“We’ve been searching now for an hour and a half,” Richard said impatiently. “Look at this map. There’s no place within five hundred meters of the plaza center that we haven’t covered at least twice.”
“Then we’re doing something wrong,” Nicole replied. “There were three heat sources in my vision.” Richard frowned. “Or be logical, if you prefer. Wliy would there be three plazas and only two underground lairs? You said yourself that the Ramans always followed a reasonable plan.”
They were standing in front of a dodecahedron that faced the eastern plaza. “And another thing,” Richard growled to himself, “what’s the purpose of all these damn polyhedrons? There’s one in every sector and the three biggest are in the plazas… Wait a minute,” he said, as his eyes went from one of the twelve faces of the dodecahedron to an opposite skyscraper. His head then turned quickly around the plaza. “Could it be?” he said. “No,” he answered, “that would be impossible.”
Richard saw that Nicole was staring at him. “I have an idea,” he said excitedly. “It may be completely farfetched… Do you remember Dr. Bardolini and his progressive matrices? With the dolphins?.. What if the Ramans also left a pattern here in New York of subtle differences that change from plaza to plaza and section to section?.. Look, it’s no crazier than your visions.”
Already Richard was on his knees on the ground, working with his maps of New York, “Can I use your computer too?” he said to Nicole a few minutes later. “That will speed up the process.”
For hours Richard Wakefield sat beside the two computers, mumbling to himself and trying to solve the puzzle of New York. He explained to Nicole, when he took a break for dinner at her insistence, that the location of the third underground hole could only be determined if he thoroughly understood the geometric relationships between the polyhedrons, the three plazas, and all the skyscrapers immediately opposite the principal faces of the polyhedrons in each of the nine sectors. Two hours before dark Richard dashed off hurriedly to an adjacent section to obtain extra data that had not yet been recorded on their computer maps.
Even after dark he did not rest. Nicole slept the first part of the fifteen-hour night. When she awoke after five hours, Richard was still working feverishly on his project. He didn’t even hear Nicole clear her throat. She arose quietly and put her hands on his shoulders. “You must get some sleep, Richard,” she said quietly,
“I’m almost there,” he said. She saw the bags under his eyes when he turned around. “No more than another hour.”
Nicole returned to her mat. When Richard awakened her later, he was full of enthusiasm. “Wouldn’t you know it?” he said with a grin. “There are three possible solutions, each of which is consistent with all the patterns.” He paced for almost a minute. “Could we go look now?” he then said pleadingly. “I don’t think I can sleep until I find out.”
None of Richard’s three solutions for the location of the third lair was close to the plaza. The nearest one was over a kilometer away, at the edge of New York opposite the Northern Hemicylinder. He and Nicole found nothing there. They then marched another fifteen minutes in the dark to the second possible location, a spot very near the southeast comer of the city. Richard and Nicole walked down the indicated street and found the covering in the exact spot that Richard had predicted. “Hallelujah,” he shouted, spreading out his sleeping mat beside the cover. “Hooray for mathematics.”
Hooray for Omeh, Nicole thought. She was no longer sleepy but she wasn’t anxious to explore any new territory in the dark. What comes first, she asked herself after they had returned to camp and she was lying awake on her mat, intuition or mathematics? Do we use models to help us find the truth? Or do we know the truth first, and then develop the mathematics to explain it?
They were both up at daylight. “The days are still growing slightly shorter,” Richard mentioned to Nicole. “But the sum of daytime and nighttime is remaining constant at forty-six hours, four minutes, and fourteen seconds.”
“How long before we reach the Earth?” Nicole inquired as she was stuffing her sleeping mat into its protective package.
’Twenty Earth days and three hours,” he replied after consulting his computer. “Are you ready for another adventure?”
She nodded. “I presume you also know where to find the panel that opens this cover?”
“No, but I bet it’s not hard to find,” he said confidently. “And after we find this one, the avian lair opening will be duck soup because we’ll have the whole pattern.”
Ten minutes later Richard pushed on a metal plate and the third covering swung open. The descent into this third hole was down a wide staircase broken by occasional landings. Richard took Nicole’s hand as they walked down the stairs. They used their flashlights to find their way, as no lights illuminated their descent.
The water room was in the same place as in the other underground lairs. There were no sounds in the horizontal tunnels that led off from the central stairway at either of the two main levels. “I don’t think anyone lives here,” Richard said.
“At least not yet,” Nicole answered.
48
WELCOME EARTHLINGS
Richard was puzzled. In the first room off one of the top horizontal tunnels he had found an array of strange gadgets that he had decoded in less than an hour. He now knew how to regulate the lights and temperature throughout each particular portion of the underground lair. But if it was that easy, and all the lairs were similarly constructed, why did the avians not use the lights that had been provided? While they were eating breakfast Richard quizzed Nicole about the details of the avian lair.
“You’re overlooking more fundamental issues!” Nicole said, as she took a bite of manna melon. “The avians aren’t that important by themselves. The real question is, where are the Ramans? And why did they put these holes under New York in the first place?”
“Maybe they’re all Ramans,” Richard replied. “The biots, the avians, the octospiders — maybe they all came originally from the same planet. At the beginning they were all one happy family. But as the years and generations passed, different species evolved in separate ways. Individual lairs were constructed and the—”
“There are too many problems with that scenario,” Nicole interrupted. “First, the biots are definitely machines. The avians may or may not be. The octospiders almost certainly aren’t, although a technological level that could create this spaceship in the first place might have progressed further in artificial intelligence than we can possibly imagine. My intuitive sense, however, says that those things are organic.”
“We humans would never be able to distinguish between a living creature and a versatile machine created by a truly advanced species.”
“I agree with that. But we can’t possibly resolve this argument by ourselves. Besides, there is another question that f want to discuss with you.”
“What’s that?” Richard asked.
“Did the avians and the octospiders and these underground regions exist also on Rama I? If so, how did the Norton crew miss them altogether? If not, why are they on this spacecraft and not the first one?”
Richard was quiet for several seconds. “I see where you’re heading,” he said finally. “The fundamental premise has always been that the Rama spacecraft were created millions of years ago, by unknown beings from another region of the galaxy, and that they were totally uninvolved with and disinterested in whatever they encountered during their trek. If they were created that long ago, why would two vehicles that were presumably built at virtually the same time have such striking differences?”