rested for an hour, taking light refreshments and massaging leg muscles. This was the last point at which they could breathe in comfort; like old-time Himalayan mountaineers, they had left their oxygen supplies here, and now put them on for the final ascent.
An hour later, they had reached the top of the stairway, and the beginning of the ladder. Ahead lay the last, vertical, kilometer, fortunately in a gravity field only a few per cent of Earth’s. A thirty-minute rest, a careful check of oxygen, and they were ready for the final lap.
Norton made sure that all his men were safely ahead of him again, spaced out at twenty-meter intervals along the ladder. From now on it would be a slow, steady haul, extremely boring. The best technique was to empty the mind of all thoughts and to count the rungs as they drifted by—one hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred….
He had just reached twelve hundred and fifty when he realized that something was wrong. The light shining on the vertical surface immediately in front of his eyes was the wrong color—and it was much too bright.
Norton did not even have time to check his ascent, or to call a warning to his men. Everything happened in less than a second.
In a soundless concussion of light, dawn burst upon Rama.
CHAPTER 18
DAWN
The light was so brilliant that for a full minute Norton had to keep his eyes clenched tightly shut. Then he risked opening them, and stared through barely parted lids at the wall a few centimeters in front of his face. He blinked several times, waited for the involuntary tears to drain away, and then turned slowly to behold the dawn.
He could endure the sight for only a few seconds; then he was forced to close his eyes again. It was not the glare that was intolerable—he could grow accustomed to that—but the awesome spectacle of Rama, now seen for the first time in its entirety.
Norton had known exactly what to expect; nevertheless, the sight had stunned him. He was seized by a spasm of uncontrollable trembling; his hands tightened around the rungs of the ladder with the violence of a drowning man clutching at a life belt. The muscles of his forearms began to knot, yet at the same time his legs—already fatigued by hours of steady climbing—seemed about to give way. If it had not been for the low gravity, he might have fallen.
Then his training took over, and he began to apply the first remedy for panic. Still keeping his eyes closed, and trying to forget the monstrous spectacle around him, he started to take deep, long breaths, filling his lungs with oxygen and washing the poisons of fatigue out of his system.
Presently he felt much better, but he did not open his eyes until he had performed one more action. It took a major effort of will to force his right hand to open—he had to talk to it as though it were a disobedient child—but presently he maneuvered it down to his waist, unclipped the safety belt from his harness, and hooked the buckle to the nearest rung. Now, whatever happened, he could not fall.
He took several more deep breaths; then, still keeping his eyes closed, he switched on his radio. He hoped his voice sounded calm and authoritative as he called: “Captain here. Is everyone OK?”
As he checked off the names one by one, and received answers—even if somewhat tremulous ones—from everybody, his own confidence and self-control came swiftly back to him. All his men were safe, and were looking to him for leadership. He was the commander once more.
“Keep your eyes closed until you’re quite sure you can take it.” he called. “The view is—overwhelming. If anyone finds that it’s too much, keep on climbing without looking back. Remember, you’ll soon be at zero gravity, so you can’t possibly fall.”
It was hardly necessary to point out such an elementary fact to trained spacemen, but Norton had to remind himself of it every few seconds. The thought of zero gravity was a kind of talisman, protecting him from harm. Whatever his eyes told him, Rama could not drag him down to destruction on the plain eight kilometers below.
It became an urgent matter of pride and self-esteem that he should open his eyes once more and look at the world around him. But first he had to get his body under control.
He let go of the ladder with both hands, and hooked his left