Norton and the crew send a message to Earth that they have taken pictures of the interior of Rama, while using flares. With the pictures they have been able to map the interior, and have even chosen a spot for a base camp. They have four thousand square kilometers to explore, including six cities which could each hold some 50,000 people, and only weeks to do it in. Their main questions are who built Rama, and what went wrong that the ship is now dead?
The scientists back on Earth are debating about all of this. Some wonder if Rama had been built as a sort of space ark - a huge and slow moving ship built to travel from star to star carrying generation of passengers.
Other scientists want to know how long Rama has been traveling. The last time it passed near a star was over 200,00 years ago! And that star is one that is thought to be unsuitable to life! It might have been traveling for more than a million years.
One of the scientists thinks that an environment like that inside Rama would only support life for 1,000 to 10,000 years. And that Rama is probably derelict but for one thing - it is obviously on a course set to go close to the Sun.
Could some sort of computers be guiding its course close to a suitable star? Long after its builders have all died?
And there is no life on Rama - very sample has come back sterile.
But - while its builders are not there - no one can ever think that humans are alone, anymore.
