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By Root 411 0

a city, it's a very peculiar one. Note that none of the buildings have windows, or even doors! They are all plain rectangular structures, an identical thirty-five metres high. And they appear to have been extruded out of the ground—there are no seams or joints—look at this close-up of the base of a wall—there's a smooth transition into the ground.'

'My own feeling is that this place is not a residential area, but a storage or supply depot. In support of that theory, look at this photo.'

'These narrow slots or grooves, about five centimetres wide, run along all the streets, and there's one leading to every building—going straight into the wall. There's a striking resemblance to the streetcar tracks of the early twentieth century; they are obviously part of some transport system.'

'We've never considered it necessary to have public transport direct to every house. It would be economically absurd—people can always walk a few hundred metres. But if these buildings are used for the storage of heavy materials, it would make sense.'

'May I ask a question?' said the Ambassador for Earth.

'Of course, Sir Robert.'

'Commander Norton couldn't get into a single building?'

'No; when you listen to his report, you can tell he was quite frustrated. At one time he decided that the buildings could only be entered from underground; then he discovered the grooves of the transport system, and changed his mind.'

'Did he try to break in?'

'There was no way he could, without explosives or heavy tools. And he doesn't want to do that until all other approaches have failed.'

'I have it!' Dennis Solomons suddenly interjected. 'Cocooning!'

'I beg your pardon?'

'It's a technique developed a couple of hundred years ago,' continued the science historian. 'Another name for it is mothballing. When you have something you want to preserve, you seal it inside a plastic envelope, and then pump in an inert gas. The original use was to protect military equipment between wars; it was once applied to whole ships. It's still widely used in museums that are short of storage space; no one knows what's inside some of the hundred-year-old cocoons in the Smithsonian basement.'

Patience was not one of Carlisle Perera's virtues; he was aching to drop his bombshell, and could restrain himself no longer.

'Please, Mr. Ambassador! This is all very interesting, but I feel my information is rather more urgent.'

'If there are no other points—very well, Dr. Perera.'

The exobiologist, unlike Conrad Taylor, had not found Rama a disappointment. It was true that he no longer expected to find life but sooner or later, he had been quite sure, some remains would be discovered of the creatures who had built this fantastic world. The exploration had barely begun, although the time available was horribly brief before Endeavour would be forced to escape from her present sun-grazing orbit.

But now, if his calculations were correct, Man's contact with Rama would be even shorter than he had feared. For one detail had been overlooked—because it was so large that no one had noticed it before.

'According to our latest information,' Perera began, 'one party is now on its way to the Cylindrical Sea, while Commander Norton has another group setting up a supply base at the foot of Stairway Alpha. When that's established, he intends to have at least two exploratory missions operating at all times. In this way he hopes to use his limited manpower at maximum efficiency.'

'It's a good plan, but there may be no time to carry it out. In fact, I would advise an immediate alert, and a preparation for total withdrawal at twelve hours' notice. Let me explain . . .'

'It's surprising how few people have commented on a rather obvious anomaly about Rama. It's now well inside the orbit of Venus yet the interior is still frozen. But the temperature of an object in direct sunlight at this point is about five hundred degrees!'

'The reason of course, is that Rama hasn't had time to warm up. It must have cooled down to near absolute zero—two hundred and seventy below—while it was in interstellar space.