Chapter 5 Chapter 5 First Extravehicular Activity

Rama was as silent as a tomb—or, it was a tomb.Absolutely no radio signals of any frequency, no vibrations detectable by vibrator pick-ups, no electrical currents, no radiation except for microwaves, no doubt due to the increasing heat of the sun.There was an almost ominous silence. What do we expect to encounter?Newton asked himself.A welcome committee?He couldn't decide whether he should be disappointed or relieved.In any case, the role of initiator must be assumed by him. His order was to wait 24 hours before going out to search.On the first day, no one could sleep.Even off-duty members spent their time with unresponsive detectors, or simply peered out of observation windows at the strangely geometric horizon.Will this be a living world?They ask themselves, time and time again.is it deadOr just fell asleep?

For the first EVA, Newton took only one companion, Major Karl Messer, a tough and creative officer.Newton had no intention of leaving the ship's sight.A larger team wasn't necessarily safer, if there was any danger, but as a precaution, he had two other members stand in spacesuits and stand by in the airlock as a precaution. The few grams given to them by Rama's gravity and centrifugal force neither helped nor hindered them, and they relied entirely on the injectors.As soon as possible, Newton decided, the rope should be drawn between the spacecraft and the "mail box."This way, they can move around without wasting fuel.

The nearest "mail box" is only 10 meters away from the air-tight cabin of the spacecraft.Newton's first concern was whether the landing would cause damage to the spacecraft.The hull was in good order, he was relieved.He started looking at the "postbox" to try to figure out what it was for. He walked a few meters along the surface of its smooth metal shell, and stopped in front of a pattern.At first, he thought it was some strange decoration, since it didn't appear to serve any useful function.Six spoked grooves were deeply sunken in the metal, and in the grooves, there were six handles, like a rimless wheel, with a small hub in the center, but the wheel seemed impossible to turn, since they were Inlaid in the wall.

Then he noticed with excitement that there was a well-formed recess at the end of these spokes, just enough to accommodate a clenched hand.If a person stands like this, facing the wall, and pulls the handle, it will... Smooth as silk, the wheels slid out of the wall, to his great amazement—for he was quite sure that any moving part had never moved in time immemorial.Newton found himself gripping a steering wheel, like an ancient captain standing on the bridge of a ship. He was glad that his visor was in the shadow of the sun, so Messer couldn't see his expression.He was amazed and angry with himself; or had he made the first mistake, had some invisible mechanism been triggered by his ill-considered movement, and the alarm system in Rama was beeping?

But Endeavor didn't report any changes, and all its detectors couldn't detect any abnormalities except for weak heat waves and his own movements. "How is it? Captain, are you going to turn it?" Newton remembered his rule to himself: "Use your own thinking and judgment, but do it carefully." If he consulted the headquarters for everything, he couldn't get anything done. "What do you think, Karl?" he asked. "It appears to be a manual device for the airlock—an emergency backup system in case of power failure. I cannot imagine any science and technology, however advanced, that would be spared such a defense."

And it would be a fail-safe device, Newton told himself, which could only be operated so long as it would not endanger his system. Newton grabbed the opposite spokes, spread his feet, and tried to turn the wheel, but it wouldn't budge. "Help me," he said to Messer.They each grabbed a spoke handle and tried their best, but they remained the same. Of course, there is no reason to assume that Lamari's clocks and screw threads rotated in the same direction as clocks on Earth. "Let's try it in a different direction," Messer suggested. This time, there is no resistance at all, and the wheel turns smoothly, and you can feel the load.

Half a meter away, the curved wall of this "mailbox" began to move, like a slowly opening shell.A few particles of dust flew up due to the rush of air, shining like diamonds in the sunlight. The road to Rama is opened.