Chapter 7 Chapter Seven The Two Wives

Lieutenant Colonel Newton thought with great interest that if his wives could even cross-reference his video telegrams, it would make him do a lot of extra work.Now he could "write" a long video telegram, make another copy, add a little personal greeting, and send them both to Mars and to Earth. Of course, it was very impossible for his wives to do this; although they had higher allowances than ordinary people as family members of astronauts, it was still very expensive and unnecessary to compare his video telegrams.His family has formed a good bond and congratulates each other by calling each other on birthdays and anniversaries.But on the whole it would be better for the girls not to see each other, and that seemed unlikely.Manna was born on Mars and can't stand Earth's gravity, while Caroline hates even a 25-minute trip to the surface.

"Forgive me for sending you a message a day late," Newton said after finishing the general opening, "I have been away from the spaceship for thirty hours, believe it or not. "But don't be afraid—everything is under control and going smoothly. It took us two days to finally get to the bottom of the airlock, and if we had the insight we have now, we would have It can be done in a few hours. But we don't want to take risks, we first send the remote control camera forward, go back and forth around the entrance and exit of the air cabin more than ten times, and finally make sure that they won't lock us up behind—— When we go in.

"Each air chamber is a simple rotating cylinder. At one end, there is a slot. You can enter through this opening. After the cylinder is rotated 180 degrees, the slot just coincides with the door on the opposite side. You can go out, or float out. "The Rama's got it right. There are three of these cylindrical airlocks under those 'mailboxes.' There's still a second back up, and a third. "But that's just the beginning. The other end of the chamber leads to a very long walkway, almost 500 meters long. They look clean and tidy, like everything else we've seen. There's a little shroud every few meters, It seems to be used for lighting, but now everything is in the dark, let me tell you, I am a little scared. There are also two parallel slots, about 1 cm wide, sunken deep in the wall, running through the entire tunnel, We suspect it's for some kind of trailer that carries equipment or people inside and out. If we knew how to use it, we'd save ourselves a lot of trouble.

"I mentioned that the tunnel is 500 meters long. Well, from our sonographic results, the tunnel is just as long as the thickness of the shell, so it appears that we have almost passed it. Now, at the other end of the tunnel, we It would not be surprising to find another similar cylindrical airlock. "Yes, and another, and another. These people seem to do everything three times. We have now reached the final airlock, waiting for an 'OK' from Earth before passing. Inside Rama only Meters away. I'll be happier when these fears are over. "Do you remember Jerry Kechov, my assistant, who used to have a real collection of books? Jerry told me about a similar situation. Back in the 21st century—no, the 20th century, a An archaeologist has discovered the tomb of an ancient Egyptian emperor, the first not to have been looted by tomb robbers. He and his crew have spent months digging down, chamber after chamber, until The last wall. As he pierced this wall he stuck his head through the hole with his lamp. He found himself seeing wealth that filled the room—inconceivable gold and silver jewels.

"Or Rama is also a tomb, and I think it is more and more like it, and even now there is still no sound at all, and there is no sign of any movement. "Well, we'll find out tomorrow." Newton dialed the VCR to pause.He wondered, what else was there to say about work before he started talking privately to each of his two families?Normally, he rarely writes about these kinds of details, but this was an unusual case.This may be the last time he will send video telegrams to his loved ones.It was his duty to explain to them, to let them know what he was doing. Before they saw the images, and heard the words, he was in Rama—whether that was good or bad.