Rendezvous With Rama - Arthur C. Clarke Page 0,28
felt exactly like ice. It was ice.
When she struck it with her hammer, a familiar pattern of cracks radiated from the impact point, and she had no difficulty in collecting as many pieces as she wished. Some had already melted when she held up the sample holder to the light. The liquid appeared to be slightly turbid water, and she took a cautious sniff.
“Is that safe?” Rodrigo called down, with a trace of anxiety.
“Believe me, Boris,” she answered, “if there are any pathogens around here that have slipped through my detectors, our insurance policies lapsed a week ago.”
But Rodrigo had a point. Despite all the tests that had been carried out, there was a slight risk that this substance might be poisonous, or might carry some unknown disease. In normal circumstances, Dr. Ernst would not have taken even this minuscule chance. Now, however, time was short, and the stakes were enormous. If it became necessary to quarantine Endeavour, that would be a small price to pay for her cargo of knowledge.
“It’s water, but I wouldn’t care to drink it—it smells like an algae culture that’s gone bad. I can hardly wait to get it to the lab.”
“Is the ice safe to walk on?”
“Yes, solid as a rock.”
“Then we can get to New York.”
“Can we, Pieter? Have you ever tried to walk across four kilometers of ice?”
“Oh—I see what you mean. Just imagine what Stores would say if we asked for a set of skates! Not that many of us would know how to use them, even if we had any aboard.”
“And there’s another problem,” put in Rodrigo. “Do you realize that the temperature is already above freezing? Before long, that ice is going to melt. How many spacemen can swim four kilometers? Certainly not this one.”
Dr. Ernst rejoined them at the edge of the cliff, and held up the small sample bottle in triumph.
“It’s a long walk for a few cc’s of dirty water, but it may teach us more about Rama than anything we’ve found so far. Let’s head for home.”
They turned toward the distant lights of the hub, moving with the gentle, loping strides that had proved the most comfortable means of walking under this reduced gravity. Often they looked back, drawn by the hidden enigma of the island out there in the center of the frozen sea.
And just once, Dr. Ernst thought she felt the faint suspicion of a breeze against her cheek.
It did not come again, and she quickly forgot about it.
CHAPTER 16
KEALAKEKUA
“As you know perfectly well, Dr. Perera,” said Ambassador Bose in a tone of patient resignation, “few of us share your knowledge of mathematical meteorology. So please take pity on our ignorance.”
“With pleasure,” answered the exobiologist, quite unabashed. “I can explain it best by telling you what is going to happen inside Rama—very soon.
“The temperature is now about to rise, as the solar heat pulse reaches the interior. According to the latest information I’ve received, it is already above freezing point. The Cylindrical Sea will soon start to thaw; and unlike bodies of water on Earth, it will melt from the bottom upward. That may produce some odd effects; but I’m much more concerned with the atmosphere.
“As it is heated, the air inside Rama will expand—and will attempt to rise toward the central axis. And this is the problem. At ground level, although it is apparently stationary, it is actually sharing the spin of Rama—over eight hundred kilometers an hour. As it rises toward the axis, it will try to retain that speed. And it won’t be able to do so, of course. The result will be violent winds and turbulence. I estimate velocities of between two and three hundred kilometers an hour.
“Incidentally, very much the same thing occurs on Earth. The heated air at the Equator—which shares the Earth’s sixteen-hundred-kilometer-an-hour spin—runs into the same problem when it rises and flows north and south.”
“Ah, the trade winds! I remember that from my geography lessons.”
“Exactly, Sir Robert. Rama will have trade winds, with a vengeance. I believe they’ll last only a few hours, and then some kind of equilibrium will be restored. Meanwhile, I should advise Commander Norton to evacuate—as soon as possible. Here is the message I propose sending.”
With a little imagination, Norton told himself, he could pretend that this was an improvised night camp at the foot of some mountain in a remote region of Asia or America. The clutter of sleeping pads, collapsible chairs and tables, portable power plant, lighting equipment, electrosan