“What’s going on here?” demanded Calvert. It was several minutes before he got even the first approximation to an answer.
The columns were not transparent from every angle or under all illuminations. As one walked around them, objects would suddenly flash into view, apparently embedded in their depths like flies in amber—and would then disappear again. There were dozens of them, all different. They looked absolutely real and solid, yet many seemed to occupy the identical volume of space.
“Holograms,” said Calvert. “Just like a museum on Earth.”
That was the obvious explanation, and therefore Norton viewed it with suspicion. His doubts grew as he examined the other columns, and conjured up the images stored in their interiors.
Hand-tools (though for huge and peculiar hands), containers, small machines with keyboards that appeared to have been made for more than five fingers, scientific instruments, startlingly conventional domestic utensils, including knives and plates which apart from their size would not have attracted a second glance on any terrestrial table… they were all there, with hundreds of less identifiable objects, often jumbled up together in the same pillar. A museum, surely, would have some logical arrangement, some segregation of related items. This seemed to be a completely random collection of hardware.
They had photographed the elusive images inside a score of the crystal pillars when the sheer variety of items gave Norton a clue. Perhaps this was not a collection, but a catalogue, indexed according to some arbitrary but perfectly logical system. He thought of the wild juxtapositions that any dictionary or alphabetized list will give, and tried the idea on his companions.
“I see what you mean,” said Mercer. “The Ramans might be equally surprised to find us putting—ah—camshafts next to cameras.”
“Or books beside boots”, added Calvert, after several seconds’ hard thinking. One could play this game for hours, he decided, with increasing degrees of impropriety.
“That’s the idea,” replied Norton. “This may be an indexed catalogue for 3-D images—templates—solid blueprints, if you like to call them that.”
“For what purpose?”
“Well, you know the theory about the biots… the idea that they don’t exist until they’re needed and then they’re created—synthesized—from patterns stored somewhere?”
“I see,” said Mercer slowly and thoughtfully. “So when a Raman needs a left-handed blivet, he punches out the correct code number, and a copy is manufactured from the pattern in here.”
“Something like that. But please don’t ask me about the practical details.”
The pillars through which they had been moving had been steadily growing in size, and were now more than two metres in diameter. The images were correspondingly larger; it was obvious that, for doubtless excellent reasons, the Ramans believed in sticking to a one-to-one scale. Norton wondered how they stored anything really big, if this was the case.
To increase their rate of coverage, the four explorers had now spread out through the crystal columns and were taking photographs as quickly as they could get their cameras focused on the fleeting images. This was an astonishing piece of luck, Norton told himself, though he felt that he had earned it; they could not possibly have made a better choice than this Illustrated Catalogue of Raman Artifacts. And yet, in another way; it could hardly have been more frustrating. There was nothing actually here, except impalpable patterns of light and darkness; these apparently solid objects did not really exist.
Even knowing this, more than once Norton felt an almost irresistible urge to laser his way into one of the pillars, so that he could have something material to take back to Earth. It was the same impulse, he told himself wryly, that would prompt a monkey to grab the reflection of a banana in a mirror.
He was photographing what seemed to be some kind of optical device when Calvert’s shout started him running through the pillars.
“Skipper—Karl—Will—look at this!”
Joe was prone to sudden enthusiasms, but what he had found was enough to justify any amount of excitement.
Inside one of the two-metre columns was an elaborate harness, or uniform, obviously made for a vertically-standing creature, much taller than a man. A very narrow central metal band apparently surrounded the waist, thorax or some division unknown to terrestrial zoology. From this rose three slim columns, tapering outwards and ending in a perfectly circular belt, an impressive metre in diameter. Loops equally spaced along it could only be intended to go round upper limbs or arms. Three of them…
There were numerous pouches, buckles, bandoliers from which tools (or weapons?) protruded, pipes and electrical conductors, even small black boxes that would have looked perfectly at home in an electronics lab on Earth. The whole arrangement was almost as complex as a spacesuit, though it obviously provided only partial covering for the creature wearing it.
And was that creature a Raman? Norton asked himself. We’ll probably never know; but it must have been intelligent—no mere animal could cope with all that sophisticated equipment.
“About two and a half metres high,” said Mercer thoughtfully, “not counting the head—whatever that was like.”
“With three arms—and presumably three legs. The same plan as the Spiders, on a much more massive scale. Do you suppose that’s a coincidence?”
“Probably not. We design robots in our own image; we might expect the Ramans to do the same.”
Joe Calvert, unusually subdued, was looking at the display with something like awe.
“Do you suppose they know we’re here?” he half-whispered.
“I doubt it,” said Mercer. “We’ve not even reached their threshold of consciousness—though the Hermians certainly had a good try.”
They were still standing there, unable to drag themselves away, when Pieter called from the Hub, his voice full of urgent concern.
“Skipper—you’d better get outside.”
“What is it—biots heading this way?”
“No—something much more serious. The lights are going out.”
43. Retreat
When he hastily emerged from the hole they had lasered, it seemed to Norton that the six suns of Rama were as brilliant as ever. Surely, he thought, Pieter must have made a mistake… that’s not like him at all…
But Pieter had anticipated just this reaction.
“It happened so slowly,” he explained apologetically, “that it was a long time before I noticed any difference. But there’s no doubt about it—I’ve taken a meter reading. The light level’s down forty per cent.”
Now, as his eyes readjusted themselves after the gloom of the glass temple, Norton could believe him. The long day of Rama was drawing to its close.
It was still as warm as ever, yet Norton felt himself shivering. He had known this sensation once before, during a beautiful summer day on Earth. There had been an inexplicable weakening of light as if darkness was falling from the air, or the sun had lost its strength—though there was not a cloud in the sky. Then he remembered; a partial eclipse was in progress.
“This is it,” he said grimly. “We’re going home. Leave all the equipment behind—we won’t need it again.”
Now, he hoped, one piece of planning was about to prove its worth. He had selected London for this raid because no other town was so close to a stairway; the foot of Beta was only four kilometres away.
They set off at the steady, loping trot which was the most comfortable mode of travelling at half a gravity. Norton set a pace which, he estimated, would get them to the edge of the plain without exhaustion, and in the minimum of time. He was acutely aware of the eight kilometres they would still have to climb when they had reached Beta, but he would feel much safer when they had actually started the ascent.