Chapter 46 Chapter Forty-Six Prudence and Courage

Below them, there is a large, dark well, with only light in the first 5 meters.On the wall of the well, there are metal nails about 1 meter long; the distance between each nail is the same. "This must be the destination of these passages," Richard said to himself.He was trying to fit the huge cylindrical hole and its studded walls into the overall structure of Rama in his mind.He and Nicole had walked around the hole twice.There is another passage nearby, which is the same as the passage they retreated just now. After looking at it, they came to the conclusion that this passage also has a slight curvature to the right, as if it points to the same place.

"Okay," said Richard, with a final shrug, "we'll go from here." He stretched out his right foot and stepped on a metal spike, trying to see if he could bear his weight.This nail is very strong.He put his left foot on the other nail, sank, and lowered his right foot. "This distance is very suitable." He glanced back at Nicole, "It's not difficult to climb up." "Richard Walkerfield," said Nicole from the edge of the cave, "are you going to tell me you're going down this abyss? And you want me to go down with you?" "I don't expect anything from you," he replied, "but I don't see a reason to go back now. What choice do we have? Shall we just go back to the ramp. Get out? Why? Nobody came to rescue us? You've seen pictures of those boats, maybe they're down here, maybe this is the secret channel to the Sea of ​​Cylindrical Sea."

"Perhaps," said Nicole, who also began to climb slowly down.At this moment, the light below Richard came on. "Strange noises down there." She heard something. "I heard that too." Richard said, "Woohoo! Come down, we two humans are here." He waved his hand, and his body immediately lost his balance. "Don't embarrass yourself here," said Nicole. She climbed down quickly and was beside him.She stopped, panting, and looked around.She stepped on two metal spikes with her feet and held the other two with her hands.She thought: "I must be crazy, look at this place, it is easy to stimulate people's imagination, such as 'the gate of hell', 'the hole of death' and so on." Richard went down the ladder again, "look Look at him, isn't he scared at all? Or is he reckless? Looks like he likes it all."

The lights came on for a third time, illuminating a grid of grids on the wall below.It hung between these metal studs, and in the not-so-bright light, it looked a little startling, like a smaller version of the great grid that hangs between the skyscrapers in the city of "New York" outside. Richard walked quickly around to check the grid.He called to Nicole, "Come here, I think it's the same thing." The grid is fastened to the wall with some small latches.At Richard's insistence, Nicole cut off a small piece and handed it to him.He stretched it, watched it slowly return to its original shape, and studied the material structure.Finally he said: "It's the same material. But what's the trick?" His brows were wrinkled.

Nicole stood beside him, nonchalantly casting a light on the depths below.She was about to suggest going back to the top when she suddenly saw the reflection of the ground below, about 20 meters deep. "I suggest that while you study this net rope, I will climb down a few meters. We may be close to the bottom of this strange well, and see what is there; if not, we can get out of here." She said. "Okay." Richard replied absently.He took the magnifying glass out of his backpack and examined the net rope intently. Nicole scrambled down nimbly and stood on the floor. "I think you'd better come down," she called to Richard. "There are two more passages here, one big and one small; and there's a well in the middle..." In the blink of an eye, he was beside her. up.He came down shortly after the lights illuminated the platform.

Richard and Nicole are now standing on a 3-meter-wide platform at the bottom of the nail well.This platform forms a ring along the well wall, and in the middle is a smaller shaft, which also has metal spikes on the wall of the small well.To their left and right, dark arched passages lead to mysterious subterranean worlds. The corridor on the left is 5 to 6 meters high, and the smaller corridor on the right is only 0.5 meters high. From the two corridors, two parallel strips protrude, and they are embedded in the ground of half the width of the ring platform.I don't know what material it is made of.The two bars of the small corridor are very close together; the larger one is farther away.Richard knelt down and examined the shape carefully. At this moment, he heard a rumbling sound coming from a distance. "Listen!" he said to Nicole.The two stepped aside instinctively.

The rumbling sound became louder and gradually turned into a "whooping" sound, as if something was flying through the air.On the far side of the corridor, something is heading straight for here like an arrow.Richard and Nicole saw the lights flickering, and their nerves tensed.The answer will come soon. A fast-moving transport vehicle caught their eyes, and they saw it driving towards them as quickly as a subway vehicle, and then stopped abruptly on the platform.Its leading edge is right where the strip ends on the floor. When the car rushed towards them, Richard and Nicole couldn't help backing up, and they had retreated to the edge of the circular platform before they knew it.For a while, they were still in shock, standing there without saying a word, staring at the streamlined rail car hovering above the floor in front of them.Then they looked at each other and laughed at the same time.

"Okay," Nicole said nervously, "I see, we've arrived at a new land. But sitting here, it's not easy to find the platform... This is ridiculous, we started from a Climbing down the nail bucket, going up to the London Underground... I don't know what you think, but I've had enough. I want to find a few sane aiyun birds for company in the next few days, and a few horses Naguas are enough to satisfy your hunger..." Richard was already at the car.A side door opened, and they saw the bright interior of the carriage.There were no seats, only a few columns standing sparsely, and there was no way to see the arrangement of those columns.It is about 3 meters high from the bottom of the carriage to the top.

"This car can't go far." Richard stuck his head through the door, but his feet were still on the platform. "There's no place to sit here." Nicole came over: "Maybe they don't have old people and disabled people... and the store is close to home." She laughed again. Richard leaned forward to get a better view of the interior walls and ceiling. "No more crazy ideas," she said. "We'd be considered crazy to get in this car. And if we run out of food, it's our last hope." "I think you're right." Richard was obviously disappointed, so he retracted, "How surprising..." Before he could finish speaking, he stopped.His eyes were fixed on the opposite platform, and Nicole followed his gaze.

At the entrance of the small corridor, a rail car that looks exactly the same, only one-tenth the size of the car here, is hovering on the floor. "That must be the way to Lilliputia," Nicole said. "The giants take the other way, and people of normal height take the subway here. It's very simple." Richard quickly circled to the opposite side. "Brilliant," he exclaimed, and took off the knapsack, put it aside, and rummaged in one of the pockets. "What are you doing?" Nicole asked curiously. Richard took out two small robots and shook them at her. "Fantastic," he repeated, with irrepressible excitement on his face, "we can send Prince Henry and Falstaff. I'll just need a few minutes to adjust their software."

Richard had turned on the laptop, placed it next to the robot, and was busy. Nicole sat down between two metal spikes with her back against the wall.She gazed at Richard, reflecting on the hours they had been together, admiring: "He was a very special man. Needless to say, he was a genius, and he had a good-natured, childlike heart." Nicole suddenly felt very tired, and she laughed at herself for staring at Richard stupidly.He is working intently.Without realizing it, Nicole closed her eyes. "I'm sorry it took so long." Richard said, "I've been thinking about it and added some new programs, so I need to rearrange the way the programs are linked." Nicole slowly woke up. "How long have we been here?" she asked, yawning. "A little over an hour," said Richard sheepishly. "It's all sorted. I'm ready to put the kids on the subway." Nicole looked around: "Both cars are still here." "I think they work like these lights. I bet they'll be here as long as we're on the platform." Nicole stood up and stretched. "That's our plan," said Richard. "I have a transceiver in my hand; both Prince Henry and Falstaff have sound and picture receivers and internal sensors that are constantly getting information. If necessary, we can receive and issue instructions in the computer through different channels. "But how can the signal penetrate this thick wall?" Nicole recalled when she was trapped in the well in the "barn". "As long as they don't have too much travel distance. If it's too long, beyond the range the device is designed to use, the signal will gradually weaken and become impulse noise... Also, this big subway is coming along a straight line, I hope this The same goes for the little subway.” Richard carefully placed the little robots on the platform and ordered them to walk towards the subway.As they approached, the doors on both sides opened simultaneously. As Falstaff climbed into the carriage, he said: "Give my regards to Mrs Quickley. She's a really silly girl, but with a kind heart." Nicole glanced at Richard curiously. "I didn't erase their old programs." He smiled. "Every now and then, they might babble." The two little robots stood in the car for a minute or two.Richard hurriedly checked their sensors and calibrated the settings on the computer.Finally, the subway doors closed, and the car waited another 10 seconds before pulling into the corridor. Richard ordered Falstaff to face forward, but not too far out of the window.It's a surprisingly long, high-speed ride.When the little subways finally slowed down and stopped, Richard reckoned they had traveled several kilometers. Richard waited a moment before ordering the little robot to leave the subway.He wants to make sure they are not supposed to get off at the halfway station.Nothing to worry about, though, as the first set of image data sent back from Prince Henry shows the tube has indeed come to an end. The two robots circled the subway platform and sent back more pictures. That subway station has many vaults and columns and is a very long room.Richard estimated from the images that the dome was about 2 meters high.He ordered Prince Henry and Falstaff to proceed along the long corridor running perpendicular to the subway and to the left. The corridor ends at another passage.The corridor is barely 5 centimeters high.As the robots surveyed the ground and found two small tracks almost directly beneath their feet, another subway car arrived.When its doors were opened and the lights came on, Richard and Nicole saw that the new car was identical to the one before them, except for the size. The two astronauts sat on their knees, staring intently at the computer screen.Richard orders Falstaff to take a picture of Prince Henry standing next to a miniature subway.After studying the pictures, Richard said to Nicole, "This car is less than a centimeter high. Who will take it? Ants?" Nicole shook her head, but said nothing.She felt uneasy again.At this moment, she recalled her reaction when she first entered Rama and sat in the transition tank car to drive to the relay station at the top of the Alpha ladder, and the shocking feeling when she saw the panoramic view of Rama was aroused again.She said in her heart: "I never thought that there would be so many mysteries. During the first expedition, I couldn't even check the surface..." "Richard." Nicole interrupted his reverie. He ordered the robot to walk back to the corridor, looking up at the camera. "What's the matter?" he replied. "How thick is Rama's shell?" "About 400 meters in total, I estimate." A puzzled expression appeared on his face, "but that's the thickness at the top of the North Pole. We don't know for sure the thickness of the crust anywhere else. Newton and his team reported According to the data, the depth of the Cylindrical Sea varies greatly, some places are only 40 meters deep, and some places are as deep as 150 meters. This means that the thickness of this shell is at least several hundred meters.” Richard quickly checked the monitors, and Prince Henry and Falstaff were almost back on the subway station where they had just disembarked, and he ordered them to stop.Then, turning to Nicole, he said, "Why are you asking that question? It's not like asking casually." "Obviously, this is a completely unexplored underground world," Nicole replied, "It may take our lifetime..." "We don't have that much time," interrupted Richard, laughing, "but back to your question of thickness. The entire southern cylindrical section is 450 meters above the ground on the northern side. So, unless there's something very An unusually important structure—on the face of it, we haven't found it yet—the crust should be much thicker there." Richard waited for Nicole to say something, but she was silent.He turned away and continued his robot adventure. Nicol has grounds to ask the question about shell thickness.She imagined that at the end of this long underground passage, maybe a door suddenly opened, and there was dazzling sunlight outside.She thought wildly: "An intelligent creature living in this dark labyrinth, accidentally encountering something, will irrevocably change your view of the entire universe. How is this impossible? How do you go back to..." "Now look, what's that?" Richard was asking. Nicole stopped thinking and focused on the screen. Prince Henry and Falstaff had entered a hall opposite the end of the Tube station, and stood before a pile of loose, spongy tape.From the infrared image on the screen, it can be seen that a sphere is embedded in the sponge-like fabric, and it is emitting heat. At Nicole's suggestion, Richard ordered the little robot to walk around the object and explore other places first. The hall was large and stretched into the distance, blurred on the screen.The dome is about 20 meters high, and the distance between the two walls exceeds 15 meters.Several other identical sponge-wrapped spherical objects are scattered across the hall.A 5-meter-high lattice grid almost cuts off the hall in the middle, and behind it, 100 meters away, there is another grid. Richard and Nicole discuss the robot's next move.There are no other exits from the lobby and subway station.From the perspective of the panorama, there is nothing of interest nearby except for the sponge-coated spheres.Nicole wants the robot to come back and leave this horrible cave together.Richard curiously demanded that at least one of the spherical objects be investigated. The two robots struggled through the sponge strips and reached the tessellated sphere in the center.As they approached the sphere, the temperature increased immediately.Now it is clear that the function of those materials on the outside is obviously to absorb heat.As soon as the robot touched the sphere, a warning signal flashed on the screen, and the surface temperature exceeded the safe line for its system to operate. Richard acted immediately.The sphere, he decided, was in fact an incomprehensible, dense alloy with a hard surface.Falstaff tapped the sphere vigorously with his arm a few times, and the sound decayed quickly, indicating that the sphere was solid and probably contained liquid.As the two robots struggled wobbly out of the sponge strips, their recording systems detected a "zzz" sound of metal scraping. Richard ordered them to speed up their escape.Prince Henry was running fairly well, but the temperature of one of Falstaff's subsystems rose too high when it touched the sphere, slowing down its internal logic chips. The sound of "Ziz" kept getting louder. Under Richard's control, the computer screen between the two astronauts split into two, showing the signals of the two robots respectively.Prince Henry reached the edge of the sponge, jumped to the ground, and without waiting for his companion to get down, ran toward the tube without looking back; Falstaff crawled slowly through the strip of sponge."Too much work for a drunk," he muttered as he passed an obstacle. The sound stopped suddenly.Falstaff's camera captured an image of an elongated object with gold and black markings.A few seconds later, the camera lens went black, and the little robot's "terminal failure" alarm sounded.Richard and Nicole caught a glimpse of the last image Falstaff sent back: a close-up, giant eye, black jelly mixed with blue.Immediately afterwards, all signal transmissions were abruptly stopped. By this time, Prince Henry had entered the waiting subway car.Seconds before the subway left the station, the ominous scraping sound of metal was heard again.But anyway, the subway has started to leave the station with the little robot. It passes through the tunnel and heads towards the two astronauts at high speed.Richard and Nicole breathed a sigh of relief. Within a second, Prince Henry's pickup picked up a loud, glass-shattering sound.Richard ordered the little robot to turn around and point the camera in the direction of the sound.The camera captured a black and gold tentacles hanging in the air.The tentacle shattered the windows of the car and was relentlessly approaching the robot.In an instant, both Nicole and Richard understood that this thing was on the roof of the subway car!And it's coming for them! Nicole immediately climbed up to the pegs under the light; Richard took a few precious seconds to pack his computer and stuff it all into his backpack.He was halfway up the metal spike when he heard Prince Henry sound the "terminal failure" alarm. Richard looked down, and the subway had arrived, right below him.His blood froze at a glance: atop the subway, crouched there was a large black creature (if that was a creature) with striped tentacles sticking out in all directions.Four tentacles had smashed the car window and grabbed the robot.The monster quickly crawled down the subway, wrapping one of its tentacles around the bottom metal spike. Richard didn't dare to look any more, he quickly climbed up, crossed the rain path above, and ran forward following Nicole who was already running ahead. As he galloped, Richard noticed that the passage curved slightly to the right, and he woke up abruptly. This was not the passage they had come in.It still brought them up the ramp, though.After running a few hundred meters, he stopped and listened carefully to the voice of his pursuer.There is no sound. Richard took a few deep breaths and started running forward again.Suddenly, he heard a terrible wail ahead. "My God, it's Nicole!" He ran towards her.