Rama grew until it filled the screen. Its surface was a dull, drab grey, as colourless as the Moon, and completely devoid of markings except at one point. Halfway along the cylinder there was a kilometre-wide stain or smear, as if something had once hit and splattered, ages ago.
There was no sign that the impact had done the slightest damage to Rama’s spinning walls; but this mark had produced the slight fluctuation in brightness that had led to Stenton’s discovery.
The images from the other cameras added nothing new. However, the trajectories their pods traced through Rama’s minute gravitational field gave one other vital piece of information—the mass of the cylinder.
It was far too light to be a solid body. To nobody’s great surprise, it was clear that Rama must be hollow.
The long-hoped-for, long-feared encounter had come at last. Mankind was about to receive its first visitor from the stars.
4. Rendezvous
Commander Norton remembered those first TV transmissions, which he had replayed so many times, during the final minutes of the rendezvous. But there was one thing no electronic image could possibly convey—and that was Rama’s overwhelming size.
He had never received such an impression when landing on a natural body like the Moon or Mars. Those were worlds, and one expected them to be big. Yet he had also landed on Jupiter VIII, which was slightly larger than Rama—and that had seemed quite a small object.
It was very easy to resolve the paradox. His judgement was wholly altered by the fact that this was an artifact, millions of times heavier than anything that Man had ever put into space. The mass of Rama was at least ten million million tons; to any spaceman, that was not only an awe-inspiring, but a terrifying thought. No wonder that he sometimes felt a sense of insignificance, and even depression, as that cylinder of sculptured, ageless metal filled more and more of the sky.