Chapter 30 Chapter Thirty Flowers

Thirsty from his ordeal, Jimmy is fully aware of the harsh truth that no one in this land has drinking water.His water bottle might keep him alive for a week - but for what purpose?The sharpest minds on the planet would soon be concentrating on his situation, and Newton would no doubt be barraged with suggestions.But he couldn't imagine any way out facing the 500-meter-high cliff.Even with a long enough rope, there is no place to tie on the cliff. But giving up without fighting is foolish and unmanly.Any rescue would come from the direction of the sea anyway, and as he headed that way, if nothing else happened, he would just incidentally complete his mission, and no one would be able to observe and photograph the ever-changing land he was going to pass through. .For this alone, it will be immortal in the history of mankind. Although he would rather have other honors, this is better than nothing.

Now he is only 3,000 meters away from the sea.He couldn't walk in a straight line because some terrain seemed impassable.This was not a problem, because there were other routes, and on the map that was displayed in front of him, curving up on both sides, all the roads seemed feasible to him. He had plenty of time, and he preferred to take the places with the most interesting views, even if they had to go out of his straight way.About a kilometer to the right there was a square that shone like broken glass or countless treasures.Jimmy walked there unconsciously.Even for a trapped person, there seems to be nothing wrong with being slightly interested in thousands of square meters of diamonds.

He wasn't particularly disappointed when he found that they were sand beds made of millions of quartz crystals.A checkerboard next to it might be more interesting.It is covered with hollow metal tubes of arbitrary shape, ranging in length from less than one meter to more than five meters.Totally impassable, unless tanks are used to wash down the forest of pipes. He followed the passage between the crystal and the pillar to the intersection.The area on the right was a carpet made of metal fluff. He tried to pull out a handful, but couldn't.The one on the left is paved with countless hexagonal colored bricks. If it is not for the different colors, you can hardly see the gaps between the bricks.At first glance, no two similar pieces are of the same color.

He took a panoramic view at the intersection, and said to the hub whistle: "What do you say this is? I seem to have run into a giant's jigsaw puzzle. Maybe this is the Rama Art Exhibition Hall?" "We're as baffled as you are, but there's no indication yet that the Rama people are engaged in art. Let's look at a few more examples before drawing conclusions." The two examples he found at the next intersection were equally difficult to explain.One piece was a bare, pure gray, hard and slippery to the touch; the other piece was spongy, and when he stepped on it with his foot, he almost lost his center of gravity and was sunk like quicksand in a swamp.

At the next intersection, he encountered a piece of cultivated land, but the "soil" was more than one meter thick, and the texture was like some kind of sawdust or filings.He didn't pay much attention to this area, because the adjacent one looked more familiar, like a fence on the earth, with pillars every five meters, and six barbed wires between the pillars to enclose the land.There are three fences like this, which seem to be used to enclose some animals.But there was no gate there, and in the center of the square was a hole smaller than the Copernicus Pass. Maybe Jimmy would have hesitated a little under other circumstances, but now he had nothing to lose.Quickly he climbed over the fence, walked over to the hole and looked in.

Unlike Copernicus, it is only 50 meters deep.In the center of the bottom, there are three tube wells, each large enough to pass an elephant through.Jimmy guessed its most logical use would be as an elevator entrance.But lift what?Probably something pretty big, and pretty dangerous. In the next few hours, Jimmy walked 10 kilometers along the coast.He saw some tent-like structures made of wire mesh, which seemed to be used to keep some large birds, and some pools of some kind of liquid that had frozen.One of them is so black that if you don't touch it, However, there are some things he can understand.Looking along the seashore, there are fields stretching southward one after another, like the experimental fields on the earth, each of which has carefully selected soil, which is only available on the metal ground of Rama.

This is virgin land, lifeless, waiting to be planted.But what?Jimmy found it unbelievable that such an advanced creature as the Rama people would engage in agriculture!Even on Earth, farming has become little more than a fashionable hobby, or simply as a source of some exotic or luxurious food.But he was sure these were fields, each covered with clear plastic film.He tried to take a sample, but his knife could not cut through the membrane. Further inland, there are many other fields, complex structures of rods and wires, apparently intended for plants to cling to.They looked pale and scattered, like trees that have lost their leaves in the depths of winter.And this is a long and terrible winter indeed, and these weeks of light and warmth may well be but a brief interlude before its return.

Jimmy never knew what made him stop and look south through the metal frames.Perhaps subconsciously he has been paying attention to all the details, looking for something special in this magnificent land. More than two hundred meters away, a bunch of colorful things caught his attention.On Earth that would not have caused him a second look.But no doubt he noticed it precisely because it reminded him of the earth. He didn't report to Hub Post until he was quite sure.Now only a few meters away from it, he was definitely alive in this supernatural world of Rama.Here, on the edge of Raman's southern hemisphere, a lonely flower blooms.

As he got closer, it was obvious to Jimmy that something was wrong.A hole had been punctured in the membrane protecting this soil from contamination by alien life forms.From this breach rose a green stem as thick as a human finger.A meter above the ground, separated leaves of fluorescent blue, which to Jimmy looked more like feathers than blades; It is actually three flowers crowded side by side. The petals are colorful tubes five centimeters long, each with about fifty tubes.They shimmer in metallic blues, purples and greens.Jimmy knew a little about botany, but he couldn't tell what looked like stamens or pistils.Maybe its resemblance to flowers on Earth is purely accidental, but it's more like coral or something.

Whatever it belongs to taxonomically, to Jimmy it is a flower.It was a miracle, a non-Rama exception that he would never have the chance to see again.He decides to own it. But it was not easy, the flower was ten meters away, separated by a grid made of thin metal rods, in the shape of a cube, each side less than forty centimeters, repeating and repeating.Jimmy wouldn't be air biking if he wasn't small and nimble.He was confident that getting in would be no problem, but getting out was another matter.Because he definitely couldn't turn the corner, he had to back out. As he reported and described the flower, sending back video from several different angles, Hub Post rejoiced in his discovery.When he told, "I'll pick it now," there was no objection, and there couldn't be, because now his life was his own, and he could do what he wanted.

He took off all his clothes, grabbed the smooth metal rods, and squeezed his way into the frame.The position was just enough, and he felt as if a fugitive was passing through the bars of the cell.When his whole body was in the frame, he tried to step back again to see if there was any problem.It was much more difficult to get out, because instead of being pulled forward with the outstretched arms, he was now pushed back; but he did not appear to be stuck. Jimmy is the action type and the impulsive type, not the thoughtful type.So as he slogged his way through the narrow gaps made of bars, he didn't waste time asking himself why he had to suffer.He has never been interested in flowers in his life, but now he is using his last physical strength to make a desperate gamble. This is undoubtedly a very unusual sample, which is of great scientific value.But Jimmy wanted it only because it was the last link connecting him and the world that gave birth to him. Yet when the flower was within his grasp, he hesitated for a moment.Perhaps this is the only flower growing in the whole of Rama.Take it off, right? If he needed an excuse, he could console himself with the fact that this was something the Ramas hadn't planned.Obviously born at the wrong time, a few generations behind—perhaps too early.But he didn't need an excuse, his hesitation was only for a moment.He reached out, grabbed the stem, and snapped it off. The bouquet came off easily.He also collected two leaves before backing out.Now that he had only one free hand, the progress of the withdrawal was so difficult and so painful that he soon had to pause for breath.Just then he became aware that the feathery leaves were folding and the headless stalk was dangling slowly from its point of support.He watched excitedly and helplessly as the plant slowly retracted completely back into the ground like a wounded snake. Jimmy said to himself, I've murdered something beautiful.But Rama kills him too, and he has the right to collect what he needs. ----------------------------- Notes: