Rendezvous With Rama - Arthur C. Clarke Page 0,48

I know what the trouble is—no gravity. We’ll be better off a kilometer 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 toward the plain. From some angles, the little sky-bike was almost invisible; Jimmy seemed to be sitting in mid-air pedaling furiously. Sometimes he moved in spurts of up to thirty kilometers an hour; then he would coast to a halt, getting the feel of the controls, before accelerating again. And he was always careful to keep a safe distance from the curving face 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 kilometers below. Jimmy completed several wide orbits, then started to climb upward again. He finally halted a few meters above his waiting colleagues and realized, a little belatedly, that he was not quite sure how to land his 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 toward 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 meters away, and the sky-bike was still barely moving, Jimmy abandoned ship. He let himself float toward the nearest safety line in the hub webwork, grasped it, then swung around in time to catch the approaching bike with his hands. The maneuver 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-meter 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; so I can tell how much energy you’ve used. We’ve got to make sure you can 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-kilometer 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 analyzed 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’s ivory-hued countenance. As he followed Surgeon Commander Ernst to the air lock, 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.”

CHAPTER 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