Chapter 34 Chapter 34 Sorry Ambassador...

"As you all know, gentlemen," said the Ambassador of Mars, "a lot has happened since our last meeting. Some of it has required us to discuss and make decisions. Therefore, I give special thanks to our distinguished colleague Mercury Representative Sorry for not being able to attend." This last sentence is not entirely true.Dr. Bosey had no particular regret at the absence of His Excellency Ambassador Mercury.It would be more true to say that he was worried about it.His diplomatic sensitivity told him something must have happened, and although he had excellent sources of information, he hadn't yet figured out what.

The ambassador's letter of apology was polite but insubstantial.Your Excellency the Ambassador regrets that due to urgent and unavoidable business, he cannot attend the meeting, either in person or via video.Dr. Bosey could think of nothing more urgent and important than Rama. "Two of our committee members have comments to make, and I would like to give Professor Davidson the floor first." There were excited whispers from the other scientists on the committee.Most of them felt that it was inappropriate for the scientist to chair the Space Advisory Council because of his well-known cosmology.He sometimes expressed the view that in the grand universe of stars and galaxies the activity of intelligent life was an unfortunate sacrilege, and that it would be ill-bred to pay too much attention to them.Outer space biologists like Dr. Perilla don't like that at all, because their point of view is the exact opposite.For them, the only purpose of the universe is to produce intelligent beings.They mocked purely astronomical phenomena, "a bunch of dead stuff" was their favorite phrase.

"Mr. Ambassador," the scientist began, "I have analyzed Rama's strange behavior during the last few days and wish to present here my conclusions, some of which are surprising." Dr. Perilla was surprised and a little smug.Anything that surprised Davidson was appreciated. "First, the remarkable sequence of events that occurred when the young lieutenant flew into the southern hemisphere," continued Davidson. Small. But they occur simultaneously with changes in Rama's rate of rotation and altitude, i.e., its heading in space, which involves enormous amounts of energy. The electrical discharge that nearly killed, uh...Mr. Peck, was but a small The by-product may be a necessary measure to minimize the loss of the Antarctic giant discharge rod.

"From this I draw two conclusions. When a spaceship—we must call Rama a spaceship, no matter how large—changes altitude, it generally means changing orbit. Therefore, we must seriously Listen carefully to those who feel that Rama is trying to be another planet in our solar system rather than going back to interstellar. "If this is the case, Endeavor must obviously be ready to unmoor at all times. Is that a word for a spaceship? It would be very dangerous for it to remain on Rama. I believe Lieutenant Colonel Newton is aware of this possibility, but I think he should be given another warning."

"Thank you very much, Professor Davidson! Well, Professor Solomon?" "I would like to comment on this statement," said the historian of science, "that Rama appears to be able to vary the rate of rotation without any ejectors or reaction devices. Thus, in my opinion, only two possibilities remain. "The first one is that it has gyroscopes or something like that, but they have to be huge. Where are they? "The second possibility, which would overthrow all of our physics, is that it has a reactionless propulsion system known as a space drive. That's something Davidson doesn't believe in. If that's the case, Lamarr has the ability to do almost anything thing, we have absolutely no way of predicting its behavior, even on a rough level of physics."

Diplomats were embarrassed by the conversation, and Davidson, the astronomer, refused to let it go, and he had too many claws today: "I'll stick to the laws of physics, if you don't mind, until I'm forced to give up. If we haven't found those gyroscopes in Rama, we haven't looked hard enough, or in the right place." Bossy could see that Perilla was getting impatient.He is generally happy to engage in speculative discussions.But now for the first time he had some concrete facts.His long-term impoverished science became rich overnight. "Very well then. If nothing else, I believe Dr. Perilla has some important information."

"Thank you, Mr. Ambassador. As you know, we have finally obtained a sample of Rama's life form. Lieutenant Colonel Ernst, the medical officer of Endeavor, sent a A detailed autopsy report. I must say that some of her results are so inexplicable that I would not have believed them otherwise. "The spider is certainly organic, although its chemical form differs in many respects from ours. It contains considerable quantities of light metals. However, I hesitate to call it an animal for several fundamental reasons. "First of all, it has no mouth, no stomach, no intestines, that is, it has no ability to ingest food; moreover, it has no air intake, no lungs, no blood, no regeneration system...

"Perhaps you are wondering what it has. It has a simple muscle system controlling three legs and three whip-like tentacles. It has a brain, which is very complicated, mainly connected with the three-sided eyes. But occupying it Eighty percent of the body is a honeycomb-shaped large cell, which surprised Ernst when he began to dissect. If she had, she might recognize it in time, because it is one of the structures of Rama that is also present in the Earth stuff, though only in some rare marine animals. "Most of the spider is literally a battery, much like the ones found in electric eels and redfish; but it's not for defense, it's the guy's energy source. That's why it doesn't have eating and breathing organs Because, it doesn't need those primitive features. Which, by the way, also means it's just as comfortable in a vacuum.

"The species we have thus obtained is, for all its function and purpose, nothing more than a moving eye. They have no organic manipulators, and the antennae are so weak that, if I were to classify them, I shall It is classified as a scout. "They're clearly able to clean up their environment and seem to have specialized jobs. I believe they're all electric because they also don't have mouths like the spiders. "I'm sure you're all wondering about the biological questions all of this raises. Did these species evolve naturally? I don't think so. They're designed for different functions like machines, and I'd rather say they're robots— — Bio-robots, something that has no parallels on Earth.

"If Rama is a spaceship, they're probably part of the crew. How they're born or made, that's something I can't tell you. But I guess the answer is in New York. If Newton If the Lieutenant Colonel and his men can stay long enough, they will encounter increasingly more complex beings whose behavior is unpredictable until they encounter the Rama themselves - the true creations of the world By. "And when it happens, gentlemen, there will be no more doubts." ----------------------------- Notes: