Rendezvous With Rama - Arthur C. Clarke [15]
'We did consider that,' he said gently. 'But if our present theories of stellar evolution are correct, this star could never have been stable—could never have had life-bearing planets. So Rama has been cruising through space for at least two hundred thousand years, and perhaps for more than a million.'
'Now it's cold and dark and apparently dead, and I think I know why. The Ramans may have had no choice—perhaps they were indeed fleeing from some disaster—but they miscalculated.'
'No closed ecology can be one hundred per cent efficient; there is always waste, loss—some degradation of the environment, and build-up of pollutants. It may take billions of years to poison and wear out a planet—but it will happen in the end. The oceans will dry up, the atmosphere will leak away . . .'
'By our standards, Rama is enormous—yet it is still a very tiny planet. My calculations, based on the leakage through its hull, and some reasonable guesses about the rate of biological turnover, indicate that its ecology could only survive for about a thousand years. At the most, I'll grant ten thousand . . .'
'That would be long enough, at the speed Rama is travelling, for a transit between the closely-packed suns in the heart of the Galaxy. But not out here, in the scattered population of the spiral arms. Rama is a ship which exhausted its provisions before it reached its goal. It's a derelict, drifting among the stars.'
'There's just one serious objection to this theory, and I'll raise it before anybody else does. Rama's orbit is aimed so accurately at the solar system that coincidence seems ruled out. In fact, I'd say it's now heading much too close to the sun for comfort: Endeavour will have to break away long before perihelion, to avoid overheating.'
'I don't pretend to understand this. Perhaps, there may be some form of automatic terminal guidance still operating, steering Rama to the nearest suitable star ages after its builders are dead.'
'And they are dead; I'll stake my reputation on that. All the samples we've taken from the interior are absolutely sterile—we've not found a single micro-organism. As for the talk you may have heard about suspended animation, you can ignore it. There are fundamental reasons why hibernation techniques will only work for a very few centuries—and we're dealing with time spans a thousand-fold longer.'
'So the Pandorans and their sympathizers have nothing to worry about. For my part, I'm sorry. It would have been wonderful to have met another intelligent species.'
'But at least we have answered one ancient question. We are not alone. The stars will never again be the same to us.'
10
Descent into Darkness
Commander Norton was sorely tempted but, as captain, his first duty was to his ship. If anything went badly wrong on this initial probe, he might have to run for it.
So that left his second officer, Lieut-Commander Mercer, as the obvious choice. Norton willingly admitted that Karl was better suited for the mission.
The authority on life-support systems, Mercer had written some of the standard textbooks on the subject. He had personally checked out innumerable types of equipment, often under hazardous conditions, and his biofeedback control was famous. At a moment's notice he could cut his pulse-rate by fifty per cent, and reduce respiration to almost zero for up to ten minutes. These useful little tricks had saved his life on more than one occasion.
Yet despite his great ability and intelligence, he was almost wholly lacking in imagination. To him the most dangerous experiments or missions were simply jobs that had to be done. He never took unnecessary risks, and had no use at all for what was commonly regarded as courage.
The two mottoes on his desk summed up his philosophy of life. One asked WHAT HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN? The other said HELP STAMP OUT BRAVERY. The fact that he was widely regarded as the bravest man in the Fleet was the only