Rendezvous With Rama - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

After a major disaster caused by a meteorite falling in Eastern Italy in 2077, the government of Earth sets up the Spaceguard system as an early warning of arrivals from deep space.

The "Rama" of the title is an alien star ship, initially mistaken for an asteroid categorised as "31/439". It is detected by astronomers in the year 2130 while still outside the orbit of Jupiter. The object's speed (100,000 km/h) and the angle of its trajectory clearly indicate that this is not an object on a long orbit around our sun; it comes from interstellar space. Astronomers' interest is further piqued when they realise that this asteroid not only has an extremely rapid rotation period of 4 minutes, but it is exceptionally large. It is subsequently renamed Rama after the Hindu god and an unmanned space probe dubbed Sita is launched from the Mars moon Phobos to intercept and photograph the object. The resulting images taken during its rapid flyby reveal that Rama is a perfect cylinder, 20 kilometres (12 mi) in diameter and 54 kilometres (34 mi) long, made of a completely featureless material, making this humankind's first encounter with an alien space ship.

The manned solar survey vessel Endeavour is sent to study Rama, as it is the only ship close enough to do so in the brief period Rama will spend in our solar system. Endeavour manages to rendezvous with Rama one month after the space ship first comes to Earth's attention, when the giant alien spacecraft is already within Venus' orbit. The 20+ crew, led by Commander Bill Norton, enters Rama through triple airlocks, and explores the vast 16-km wide by 50-km long cylindrical world of its interior, but the nature and purpose of the starship and its creators remains enigmatic throughout the book. Inside Rama, the air is discovered to be breathable. The astronauts discover several features, including "cities" (odd blocky shapes that look like buildings, and streets with shallow trenches in them, looking like trolley car tracks) that actually served as factories, a sea that stretches in a band around Rama dubbed the Cylindrical Sea, and seven massive cones at the southern end of Rama - believed to form part of the propulsion system.

One of the crew members, Jimmy Pak, who has experience with low gravity skybikes, volunteers to ride a smuggled skybike along Rama's axis to the far end, otherwise inaccessible due to the cylindrical sea and the 500-m high cliff on the opposite shore. A few hours later, Jimmy reaches the massive metal cones on the southern end of Rama, picking up a strange magnetic field coming from the cones. Pak takes a few pictures of the area and the strange plateau on the southern end of Rama's landmass before leaving. The electrical charge in the atmosphere begins to increase during Pak's return, resulting in lightning. A discharge hits his skybike causing him to crash on the isolated southern continent.

When Pak wakes up, he sees a crab-like creature picking up his skybike and chopping it into pieces. He cannot decide whether it is a robot or a biological alien, and keeps his distance while contacting Norton and the others on the other side of Rama for help. Norton sends a rescue party across the cylindrical sea, using a small, improvised craft, and Pak waits. He sees the crab-like creature dump the remains of the skybike into the sea, and he approaches the creature, but it completely ignores him. Pak explores the surrounding fields while waiting for the rescue party to arrive on the southern cliffs of the cylindrical sea. Amongst the strange geometric patterns he sees an alien flower growing through a cracked tile in the otherwise sterile environment, and decides to take it as both a curiosity and for scientific research.

Pak jumps off the 500m cliff, his descent slowed by low gravity and using his shirt as a parachute, and swims quickly to the craft. The ride back is highlighted by tidal waves in the cylindrical sea, formed by movements of Rama itself as it makes course corrections. When the crew arrive at base, they see a variety of odd creatures inspecting their camp. When one is found damaged and apparently lifeless, the team's doctor/biologist Surgeon-Commander Laura Ernst inspects it and names it a "biot" or a hybrid of a biological entity and robot. She concludes that it, and others, appear to be electrically powered by natural internal batteries (much like terrestrial electric eels) and possess some degree of intelligence. They are believed to be the servants of Rama's still-absent builders and maintainers of the starship.

The members of the Rama Committee and the United Planets, both based on the moon, have been monitoring events inside Rama and giving feedback. The Hermian colonists have concluded that Rama is a potential threat to them and send a rocket-mounted bomb to destroy Rama. It is successfully defused by Lt Boris Rodrigo using a pair of wire cutters.

As Rama approaches perihelion, the biots act strangely - jumping into the cylindrical sea where they are destroyed by aquatic biots ('sharks'), and absorbed back into the mineral-laden water. On one last expedition to explore Rama, a few crew members decide to visit the city "London" (chosen as closest to the stairways at the "northern" end of the cylinder they use to return to their ship) to use a laser to cut open one of the buildings and see what is inside. Inside, they discover pedestals containing holograms of various artifacts, believed to have been used by the Ramans as tools and other objects. The holograms themselves are presumed to be templates for replicating these items as needed. The most amazing sight is what appears to be a uniform with bandoliers, straps and pockets that suggests the size and shape of the Ramans. But before the crew can photograph any more holograms, the lights start going out, and they must leave. They all exit up through the stairway on Rama's northern side, out of the three airlocks, and board Endeavour.

When Endeavour is a safe distance away, and Rama reaches perihelion, Rama harnesses the Sun's gravitational field with its mysterious "space drive" for use in a slingshot manoeuvre and is flung out of the solar system toward an unknown location in the direction of the Large Magellanic Cloud.

The book was meant to stand alone, although the final sentence of the book suggests otherwise:

And on far-off Earth, Dr. Carlisle Perera had as yet told no one how he had wakened from a restless sleep with the message from his subconscious still echoing in his brain: The Ramans do everything in threes.

Clarke, however, denied that this sentence was meant to hint at a continuation of the story-–according to his foreword in the book's sequel, it was just a good way to end the book and was added during a final revision.