Chapter 48 Chapter 48: Welcome Earthlings

Richard was puzzled.In the first room of the upper horizontal passage, he found some strange little traps.It took him an hour to figure out what they were for.Now, he knew how to adjust the light and temperature in every place in the crypt.But the question is, since the structure of each crypt is roughly the same, why don't those iyun birds use these simpler and easier methods for lighting?As they ate breakfast, Richard half-jokingly asked Nicole to answer the question. Nicole took a bite of the managua and replied, "You're missing the point. The iyun birds themselves don't matter, the real question is, where are the Rama people? Why are they in 'New York' city Do these caves?"

"Maybe they're all Rama," Richard replied, "those creatures, those iyun birds, those eight-legged spiders... maybe they all come from the same planet. In the beginning, they were a happy big Families. But as the years passed and the generations passed, they evolved into different species and built different caves..." "The way you put it, there are too many problems." Nicole interrupted him. "First of all, those creatures must be machines; and those eight-legged spiders may or may not be machines; Well, they are almost certainly not machines. Although where the Rama spacecraft can be produced, the level of artificial intelligence must be higher than our imagination, but my instinct is that they are organic."

"We humans may not be able to tell the difference between a living organism and a multipurpose robot made by a very advanced species." "I agree. But we cannot judge our arguments ourselves. Besides, there is one more point I would like to discuss with you." "What?" Richard asked. "Are these iyun birds, eight-legged spiders, and these crypts on 'Rama 1'?If so, why didn't the team members of the "Enduring" discover it at all?If not, why does this ship have one? " Richard thought for a while quietly: "I know what you think." He finally said, "The most basic premise is that the Rama spaceship was built by some unknown creature millions of years ago. Well; they live in another part of the galaxy. They have no concern, no interest in what they will encounter on this long and arduous journey. If the two ships had been separated so long ago built almost at the same time, why in fact are they so significantly different?"

"I'm beginning to think that our Japanese colleagues are right," replied Nicole. "Perhaps these meaningful terrains will tell us everything. I believe that Newton's team must have been very accurate in their surveying and mapping.' Rama 1 and Rama 2 are indeed different. Once we know the difference between the two ships, we face a more difficult question: Why are they different?" Richard has finished his meal.He paced the dimly lit corridor: "Before the decision to suspend the operation was discussed like this. In the teleconference, the main question was: Why did Rama change its orbit and fly towards Earth? Because the first No other spacecraft did this, so this is strong evidence that Rama 2 is different. Of course, those who attended the meeting did not know about the Aiyunniao and the eight-legged spider."

"General Posov will love these aiyun birds." After a moment of silence, Nicole sighed, "He thinks flying is the most exciting thing in the world." She laughed, "Once he told I, the greatest secret in his life, was to wish to be a bird in the next life." "He's a good guy." Richard stopped pacing. "We didn't know enough about his talents at the time." Nicole put the melon back in her backpack, ready to continue exploring.She smiled at her friends walking around: "Another question, Richard?" He nodded. "Do you think we've met the Rama people? I mean the Rama people who built this ship, or their descendants."

Richard shook his head vigorously and said, "Maybe we've seen some of their creations, or other species from the same planet, but we haven't seen the protagonist of the drama himself." On the left side of the horizontal corridor on the second level, they found a "white room".Before that, the expedition had seemed dull, with Richard and Nicole just walking the corridors, peering into the rooms.Richard again found the switches that controlled the lights and temperature, but nothing new that interested them. Richard and Nicole were taken aback as soon as they entered the brightly painted room.What is even more surprising is that there is a pile of things in a mess on the corner of the wall. When you look closely, they are all daily necessities used by human beings!It makes people feel familiar and intimate.There was a comb, a brush, an empty lipstick case, some coins, a bunch of keys, and even what looked like a walkie-talkie.There was another pile containing a ring, a watch, a tube of toothpaste, a nail file, and a keypad with Latin letters on it.

Richard and Nicole felt dizzy. "Well, my genius," she said, waving her arms, "explain all of this if you can." He picked up the toothpaste, opened the cap, and squeezed hard.A white stuff came out and Richard dipped his finger in some and put it in his mouth. "Oops, bah!" he spat. "Get out your spectrometer and see what it is." While Nicole tested the ingredients in "toothpaste," Richard went through everything on the floor.That watch particularly attracted him. The time of the watch was really accurate, not bad for a second, but the way it marked the hour had never been seen before.

"Have you been to the Space Museum in Florida?" he asked Nicole. "No." She looked up and replied. “There is a display of the belongings that the crew brought with them from the first Rama expedition. This watch is exactly the same as the one on display. I remember it well because I bought a replica in the museum shop.” Nicole came over with a puzzled face and said, "This stuff isn't toothpaste, Richard. But I don't know what it is. The spectrum is weird. It contains a high-molecular organic substance." For several minutes, the two astronauts rummaged through Rama's strange collection in silence, looking for clues. "One thing's for sure," said Richard, who tried unsuccessfully to turn on the walkie-talkie, "these things are clearly connected to humans, and it's not a weird coincidence."

"But how did they get here?" Nicole tried the comb through her hair, but it was too soft. "It's not a real comb," she declared after examining it carefully, "but it just looks like a comb, But it's completely useless, it can't comb your hair." She bent down and picked up the nail file: "Also, this file is useless to human nails." Richard came over and studied the objects.He'd been fussing about with the phone until he dropped it impatiently.He took the file Nicole handed him. "Then these things just look human, don't they?" he said as he ran the file through his longest nail. The nail didn't change at all. Richard returned the file to Nicole.

"What's going on here?" His voice was a little frustrated. "I remember when I was in college, I read a science fiction novel," Nicole said after a moment of contemplation, "it was about the aliens who only knew about human beings from the early TV programs of the earthlings. When we met, the aliens took out the lunch boxes, soaps and other items they had seen on TV, which looked impeccable, but the contents were either missing or not in the right place." Richard didn't listen carefully to Nicole's words, he was typing on the keyboard while observing and studying the things in the room. "Now, how do you explain these things are here?" he said softly to himself.

In an instant, they both came to the same conclusion: "These are the items that Newton and his team carried!" They said in unison. "Then there must be some sort of communication link between the two Rama ships," Richard said. "And these things are put here on purpose to show us that the visit to 'Rama 1' has been discovered and documented." "Those spider-biobots surveyed Newton's camp and equipment. They must have sensor scanners or something." "And all these things are manufactured here according to the blueprints transmitted from 'Rama 1'." When Nicole had finished speaking, both fell into deep thought. "But why are they telling us this? What do they want us to do now?" Richard stood up, pacing the room. Suddenly he laughed and said, "Isn't that amazing? If David Brown is right, if the Rama people really aren't interested in what they find, then why are they doing all this stuff? They're changing Orbital, where they make simple everyday items to please the intelligent beings they encounter? Incredible. I think because all imperfect species are self righteous and incorrigible, the visitors to the Rama spaceship will Asked to know some basic information..." "I think you've got it wrong." Nicole interrupted him. "We know that this ship apparently received the pictures sent from the first ship, and then copied these little daily necessities, and put them here for we discover." "I'd like to see if this keyboard is just a decoration like everything else." Richard picked up the keyboard and typed the word "Rama".Nothing happened.He typed "Nicole" again, still no response. "Don't you know how to use an old-fashioned keyboard?" Nicole laughed.She took the keyboard and demonstrated: "They have a separate power button." She pressed the unmarked button in the upper right corner.A portion of the opposite wall suddenly slid away, revealing a large black rectangle about a meter on a side. The keypad was made in the style of the laptops used by Newton's team, with four rows of 12-letter keys and a power button in the upper right corner. 26 Latin letters, 10 numeric keys, 4 operation keys, 40 in total.In addition, there are 8 keys marked with dots and some geometric figures, and can switch the "up" and "down" positions. It didn't take long for Richard and Nicole to figure out that this particular keyboard was being manipulated by Rama's control center.By using it, they also found that tapping any function key can make the other seven keys switch to different functions.Therefore, pressing any command key can combine to produce 128 different results, so that the total system may have 1024 commands. Listing all the orders was no easy task, and Richard volunteered to do the job.He took notes on his own computer and began writing a program to translate the keyboard commands, and once that was done, they could use the commands on the Rama keypad as if they were their own.He also found that every time a key was pressed, the screen on the wall responded accordingly. Even with Richard's brilliant mind and rich experience, this task is very difficult, and no one else can help him. At Richard's suggestion, during the first day after they discovered the White House, Nicole came out of the crypt twice to the surface, walking around "New York" and searching the skies of Rama for signs of helicopters. clues. The second time out, Nicole returned to the "barn" that had brought her into despair.How many thrilling things have happened since then.The past seems to be a long time ago, and it has become a long history. She often thought of Posov, Wilson, and Tall shore.Before leaving the earth, they also dubiously understood that there would be dangers in the operation; they also received emergency training to deal with various emergencies on the spacecraft and when their lives were threatened, but no one really believed that they would be in action. suffered misfortune. "If Richard and I had died in this 'New York' city," Nicole said to himself, "almost half the crew would have been killed in action, a catastrophe unprecedented since the resumption of space travel." She came outside the "barn," where Frances and Richard had last spoken to Richard before the accident, thinking, "Why are you lying, Frances? Do you think my disappearance will dispel all doubts?" Also disappear into the invisible together?" On the last morning at Camp Beta, before she set off with the others to find Tall Shore, Nicole transferred all the files from her laptop over the network system to the computer in her room on the Newton.Also, Nicole carefully transferred the backup files to her personal travel computer as well. Nicole thought, "It's all there. If some investigator is diligent, look for the stuff about the pills, Posov's blood pressure, even that secret abortion, and of course what Richard did to the surgical robot." Analysis conclusions, etc., will appear in front of his eyes." During two walks, Nicole saw several centipede creatures and spotted a "bulldozer" in the distance.But she neither saw nor heard any trace or sound of the iyun bird or the eight-legged spider. "Maybe they're only active at night," she thought, thinking, as she walked back to join Richard for dinner.