Rendezvous With Rama - Arthur C. Clarke Page 0,41

though not an unpleasant one. It was like a summer evening, Mercer thought, on some tropical coast. The climate inside Rama had improved dramatically during the last few days.

And why? The increased humidity was no problem; the startling rise in oxygen was much more difficult to explain. As he recommenced the descent, Mercer began a whole series of mental calculations. He had not arrived at any satisfactory result by the time they entered the cloud layer.

It was a dramatic experience, for the transition was abrupt. At one moment they were sliding downward in clear air, gripping the smooth metal of the handrail so that they would not gain speed too swiftly in this quarter-of-a-gravity region. Then, suddenly, they shot into a blinding white fog, and visibility dropped to a few meters. Mercer put on the brakes so quickly that Calvert almost bumped into him, and Myron did bump into Calvert, nearly knocking him off the rail.

“Take it easy,” said Mercer. “Spread out so we can just see each other. And don’t let yourself build up speed, in case I have to stop suddenly.”

In eerie silence they continued to glide downward through the fog. Calvert could just see Mercer as a vague shadow ten meters ahead, and when he looked back, Myron was at the same distance behind him. In some ways, this was even spookier than descending in the complete darkness of the Raman night; then, at least, the searchlight beams had shown them what lay ahead. But this was like diving in poor visibility in the open sea.

It was impossible to tell how far they had traveled, but Calvert guessed they had almost reached the fourth level, when Mercer suddenly braked again. After they had bunched together, he whispered: “Listen! Don’t you hear something?”

“Yes,” said Myron, after a minute. “It sounds like the wind.”

Calvert was not so sure. He turned his head back and forth, trying to locate the direction of the faint murmur that had come to them through the fog, but soon abandoned the attempt as hopeless.

They continued the slide, reached the fourth level, and started on toward the fifth. All the while the sound grew louder—and more hauntingly familiar. They were halfway down the fourth stairway when Myron called out: “Now do you recognize it?”

They should have identified it long ago, but it was not a sound they would ever have associated with any world except Earth. Coming out of the fog, from a source whose distance could not be guessed, was the steady thunder of falling water.

A few minutes later, the cloud ceiling ended as abruptly as it had begun. They shot out into the blinding glare of the Raman day, made more brilliant by the light reflected from the low-hanging clouds. There was the familiar curving plain—now made more acceptable to mind and senses because its full circle could no longer be seen. It was not too difficult to pretend that they were looking along a broad valley, and that the upward sweep of the sea was really an outward one.

They halted at the fifth and penultimate platform, to report that they were through the cloud cover and to make a careful survey. As far as they could tell, nothing had changed down there on the plain; but up here on the northern dome Rama had brought forth another wonder.

So there was the origin of the sound they had heard. Descending from some hidden source in the clouds three or four kilometers away was a waterfall, and for long minutes they stared at it silently, almost unable to believe their eyes. Logic told them that on this spinning world no falling object could move in a straight line, but there was something horribly unnatural about a curving waterfall that curved sideways, to end many kilometers away from the point directly below its source.

“If Galileo had been born in this world,” said Mercer finally, “he’d have gone crazy working out the laws of dynamics.”

“I thought I knew them,” Calvert replied, “and I’m going crazy anyway. Doesn’t it upset you, Prof?”

“Why should it?” said Myron. “It’s a perfectly straightforward demonstration of the Coriolis Effect. I wish I could show it to some of my students.”

Mercer was staring thoughtfully at the globe-circling band of the Cylindrical Sea.

“Have you noticed what’s happened to the water?” he said at last.

“Why—it’s no longer so blue. I’d call it pea green. What does that signify?”

“Perhaps the same thing that it does on Earth. Laura called the sea an organic soup, waiting