Rendezvous With Rama Quotes
"In those days, there was nothing that men could do to protect themselves against the last random shots in the cosmic bombardment."
"The human race had spread from pole to pole."
"Moving at fifty kilometres a second, a thousand tons of rock and metal impacted on the plains of northern Italy."
"But the loss to art, to history, to science - to the whole human race, for the rest of time - was beyond all computation."
"No meteorite large enough to cause catastrophe would ever again be allowed to breach the defences of Earth."
"The object first catalogued as 31/439, according to the year and the order of its discovery, was detected while still outside the orbit of Jupiter."
"Rama was a lonely wanderer between the stars."
"The sunlight reflected from Rama was not, after all, absolutely constant in its intensity."
"Rama was a rolling stone that could never have gathered any cosmic moss."
"The extraordinary meeting of the Space Advisory Council was brief and stormy."
"The question before the Council was straightforward enough."
"The curvature's too small to be visible over this limited area."
"It's still very cold - below freezing - and we're glad of our thermosuits."
"Here, every sound is swallowed up; the space around us is so enormous that there aren't any echoes."
"The quiet, dignified communications officer was popular with the rest of the crew, but he never entered fully into their activities."
"Jesus Christ was a visitor from space, and had constructed an entire theology on that assumption."
"The main tenet of its faith was well known: it believed that Jesus Christ was a visitor from space."
"Men with advanced scientific and technical training could possibly believe some of the things he had heard Christers state as incontrovertible facts."
"The absence of noise is not a natural condition; all human senses require some input."
"He was seized by a spasm of uncontrollable trembling; his hands tightened round the rungs of the ladder."
"In a soundless concussion of light, dawn burst upon Rama."
"He knew this place. He had been here before."
"The disturbing sensation of déjà-vu faded out, to be replaced by a real and identifiable memory from his youth."
"The tumult was swiftly subsiding; a temporary stalemate had been reached in the war between ice and water."
"It seemed most unlikely that he could crack this material."
"As indeed he was, being a devout member of the Fifth Church of Christ, Cosmonaut."
"Norton had never been able to discover what had happened to the earlier four."
"The ice was breaking up. All these days and weeks, the Sea had been thawing, far down in the depths."
"It was a sheer straight drop of fifty metres from the level of the plain to that of the Sea."
"They should have existed in billions, not mere thousands."
"It was as if there had been a brief explosion of life, recapitulating on a trillion-fold swifter time-scale the early history of Earth."
"All those weird organo-metallic salts add up to a fairly poisonous package."
"The Ramans, it seemed, had brought the art of triple-redundancy to a high degree of perfection."
"Ruby was steering Resolution towards the central complex, where a flight of steps led up from the water to the very top of the wall."
"Commander Norton did not really believe in luck; he never got into a situation until he had analysed all the factors involved and had secured his line of retreat."
"It was a view almost stunning in its complexity."
"The closest analogy he had ever seen to this place on Earth was a giant chemical processing plant."
"It's very important not to over-exert yourself. Remember, the oxygen level here at the axis is still very low."
"The real magnitude of his adventure did not hit Jimmy Pak until he reached the coast of the Cylindrical Sea."
"The spinning phantom he had merely imagined seeing had nothing to do with his decision."
"I've murdered something beautiful, Jimmy told himself."
"A tidal wave was racing towards them, down the eternal curve of the Cylindrical Sea."
"There were too many unknowns, too many dangers..."
"We must make no move that could possibly be regarded as threatening."
"We design robots in our own image; we might expect the Ramans to do the same."
"The human race has to live with its conscience."
"The important thing is not to get bored, to be ready to react at a moment's notice."
"When all else failed, a man had to rely on eyeball instrumentation."
"Either the universe, in a reversion of pre-Copernican cosmology, had suddenly decided to revolve around Endeavour; or..."