Chapter 13 Chapter Thirteen The Plains of Rama

After descending those seemingly endless steps, it was a strange treat to walk on level again.Looking forward, the ground is completely flat, and on the left and right, at the limit of being illuminated, a slightly rising curved surface can be barely perceived.They seem to be walking on a vast basin.It's hard to believe that they're actually crawling inside a large cylindrical tank, and beyond this shimmering oasis the land rises on both sides and borders, no, becomes the zenith. While they both felt confident and tried to hold back their excitement, Rama's deadly silence soon overwhelmed them.Every sound of footsteps, every voice, disappears into nothingness without reverberation.Joe Cafu couldn't stand it any longer before five hundred meters.

In addition to his many recognized tricks, he also had the art of whistling.He can blow the tune of many movie songs from the past 200 years.He blows one by one, even if it is not a job, it might as well try to boost morale.Newton was trying to persuade him not to waste his efforts, but the young crew member had also realized that his efforts were inappropriate.In this way, except for the occasional communication with the spacecraft, they have been advancing in silence.Rama won the first round. On this first journey across the plain, Newton arranged for them to take a short detour.Paris is straight ahead, halfway between Step Foot and the Côte de la Column, and just 1,000 meters to the right, there is a very prominent and rather strange place that has been named the "Valley of Straight".It was a deep trough 40 meters deep and 100 meters wide, with slopes on both sides.At first it was considered a canal or canal.Like the huge step ladder, there are three of them, equally spaced on the curved surface of Rama.

These three valleys are all 10 kilometers long and are suddenly interrupted when they reach the sea.On the other side of the sea, this pattern repeats: there are also three 10-kilometer-long troughs in the southern hemisphere. After a comfortable fifteen minutes' walk they came to the edge of the Straight Valley, and they stood for a moment looking thoughtfully into its depths.The slopes at 60° angles on both sides are very smooth, without steps or treads, and the entire bottom is covered with a white substance like ice.Getting a sample of it would put an end to the debate about what it really is.

Newton decided to go down. Cafu and Rodrigo released the safety rope and let Newton slide down the slope.When he got to the bottom, he thought he was going to hit ice, but he was wrong.It turns out that the friction at the bottom of the valley is very strong, and the feet are not slippery at all.This material is like some kind of glass or transparent crystal.When he touched it with his fingers, it was cold and hard, and he couldn't break it. Newton turned his back to the searchlight, blocked the blinding light with his hand, and tried to see through the layer of crystals, as if he were trying to see through the ice on a lake.But he couldn't see anything, and even focusing with his helmet light had no effect.This thing transmits light, but is not transparent.If this is some kind of frozen liquid, it must have a much higher melting point than water.

He took out the geological hammer from his satchel and tapped it lightly, and there was a deep "crown" sound. He tapped harder, but there was no better effect. When he was about to smash it with all his strength, a thought made him endure Living. It doesn't look like it's a material he can crack, and what if it does?Then he looks like a hooligan smashing a big window.There will be better conditions in the future, and he has already obtained useful information.It can't be a canal.Its starting point and ending point are so sudden, and it is not connected by anything.If it had carried any liquid, there must have been traces or dried sediment?But everything is so shiny and clean, it seems as if the people who built it left yesterday.

Once again he was confronted with the fundamental mystery of Rama, and this time he could not escape.Newton was a man of rich imagination, but if he indulged his imagination blindly, he would not be able to reach his current status.However, now he has a feeling that it is not a prophet, but a premonition.A thing is not what it appears to be.There are some strange things about a place that is new and at the same time an antique millions of years old. Deep in thought, he strolled along the small gorge, while his companions held the other end of the rope tied around his waist and walked along the edge of the gorge.It was not so much that he wanted to rediscover, but to indulge his wonderful emotional state; for he felt that something else was disturbing him besides Rama's inexplicable permanence.

When he hadn't walked more than ten meters, the harassing thought hit him like a thunderbolt. He knows this place.It seemed that he had been here before. Such experiences, even on Earth or familiar planets, while not particularly rare, are always disturbing.Many people have had this experience from time to time, but generally they dismiss it as a forgotten photograph.Pure coincidence—if they believed in psychics, they might think it was a telepathy from someone else, or even a flashback of some future scene in their own. But it is quite astonishing that a sight that no other man has ever seen should be acquainted.Newton stood firmly on the smooth crystalline surface for several seconds, trying to organize his thoughts.This kind of mystery, which he had dismissed all his life, made him dizzy at a glance at the edge of existence, and almost turned the well-ordered universe in his heart upside down.

Then, to his great relief, common sense came to the rescue.The disturbing vision faded away, replaced by a real memory of his boyhood. Once, he actually stood in the middle of two steep slopes, watching the slopes stretching away until they merged into a point in the distance.But the pair of slopes were covered with neatly manicured turf, with gravel instead of smooth crystals underfoot. That was 30 years ago, while on holiday in England.Primarily for another classmate (whom he still remembers her face but forgets her name), he took industrial archeology—a popular demand among polytechnic graduates at the time.They inspect abandoned coal mines and cotton mills, climb dilapidated blast furnaces and steam engines, stare in disbelief at pristine, yet dangerous nuclear reactors, and drive worthless Old antique car powered by turbo turbine.

Not everything they see is the real thing.Most of them were lost in the past century, and people didn't bother to preserve it for those everyday objects.But when replicas are needed, they are painstakingly recreated. The young William Newton once shoveled precious coal toward the stove of a locomotive that appeared to be more than 200 years old (it was actually a fake) and enjoyed a 100-kilometer-per-hour gallop along the rails.The 30-kilometer line is real, but it was opened and restored to use after a lot of excavation work. The car whistle blew, leading them into a long tunnel, and out of the tunnel they reached the very straight valley road with grass slopes on both sides.It was this long-forgotten view of the valley that was almost identical to the one he was facing now.

"What's the matter, Captain?" cried Rodrigo. "Have you found anything?" Newton pulled himself back into his present reality, pushing some annoying repression out of his mind.There is definitely a mystery here, but probably beyond human comprehension.He has learned a lesson, although he cannot pass it on to others.No matter the cost, he must not let Rama overwhelm him, because that would mean failure, even madness. "There's nothing down here," he answered. "Pull me up. We'll go straight to Paris." ----------------------------- Notes: