Rendezvous With Rama - Arthur C. Clarke Page 0,47

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 at 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 acrobatic.”

“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.”

CHAPTER 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 around 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 center of gravity, in a semireclining position to reduce air resistance. Control was by a single stick, which could be moved backward and forward, 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-fiber 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, 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; if he did meet with disaster, they would know exactly what had happened to him.

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 Laura 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 absent-mindedly as he tested the controls. The whole rudder-elevator assembly, which formed a single unit on an outrigger five meters 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 repress 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 lifted straight upward—or outward—from the hub, moving slowly along the axis of Rama. When she had traveled a hundred meters, Jimmy stopped pedaling. It was strange to see an obviously aerodynamic vehicle hanging motionless in mid-air. This must be the first time such a thing had ever happened, except possibly on a limited scale inside one of the larger space stations.

“How does she handle?” Norton called.

“Response good, stability poor. But