He wondered how the Ramans reached their southern land from New York. Probably there was an underground transport system running beneath the Sea, but they must also have aircraft as well; there were many open areas here in the city that could be used for landing. To discover a Raman vehicle would be a major accomplishment—especially if they could learn to operate it. (Though could any conceivable power source still be functioning, after several hundred thousand years?) There were numerous structures that had the functional look of hangars or garages, but they were all smooth and windowless, as if they had been sprayed with sealant. Sooner or later, Norton had told himself grimly, we’ll be forced to use explosives, and laser beams. He was determined to put off this decision to the last possible moment. His reluctance to use brute force was based partly on pride, partly on fear. He did not wish to behave like a technological barbarian, smashing what he could not understand. After all, he was an uninvited visitor in this world, and should act accordingly.
As for his fear—perhaps that was too strong a word; apprehension might be better. The Ramans seemed to have planned for everything; he was not anxious to discover the precautions they had taken to guard their property. When he sailed back to the mainland, it would be with empty hands.
24. Dragonfly
Lieutenant James Pak was the most junior officer on board Endeavour, and this was only his fourth mission into deep space. He was ambitious, and due for promotion; he had also committed a serious breach of regulations. No wonder, therefore, that he took a long time to make up his mind.
It would be a gamble; if he lost, he could be in deep trouble. He could not only be risking his career; he might even be risking his neck. But if he succeeded, he would be a hero. What finally convinced him was neither of these arguments; it was the certainty that, if he did nothing at all, he would spend the rest of his life brooding over his lost opportunity. Nevertheless, he was still hesitant when he asked the Captain for a private meeting.
What is it this time? Norton asked himself, as he analysed the uncertain expression on the young officer’s face. He remembered his delicate interview with Boris Rodrigo; no, it wouldn’t be anything like that. Jimmy was certainly not the religious type; the only interests he had ever shown outside his work were sport and sex, preferably combined.
It could hardly be the former, and Norton hoped it was not the latter. He had encountered most of the problems that a commanding officer could encounter in this department—except the classical one of an unscheduled birth during a mission. Though this situation was the subject of innumerable jokes, it had never happened yet; of time. “Well, Jimmy, what is it?”
“I have an idea, Commander. I know how to reach the southern continent—even to the South Pole.”
“I’m listening. How do you propose to do it?”
“Er—by flying there.”
“Jimmy, I’ve had at least five proposals to do that—more if you count crazy suggestions from Earth. We’ve looked into the possibility of adapting our spacesuit propulsors, but air drag would make them hopelessly inefficient. They’d run out of fuel before they could go ten kilometres.”
“I know that. But I have the answer.”
Lt. Pak’s attitude was a curious mixture of complete confidence and barely suppressed nervousness. Norton was quite baffled; what was the kid worried about? Surely he knew his commanding officer well enough to be certain that no reasonable proposal would be laughed out of court.
“Well, go on. If it works, I’ll see your promotion is retroactive.”
That little half-promise, half-joke didn’t go down as well as he had hoped. Jimmy gave a rather sickly smile, made several false starts, then decided on an oblique approach to the subject.
“You know, Commander, that I was in the Lunar Olympics last year.”
“Of course. Sorry you didn’t win.”
“It was bad equipment; I know what went wrong. I have friends on Mars who’ve been working on it, in secret. We want to give everyone a surprise.”
“Mars? But I didn’t know…”
“Not many people do—the sport’s still new there; it’s only been tried in the Xante Sportsdome. But the best aerodynamicists in the solar system are on Mars; if you can fly in that atmosphere, you can fly anywhere.”
“Now, my idea was that if the Martians could build a good machine, with all their know-how, it would really perform on the Moon—where gravity is only half as strong.”
“That seems plausible, but how does it help us?”
Norton was beginning to guess, but he wanted to give Jimmy plenty of rope.
“Well, I formed a syndicate with some friends in Lowell City. They’ve built a fully aerobatic flyer with some refinements that no one has ever seen before. In lunar gravity, under the Olympic dome, it should create a sensation.”
“And win you the gold medal.”
“I hope so.”
“Let me see if I follow your train of thought correctly. A sky-bike that could enter the Lunar Olympics, at a sixth of a gravity, would be even more sensational inside Rama, with no gravity at all. You could fly it right along the axis, from the North Pole to the South—and back again.”
“Yes—easily. The one-way trip would take three hours, non-stop. But of course you could rest whenever you wanted to, as long as you kept near the axis.”
“It’s a brilliant idea, and I congratulate you. What a pity sky-bikes aren’t part of regular Space Survey equipment.”
Jimmy seemed to have some difficulty in finding words. He opened his mouth several times, but nothing happened. “All right, Jimmy. As a matter of morbid interest, and purely off the record, how did you smuggle the thing aboard?”
“Er—‘Recreational Stores’.”
“Well, you weren’t lying. And what about the weight?”
“It’s only twenty kilograms.”
“Only! Still, that’s not as bad as I thought. In fact, I’m astonished you can build a bike for that weight.”
“Some have been only fifteen, but they were too fragile and usually folded up when they made a turn. There’s no danger of Dragonfly doing that. As I said, she’s fully aerobatic.”
“Dragonfly—nice name. So tell me just how you plan to use her; then I can decide whether a promotion or a court martial is in order. Or both.”
25. Maiden Flight
Dragonfly was certainly a good name. The long, tapering wings were almost invisible, except when the light struck them from certain angles and was refracted into rainbow hues. It was as if a soap bubble had been wrapped round a delicate tracery of aerofoil sections; the envelope enclosing the little flyer was an organic film only a few molecules thick, yet strong enough to control and direct the movements of a fifty-kph air flow. The pilot—who was also the power plant and the guidance system—sat on a tiny seat at the centre of gravity, in a semi-reclining position to reduce air resistance. Control was by a single stick which could be moved backwards and forwards, right and left; the only “instrument” was a piece of weighted ribbon attached to the leading edge, to show the direction of the relative wind.
Once the flyer had been assembled at the Hub, Jimmy Pak would allow no one to touch it. Clumsy handling could snap one of the single-fibre structural members, and those glittering wings were an almost irresistible attraction to prying fingers. It was hard to believe that there was really something there…
As he watched Jimmy climb into the contraption, Commander Norton began to have second thoughts. If one of those wire-sized struts snapped when Dragonfly was on the other side of the Cylindrical Sea, Jimmy would have no way of getting back—even if he was able to make a safe landing. They were also breaking one of the most sacrosanct rules of space exploration; a man was going alone into unknown territory, beyond all possibility of help. The only consolation was that he would be in full view and communication all the time; they would know exactly what had happened to him, if he did meet with disaster.
Yet this opportunity was far too good to miss; if one
believed in fate or destiny, it would be challenging the gods themselves to neglect the only chance they might ever have of reaching the far side of Rama, and seeing at close quarters the mysteries of the South Pole. Jimmy knew what he was attempting, far better than anyone in the crew could tell him. This was precisely the sort of risk that had to be taken; if it failed, that was the luck of the game. You couldn’t win them all…
“Now listen to me carefully, Jimmy,” said Surgeon-Commander Ernst. “It’s very important not to overexert yourself. Remember, the oxygen level here at the axis is still very low. If you feel breathless at any time, stop and hyperventilate for thirty seconds—but no longer.”
Jimmy nodded absentmindedly as he tested the controls. The whole rudder-elevator assembly, which formed a single unit on an outrigger five metres behind the rudimentary cockpit, began to twist around; then the flap-shaped ailerons, halfway along the wing, moved alternately up and down.
“Do you want me to swing the prop?” asked Joe Calvert, unable to suppress memories of two-hundred-year-old war movies. “Ignition! Contact!” Probably no one except Jimmy knew what he was talking about, but it helped to relieve the tension.
Very slowly, Jimmy started to move the foot-pedals. The flimsy, broad fan of the airscrew—like the wing, a delicate skeleton covered with shimmering film—began to turn. By the time it had made a few revolutions, it had disappeared completely and Dragonfly was on her way.
She moved straight outwards from the Hub, moving slowly along the axis of Rama. When she had travelled a hundred metres, Jimmy stopped pedalling; it was strange to see an obviously aerodynamic vehicle hanging motionless in midair. This must be the first time such a thing had ever happened, except possibly on a very limited scale inside one of the larger space stations.
“How does she handle?” Norton called.
“Response good, stability poor. But I know what the trouble is—no gravity. We’ll be better off a kilometre lower down.”
“Now wait a minute, is that safe?”
By losing altitude, Jimmy would be sacrificing his main advantage. As long as he stayed precisely on the axis, he—and Dragonfly—would be completely weightless. He could hover effortlessly, or even go to sleep if he wished. But as soon as he moved away from the central line around which Rama spun, the pseudo-weight of centrifugal force would reappear.
And so, unless he could maintain himself at this altitude, he would continue to lose height—and at the same time, to gain weight. It would be an accelerating process, which could end in catastrophe. The gravity down on the plain of Rama was twice that in which Dragonfly had been designed to operate. Jimmy might be able to make a safe landing; he could certainly never take off again. But he had already considered all this, and he answered confidently enough: “I can manage a tenth of a gee without any trouble. And she’ll handle more easily in denser air.”
In a slow, leisurely spiral, Dragonfly drifted across the sky, roughly following the line of Stairway Alpha down towards the plain. From some angles, the little sky-bike was almost invisible; Jimmy seemed to be sitting in midair pedalling furiously. Sometimes he moved into spurts of up to thirty kilometres an hour; then he would coast to a halt, getting the feel of the controls, before accelerating again. And he was always very careful to keep a safe distance from the curving end of Rama.
It was soon obvious that Dragonfly handled much better at lower altitudes; she no longer rolled around at any angle but stabilized so that her wings were parallel to the plain seven kilometres below. Jimmy completed several wide orbits, then started to climb upwards again. He finally halted a few metres above his waiting colleagues and realized, a little belatedly, that he was not quite sure how to land this gossamer craft.
“Shall we throw you a rope?” Norton asked half-seriously.
“No, Skipper—I’ve got to work this out myself. I won’t have anyone to help me at the other end.”
He sat thinking for a while, then started to ease Dragonfly towards the Hub with short bursts of power. She quickly lost momentum between each, as air drag brought her to rest again. When he was only five metres away, and the sky-bike was still barely moving, Jimmy abandoned ship. He let himself float towards the nearest safety line in the Hub webwork, grasped it, then swung around in time to catch the approaching bike with his hands. The manoeuvre was so neatly executed that it drew a round of applause.
“For my next act—” Joe Calvert began.
Jimmy was quick to disclaim any credit.
“That was messy,” he said. “But now I know how to do it. I’ll take a sticky-bomb on a twenty-metre line; then I’ll be able to pull myself in wherever I want to.”
“Give me your wrist, Jimmy,” ordered the Doctor, “and blow into this bag. I’ll want a blood sample, too. Did you have any difficulty in breathing?”
“Only at this altitude. Hey, what do you want the blood for?”
“Sugar level; then I can tell how much energy you’ve used. We’ve got to make sure you carry enough fuel for the mission. By the way, what’s the endurance record for sky-biking?”
“Two hours twenty-five minutes three point six seconds. On the Moon, of course—a two kilometre circuit in the Olympic Dome.”
“And you think you can keep it up for six hours?”
“Easily, since I can stop for a rest at any time. Sky biking on the Moon is at least twice as hard as it is here.”
“OK Jimmy—back to the lab. I’ll give you a Go-No-Go as soon as I’ve analysed these samples. I don’t want to raise false hopes but I think you can make it.” A large smile of satisfaction spread across Jimmy Pak’s ivory-hued countenance. As he followed Surgeon-Commander Ernst to the airlock, he called back to his companions: “Hands off, please! I don’t want anyone putting his fist through the wings.”
“I’ll see to that, Jimmy,” promised the Commander. “Dragonfly is off limits to everybody—including myself.”
26. The Voice of Rama
The real magnitude of his adventure did not hit Jimmy Pak until he reached the coast of the Cylindrical Sea. Until now, he had been over known territory; barring a catastrophic structural failure, he could always land and walk back to base in a few hours.
That option no longer existed. If he came down in the Sea, he would probably drown, quite unpleasantly, in its poisonous waters. And even if he made a safe landing in the southern continent, it might be impossible to rescue him before Endeavour had to break away from Rama’s sunward orbit. He was also acutely aware that the foreseeable disasters were the ones most unlikely to happen. The totally unknown region over which he was flying might produce any number of surprises; suppose there were flying creatures here, who objected to his intrusion? He would hate to engage in a dogfight with anything larger than a pigeon. A few well-placed pecks could destroy Dragonfly’s aerodynamics. Yet, if there were no hazards, there would be no achievement—no sense of adventure. Millions of men would gladly have traded places with him now. He was going not only where no one had ever been before—but where no one would ever go again. In all of history, he would be the only human being to visit the southern regions of Rama. Whenever he felt fear brushing against his mind, he could remember that. He had now grown accustomed to sitting in midair, with the world wrapped around him. Because he had dropped two kilometres below the central axis, he had acquired a definite sense of “up” and “down”. The ground was only six kilometres below, but the arch of the sky was ten kilometres overhead. The “city” of London was hanging up there near the zenith; New York, on the other hand, was the right way up, directly ahead.
“Dragonfly,” said Hub Control, “you’re getting a little low. Twenty-two hundred metres from the axis.”
“Thanks,” he replied. “I’ll gain altitude. Let me know when I’m back at twenty.”
This was something he’d have to watch. There was a natural tendency to lose height—and he had no instruments to tell him exactly where he was. If he got too far away from the zero-gravity of the axis, he might never
be able to climb back to it. Fortunately, there was a wide margin for error, and there was always someone watching his progress through a telescope at the Hub.
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