Rendezvous With Rama - Arthur C. Clarke Page 0,69

believe in. If this is the case, Rama may be able to do almost anything. We will be quite unable to anticipate its behavior, even on the gross physical level.”

The diplomats were obviously somewhat baffled by this exchange, and the astronomer refused to be drawn. He had gone out on enough limbs for one day.

“I’ll stick to the laws of physics, if you don’t mind, until I’m forced to give them up. If we’ve not found any gyroscopes in Rama, we may not have looked hard enough, or in the right place.”

Bose could see that Perera was getting impatient. Normally the exobiologist was as happy as anyone else to engage in speculation; but now, for the first time, he had some solid facts. His long-impoverished science had become wealthy overnight.

“Very well. If there are no other comments, I know that Dr. Perera has some important information.”

“Thank you, Mr. Ambassador. As you’ve all seen, we have at last obtained a specimen of a Rama life form, and have observed several others at close quarters. Surgeon Commander Ernst, Endeavour’s medical officer, has sent a full report on the spiderlike creature she dissected. I must say at once that some of her results are baffling, and in any other circumstances I would have refused to believe them.

“The spider is definitely organic, though its chemistry differs from ours in many respects. It contains considerable quantities of light metals. Yet I hesitate to call it an animal, for several fundamental reasons.

“In the first place, it seems to have no mouth, no stomach, no gut—no method of ingesting food. Also no air intakes, no lungs, no blood, no reproductive system….

“You may wonder what it has got. Well, there’s a simple musculature, controlling its three legs and the three whiplike tendrils or feelers. There’s a brain—fairly complex, mostly concerned with the creature’s remarkably developed triocular vision. But eighty per cent of the body consists of a honeycomb of large cells, and this is what gave Dr. Ernst such an unpleasant surprise when she started her dissection. If she’d been luckier, she might have recognized it in time, because it’s the one Raman structure that does exist on Earth—though only in a handful of marine animals.

“Most of the spider is simply a battery, much like that found in electric eels and rays. But in this case it’s apparently not used for defense. It’s the creature’s source of energy. And that is why it has no provisions for eating and breathing; it doesn’t need such primitive arrangements. And incidentally, this means that it would be perfectly at home in a vacuum.

“So we have a creature which, to all intents and purposes, is nothing more than a mobile eye. It has no organs of manipulation; those tendrils are much too feeble. If I had been given its specifications, I would have said it’s merely a reconnaissance device.

“Its behavior certainly fits that description. All the spiders ever do is run around and look at things. That’s all they can do.

“But the other animals are different. The crab, the starfish, the sharks—for want of better words—these can obviously manipulate their environment, and appear to be specialized for various functions. I assume that they are also electrically powered, since, like the spider, they appear to have no mouths.

“I’m sure you’ll appreciate the biological problems raised by all this. Could such creatures evolve naturally? I really don’t think so. They appear to be designed, like machines, for specific jobs. If I had to describe them, I would say that they are robots—biological robots—something that has no analogy on Earth.

“If Rama is a spaceship, perhaps they are part of its crew. As to how they are born—or created—that’s something I can’t tell you. But I can guess that the answer’s over there in New York. If Commander Norton and his men can wait long enough, they may encounter increasingly more complex creatures, with unpredictable behavior. Somewhere along the line they may meet the Ramans themselves—the real makers of this world.

“And when that happens, gentlemen, there will be no doubt about it at all.”

CHAPTER 35

SPECIAL DELIVERY

Commander Norton was sleeping soundly when his personal communicator dragged him away from happy dreams. He had been holidaying with his family on Mars, flying past the awesome, snow-capped peak of Nix Olympica, mightiest volcano in the solar system. Little Billie had started to say something to him; now he would never know what it was.

The dream faded; the reality was his executive officer, up on the ship.

“Sorry to wake you,