost half its terrestrial value. Rama’s centrifugal spin was at last exerting its real strength; they were surrendering themselves to the implacable force that rules every planet, and that can exert a merciless price for the smallest slip. It was still easy to go downward; but the thought of the return, up those thousands upon thousands of steps, was already beginning to prey upon their minds.

The stairway had long ago ceased its vertiginous downward plunge and was now flattening out toward the horizontal. The gradient was now only about one in five; at the beginning, it had been five in one. Normal walking was now both physically and psychologically acceptable; only the lowered gravity reminded them that they were not descending