Rendezvous With Rama

chapter 33. Spider
From now on, Norton had decreed, there would always be at least three people at Camp Alpha, and one of them would always be awake. In addition, all exploring parties would follow the same routine. Potentially dangerous creatures were on the move inside Rama, and though none had shown active hostility, a prudent commander would take no chances.

As an extra safeguard, there was always an observer up on the Hub, keeping watch through a powerful telescope. From this vantage point, the whole interior of Rama could be surveyed, and even the South Pole appeared only a few hundred metres away. The territory round any group of explorers was to be kept under regular observation; in this way, it was hoped to eliminate any possibility of surprise. It was a good plan - and it failed completely.

After the last meal of the day, and just before the 22.00 hour sleep period, Norton, Rodrigo, Calvert and Laura Ernst were watching the regular evening news telecast specially beamed to them from the transmitter at Inferno, Mercury. They had been particularly interested in seeing Jimmy's film of the Southern continent, and the return across the Cylindrical Sea - an episode which had excited all viewers. Scientists, news commentators, and members of the Rama Committee had given their opinions, most of them contradictory. No one could agree whether the crablike creature Jimmy had encountered was an animal, a machine, a genuine Raman - or something that fitted none of these categories.

They had just watched, with a distinctly queasy feeling, the giant starfish being demolished by its predators when they discovered that they were no longer alone. There was an intruder in the camp.

Laura Ernst noticed it first. She froze in sudden shock, then said: "Don't move, Bill. Now look slowly to the right."

Norton turned his head. Ten metres away was a slender-legged tripod surmounted by a spherical body no larger than a football. Set around the body were three large, expressionless eyes, apparently giving 360 degrees of vision, and trailing beneath it were three whiplike tendrils. The creature was not quite as tall as a man, and looked far too fragile to be dangerous, but that did not excuse their carelessness in letting it sneak up on them unawares. It reminded Norton of nothing so much as a three-legged spider, or daddy-long-legs, and he wondered how it had solved the problem - never challenged by any creature on Earth - of tripedal locomotion.

"What do you make of it, Doc?" he whispered, turning off the voice of the TV newscaster.

"Usual Raman three-fold symmetry. I don't see how it could hurt us, though those whips might be unpleasant - and they could be poisonous, like a coelenterate's. Sit tight and see what it does."

After regarding them impassively for several minutes, the creature suddenly moved - and now they could understand why they had failed to observe its arrival. It was fast, and it covered the ground with such an extraordinary spinning motion that the human eye and mind had real difficulty in following it.

As far as Norton could judge - and only a high-speed camera could settle the matter - each leg in turn acted as a pivot around which the creature whirled its body. And he was not sure, but it also seemed to him that every few "steps" it reversed its direction of spin, while the three whips flickered over the ground like lightning as it moved. Its top speed - though this also was very hard to estimate - was at least thirty kilometres an hour.

It swept swiftly round the camp, examining every item of equipment, delicately touching the improvised beds and chairs and tables, communication gear, food containers, Electrosans, cameras, water tanks, tools - there seemed to be nothing that it ignored, except the four watchers. Clearly, it was intelligent enough to draw a distinction between humans and their inanimate property; its actions gave the unmistakable impression of an extremely methodical curiosity or inquisitiveness.

"I wish I could examine it!" Laura exclaimed in frustration, as the creature continued its swift pirouette. "Shall we try to catch it?"

"How?" Calvert asked, reasonably enough.

"You know - the way primitive hunters bring down fast-moving animals with a couple of weights whirling around at the end of a rope. It doesn't even hurt them."

"That I doubt," said Norton. "But even if it worked, we can't risk it. We don't know how intelligent this creature is - and a trick like that could easily break its legs. Then we would be in real trouble - from Rama, Earth and everyone else."

"But I've got to have a specimen!"

"You may have to be content with Jimmy's flower - unless one of these creatures cooperates with you. Force is out. How would you like it if something landed on Earth and decided that you would make a nice specimen for dissection?"

"I don't want to dissect it," said Laura, not at all convincingly. "I only want to examine it."

"Well, alien visitors might have the same attitude towards you, but you could have a very uncomfortable time before you believed them. We must make no move that could possibly be regarded as threatening."

He was quoting from Ship's Orders, of course, and Laura knew it. The claims of science had a lower priority than those of space diplomacy.

In fact, there was no need to bring in such elevated considerations; it was merely a matter of good manners. They were all visitors here, and had never even asked permission to come inside...

The creature seemed to have finished its inspection. It made one more high speed circuit of the camp, then shot off at a tangent towards the stairway.

"I wonder how it's going to manage the steps?" Laura mused. Her question was quickly answered; the spider ignored them completely, and headed up the gently sloping curve of the ramp without slackening its speed.

"Hub Control," said Norton. "You may have a visitor shortly; take a look at the Alpha Stairway Section Six. And incidentally, thanks a lot for keeping such a good watch on us."

It took a minute for the sarcasm to sink in; then the Hub observer started to make apologetic noises.

"Er - I can just see something, Skipper, now you tell me it's there. But what is it?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," Norton answered, as he pressed the General Alert button. "Camp Alpha calling all stations. We've just been visited by a creature like a three-legged spider, with very thin legs, about two metres high, small spherical body, travels very fast with a spinning motion. Appears harmless but inquisitive. It may sneak up on you before you notice it. Please acknowledge."

The first reply came from London, fifteen kilometres to the east.

"Nothing unusual here, Skipper."

The same distance to the west, Rome answered, sounding suspiciously sleepy.

"Same here, Skipper. Uh, just a moment..."

"What is it?"

"I put my pen down a minute ago - it's gone! What - oh!"

"Talk sense!"

"You won't believe this, Skipper. I was making some notes - you know I like writing, and it doesn't disturb anybody - I was using my favourite ball-point, it's nearly two hundred years old - well, now it's lying on the ground, about five metres away! I've got it - thank goodness - it isn't damaged."

"And how do you suppose it got there?"

"Er - I may have dozed off for a minute. It's been a hard day."

Norton sighed, but refrained from comment; there were so few of them, and they had so little time in which to explore a world. Enthusiasm could not always overcome exhaustion, and he wondered if they were taking unnecessary risks. Perhaps he should not split his men up into such small groups, and try to cover so much territory. But he was always conscious of the swiftly passing days, and the unsolved mysteries around them. He was becoming more and more certain that something was about to happen, and that they would have to abandon Rama even before it reached perihelion - the moment of truth when any orbit change must surely take place.

"Now listen, Hub, Rome, London - everyone," he said. "I want a report at every half-hour through the night. We must assume that from now on we may expect visitors at any time. Some of them may be dangerous, but at all costs we have to avoid incidents. You all know the directives on this subject."

That was true enough; it was part of their training - yet perhaps none of them had ever really believed that the long-theorized "physical contact with intelligent aliens" would occur in their lifetimes - still less that they would experience it themselves.

Training was one thing, reality another; and no one could be sure that the ancient, human instincts of self-preservation would not take over in an emergency. Yet it was essential to give every entity they encountered in Rama the benefit of the doubt, up to the last possible minute - and even beyond.

Commander Norton did not want to be remembered by history as the man who started the first interplanetary war. Within a few hours there were hundreds of the spiders, and they were all over the plain. Through the telescope, it could be seen that the southern continent was also infested with them - but not, it seemed, the island of New York.

They took no further notice of the explorers, and after a while the explorers took little notice of them - though from time to time Norton still detected a predatory gleam in his Surgeon-Commander's eye. Nothing would please her better, he was sure, than for one of the spiders to have an unfortunate accident, and he would not put it past her to arrange such a thing in the interests of science.

It seemed virtually certain that the spiders could not be intelligent; their bodies were far too small to contain much in the way of brains, and indeed it was hard to see where they stored all the energy to move. Yet their behaviour was curiously purposeful and coordinated; they seemed to be everywhere, but they never visited the same place twice. Norton frequently had the impression that they were searching for something. Whatever it was, they did not seem to have discovered it.

They went all the way up to the central Hub, still scorning the three great stairways. How they managed to ascend the vertical sections, even under almost-zero gravity, was not clear; Laura theorized that they were equipped with suction pads.

And then, to her obvious delight, she got her eagerly desired specimen. Hub Control reported that a spider had fallen down the vertical face and was lying, dead or incapacitated, on the first platform. Laura's time up from the plain was a record that would never be beaten.

When she arrived at the platform, she found that, despite the low velocity of impact, the creature had broken all its legs. Its eyes were still open, but it showed no reactions to any external tests. Even a fresh human corpse would have been livelier, Laura decided; as soon as she got her prize back to Endeavour, she started to work with her dissecting kit.

The spider was so fragile that it almost came to pieces without her assistance. She disarticulated the legs, then started on the delicate carapace, which split along three great circles and opened up like a peeled orange.

After some moments of blank incredulity - for there was nothing that she could recognize or identify - she took a series of careful photographs. Then she picked up her scalpel.

Where to start cutting? She felt like closing her eyes, and stabbing at random, but that would not have been very scientific.

The blade went in with practically no resistance. A second later, Surgeon-Commander Ernst's most unladylike yell echoed the length and breadth of Endeavour.

It took an annoyed Sergeant McAndrews a good twenty minutes to calm down the startled simps.