Rendezvous With Rama - Arthur C. Clarke Page 0,23

needed the grandeur of Bach or Beethoven or Sibelius or Tuan Sun, not the trivia of popular entertainment. Norton was on the point of suggesting that Joe save his breath for later exertions when the young officer realized the inappropriateness of his efforts. Thereafter, apart from an occasional consultation with the ship, they marched on in silence. Rama had won this round.

On this initial traverse, Norton had allowed for one detour. Paris lay straight ahead, halfway between the foot of the stairway and the shore of the Cylindrical Sea, but only a kilometer to the right of their track was a very prominent, and rather mysterious, feature, which had been christened the Straight Valley. It was a long groove or trench, forty meters deep and a hundred wide, with gently sloping sides; it had been provisionally identified as an irrigation ditch or canal. Like the stairway, it had two similar counterparts, equally spaced on the curve of Rama.

The three valleys were almost ten kilometers long, and they stopped abruptly just before they reached the sea—which was strange if they were intended to carry water. And on the other side of the sea the pattern was repeated: three more ten-kilometer trenches continued on to the region of the South Pole.

They reached the near end of the Straight Valley after only fifteen minutes’ comfortable walking, and stood for a while staring thoughtfully into its depths. The perfectly smooth walls sloped down at an angle of sixty degrees; there were no steps or footholds. Filling the bottom was a sheet of flat white material that looked much like ice. A specimen could settle a good many arguments. Norton decided to get one.

With Calvert and Rodrigo acting as anchors and playing out a safety rope, he rappelled slowly down the steep incline. When he reached the bottom, he fully expected to find the familiar slippery feel of ice underfoot, but he was mistaken. The friction was too great; his footing was secure. This material was some kind of glass or transparent crystal. When he touched it with his finger tips, it was cold, hard, and unyielding.

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 much higher than water.

He tapped it gently with the hammer from his geology kit. The tool rebounded with a dull, unmusical “clunk.” He tapped harder, with no more result, and he was about to exert his full strength when some impulse made him desist.

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 most unlikely 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 sediment, 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. 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 odd indeed about a place that was simultaneously brand new and a million years old.

Deep in thought, 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 meters when it hit him like a thunderbolt.

He knew this place. He had been here