At first it was thought to be an asteroid, but calculations of its orbit revealed that it was a lone star prodigal. This is its first and last visit to the solar system, as it hurtles toward the solar system, around the sun, toward the unknown sky. This amazing discovery was so exciting that it needed a proper name, but by 2130, the Greek and Roman gods had all run out and it was the turn of the Hindu gods to name the star, and it became Ram.
The next observation showed that Rama’s rotation period was only four minutes. It was a perfect cylinder, and the two bottom surfaces perpendicular to the axis of rotation were 20 kilometers in diameter. The distance between the two bottom surfaces was 50 kilometers.
Among the coalition leaders, there was talk of “an encounter between two civilisations-as far apart in technology as Pizarro was to the Incas, Peri to the shogunate, Europe to Africa. These contacts, almost invariably, have had disastrous consequences.”
When the human Endeavour spacecraft landed smoothly on the underside of Rama, it was found to be as quiet as a tomb, no electricity, no radiation, no detectors. Was it dead, or just dormant?
Endeavour’s captain NORTON found a manual switch in the airlock compartment and opened the path to Rama’s interior. It was completely dark. Using flares, NORTON and his party saw the unusual structure inside — Rama was bowl-shaped at both ends. The central axis area in the north has three ladders radially south to the center of the inner side of the cylinder (the inner side of the translator called “plain”). A ten-kilometer-wide band of darkness encircle Rama halfway up the inner side, which looks like ice, and which NORTON calls the “cylindrical sea.” Right in the middle of the cylindrical sea is a huge ovoid island, covered with towering structures. In the south, on the central axis, there was a huge spike several kilometers long, and around it were six smaller spikes.
To NORTON, the Rama world is now a tomb, where temperatures are below freezing, oxygen levels are low but breathable, and the air smells musty. Rama was hundreds of times older than any existing building on Earth, yet everything looked brand new, with no signs of wear or scratches, which baffled NORTON.
As Rama enters the inner orbit of Venus, the outer temperature has reached nearly 500 degrees Celsius. As the sun’s heat penetrates through the outer crust, the cylindrical sea begins to melt, icebergs collide, and the sound of crushing and crushing ice resounds above. Suddenly, in a silent burst of light, NORTON saw the dawn of Rama, and he thought that perhaps, though there was no life, there might be consciousness, there might be sentience — the robots might be waking from their eons of sleep.
Just as the Mercury Ambassador, one of the heads of the coalition government, worries that Rama may be under the command of robots to the detriment of humans, “It may be unpleasant to think that, but we must think about self-defence.” Endeavour crewman Rodrigo, however, believes Rama is an ark, a place with water and air suitable for human habitation. “Our faith has prepared us for such a visit, even though we don’t know what form it will take. If this isn’t the Second coming of Jesus, it could be the Second Last Judgment — the first was the story of Noah’s Ark. I believe that Rama is a cosmic ark sent here to save — those who deserve to be saved.” By this time, Rama’s cylindrical sea had become an “organic soup,” and in the past 48 hours, it had sped through the anaerobic stage and evolved photosynthetic plants.
South of Rama, sailor Jimmy came across a huge crab-like creature, about two meters long and one meter wide, with six legs and three joints on each leg; A green stem the width of a little finger grew out of a cluster of blue leaves a metre above the ground, and at the top of the stem three flowers, close together, glowed metallic blue or purple or green. In the cylindrical sea, NORTON and his men saw a five-meter-long giant starfish being torn to pieces by two lobster-like beasts. At Endeavour’s camp, the three-legged, two-meter-tall spider-shaped creature gingerly touches their desks, chairs, sleeping quarters, communications equipment, food containers, electric toilets, video cameras, water tanks, tools… It was as if I had seen everything. Hundreds of spider-like creatures appeared across the plains, ignoring NORTON and his party, as if they were biological robots designed to do a specific job.
This makes Ambassador Mercury, head of the coalition government, increasingly uneasy: “We are facing various possibilities, some of them very serious. It would be foolish to continue pretending that these creatures are necessarily friendly and will not hinder us in any way. If they came to our solar system, they must have wanted something… Think of the terrible threat that Rama might — I don’t say definitely — bring to civilization. Should the worst happen…” Missiles are on standby 50 kilometers from Rama.
Just before the evacuation, NORTON and others found stored holograms — a sophisticated set of safety rigging or uniforms, apparently intended for an upright creature taller than a man, almost as sophisticated as a space suit. So is this creature a Rama? NORTON asked himself. It may never be known, but it was clearly an intelligent creature — no ordinary animal could cope with such a sophisticated device.
Rama was already 200,000 kilometers away, and NORTON and his team on Endeavour were going through the data over and over again until they had to come to the incredible conclusion that perhaps Rama’s computer, after millions of years of safe navigation, had made a trivial error, perhaps simply changing a plus sign to a minus sign in some equation, and that it was moving faster than ever before, Falling fast into the sun. When NORTON thought that the wonders he had seen at Ramori were about to disappear, he was filled with sorrow and regret.
“High up in the sun’s outer atmosphere there appears a shimmering pipe a hundred thousand kilometers long. It curves slightly along the path of Rama, and Rama itself — or the protective shell around him — looks like a shiny bullet, ghostly flying faster and faster along a tube through the sun’s corona. Now the Rama’s strategy was clear — they had come so close to the sun in order to extract its energy from its source, so that they could gain greater speed towards their ultimate goal, which no one knew about…”
Despite the excitement, speculation, doubt, bewilderment, curiosity, hostility, or worship that has been found in Rama, it has treated the solar system as a gas station — a supply station — whatever you want to call it, and then continued on its way, passing us by, ignoring humanity.
God laughs when man thinks.
After reading the novel, I found myself spending nearly six hours on the plain, among the mysteries and wonders of Captain NORTON and the others, while perhaps Sir Arthur Clarke, the author, was sipping his English tea in the five dimensions of Interstellar, watching how, over the years, different languages have been used in various parts of the globe, Meeting Rama — he must have smiled.
