“Well, even ruling out such unpleasantness,” Sir Robert continued, “we still have the much more ominous possibility of an active, inhabited Rama. Then the situation is one of an encounter between two cultures—at very different technological levels. Pizzaro and the Incas. Perry and the Japanese. Europe and Africa. Almost invariably, the consequences have been disastrous—for one or both parties. I’m not making any recommendations: I’m merely pointing out precedents.”

“Thank you, Sir Robert,” replied Dr. Bose. It was a mild nuisance, he thought, having two “Sirs” on one small committee; in these latter days, knighthood was an honour which few Englishmen escaped. “I’m sure we’ve all thought of these alarming possibilities. But if the creatures inside Rama are—er—malevolent—will it really make the slightest difference what we do?”

“They might ignore us if we go away.”

“What—after they’ve travelled billions of miles and thousands of years?”

The argument had reached the take-off point, and was now self-sustaining. Dr. Bose sat back in his chair, said very little, and waited for the consensus to emerge.

It was just as he had predicted. Everyone agreed that, once he had opened the first door, it was inconceivable that Commander Norton should not open the second.

If his wives ever compared his videograms, Commander Norton thought with more amusement than concern, it would involve him in a lot of extra work. Now, he could make one long ’gram and dupe it, adding only brief personal messages and endearments before shooting the almost identical copies off to Mars and Earth.

Of course, it was highly unlikely that his wives ever would do such a thing; even at the concessionary rates allowed to spacemen’s families, it would be expensive. And there would be no point in it; his families were on excellent terms with each other, and exchanged the usual greetings on birthdays and anniversaries. Yet, on the whole, perhaps it was just as well that the girls had never met, and probably never would. Myrna had been born on Mars and so could not tolerate the high gravity of Earth. And Caroline hated even the twenty-five minutes of the longest possible terrestrial journey.

“Sorry I’m a day late with this transmission,” said the Commander after he had finished the general-purpose preliminaries, “but I’ve been away from the ship for the last thirty hours, believe it or not…”

“Don’t be alarmed—everything is under control, going perfectly. It’s taken us two days, but we’re almost through the airlock complex. We could have done it in a couple of hours, if we’d known what we do now. But we took no chances, sent remote cameras ahead, and cycled all the locks a dozen times to make sure they wouldn’t seize up behind us after we’d gone through…”

“Each lock is a simple revolving cylinder with a slot on one side. You go in through this opening, crank the cylinder round a hundred and eighty degrees and the slot then matches up with another door so that you can step out of it. Or float, in this case.”

“The Ramans really made sure of things. There are three of these cylinder-locks, one after the other just inside the outer hull and below the entry pillbox. I can’t imagine how even one would fail, unless someone blew it up with explosives, but if it did, there would be a second back-up, and then a third…”

“And that’s only the beginning. The final lock opens into a straight corridor, almost half a kilometre long. It looks clean and tidy, like everything else we’ve seen; every few metres there are small ports that probably held lights, but now everything is completely black and, I don’t mind telling you, scary. There are also two parallel slots, about a centimetre wide, cut in the walls and running the whole length of the tunnel. We suspect that some kind of shuttle runs inside these, to tow equipment—or people—back and forth. It would save us a lot of trouble if we could get it working…”

“I mentioned that the tunnel was half a kilometre long. Well, from our seismic soundings we knew that’s about the thickness of the shell, so obviously we were almost through it. And at the end of the tunnel we weren’t surprised to find another of those cylindrical airlocks.”

“Yes, and another. And another. These people seem to have done everything in threes. We’re in the final lock chamber now, awaiting the OK from Earth before we go through. The interior of Rama is only a few metres away. I’ll be a lot happier when the suspense is over.”

“You know Jerry Kirchoff, my Exec, who’s got such a library of real books that he can’t afford to emigrate from Earth? Well, Jerry told me about a situation just like this, back at the beginning of the twenty-first—no, twentieth century. An archaeologist found the tomb of an Egyptian king, the first one that hadn’t been looted by robbers. His workmen took months to dig their way in, chamber by chamber, until they came to the final wall. Then they broke through the masonry, and he held out a lantern and pushed his head inside. He found himself looking into a whole roomful of treasure—incredible stuff gold and jewels…”

“Perhaps this place is also a tomb; it seems more and more likely. Even now, there’s still not the slightest sound, or hint of any activity. Well, tomorrow we should know.”

Commander Norton switched the record to HOLD. What else, he wondered, should he say about the work before he began the separate personal messages to his families? Normally, he never went into so much detail, but these circumstances were scarcely normal. This might be the last ’gram he would ever send to those he loved; he owed it to them to explain what he was doing.

By the time they saw these images, and heard these words, he would be inside Rama—for better or for worse.

Never before had Norton felt so strongly his kinship with that long dead Egyptologist. Not since Howard Carter had first peered into the tomb of Tutankhamen could any man have known a moment such as this—yet the comparison was almost laughably ludicrous.

Tutankhamen had been buried only yesterday—not even four thousand years ago; Rama might be older than mankind. That little tomb in the Valley of the Kings could have been lost in the corridors through which they had already passed, yet the space that lay beyond this final seal was at least a million times greater. And as for the treasure it might hold—that was beyond imagination.

No one had spoken over the radio circuits for at least five minutes; the well-trained team had not even reported verbally when all the checks were complete. Mercer had simply given him the OK sign and waved him towards the open tunnel. It was as if everyone realized that this was a moment for History, not to be spoiled by unnecessary small talk. That suited Commander Norton, for at the moment he too had nothing to say. He flicked on the beam of his flashlight, triggered his jets, and drifted slowly down the short corridor, trailing his safety line behind him. Only seconds later, he was inside.

Inside what? All before him was total darkness; not a glimmer of light was reflected back from the beam. He had expected this, but he had not really believed it. All the calculations had shown that the far wall was tens of kilometres away; now his eyes told him that this was indeed the truth. As he drifted slowly into that darkness, he felt a sudden need for the reassurance of his safety line, stronger than any he had ever experienced before, even on his very first EVA. And that was ridiculous; he had looked out across the light-years and the megaparsecs without vertigo; why should he be disturbed by a few cubic kilometres of emptiness?

He was still queasily brooding over this problem when the momentum damper at the end of the line braked him gently to a halt, with a barely perceptible rebound. He swept the vainly-probing beam of the flashlight down from the nothingness ahead, to examine the surface from which he had emerged.