Rendezvous With Rama - Arthur C. Clarke Page 0,49

he came down in the sea, he would probably drown, quite unpleasantly, in its poisonous waters. And even if he made a safe landing on the southern continent, it might be impossible to rescue him before Endeavour had to break away from Rama’s sunward orbit.

He was also acutely aware that the foreseeable disasters were the ones most unlikely to happen. The totally unknown region over which he was flying might produce any number of surprises. Suppose there were flying creatures here who objected to his intrusion? He would hate to engage in a dogfight with anything larger than a pigeon. A few well-placed pecks could destroy Dragonfly’s aerodynamics.

Yet if there were no hazards there would be no achievement, no sense of adventure. Millions of men would gladly have traded places with him now. He was going not only where no one had ever been before, but also where no one would ever go again. In all of history he would be the only human being to visit the southern regions of Rama. Whenever he felt fear brushing against his mind, he could remember that.

He had now grown accustomed to sitting in mid-air with the world wrapped around him. Because he had dropped two kilometers below the central axis, he had acquired a definite sense of “up” and “down.” The ground was only six kilometers below, but the arch of the sky was ten kilometers overhead. The “city” of London was hanging up there near the zenith; New York, on the other hand, was the right way up, directly ahead.

“Dragonfly,” said Hub Control, “You’re getting a little low. Twenty-two hundred meters from the axis.”

“Thanks,” he replied. “I’ll gain altitude. Let me know when I’m back at twenty.”

This was something he’d have to watch. There was a natural tendency to lose height, and he had no instruments to tell him exactly where he was. If he got too far away from the zero gravity of the axis, he might never be able to climb back to it. Fortunately, there was a wide margin for error, and there was always someone watching his progress through a telescope at the hub.

He was now well out over the sea, pedaling along at a steady twenty kilometers an hour. In five minutes, he would be over New York; already the island looked rather like a ship, sailing forever round and round the Cylindrical Sea.

When he reached New York he flew a circle over it, stopping several times so that his little TV camera could send back steady, vibration-free images. The panorama of buildings, towers, industrial plants, power stations—or whatever they were—was fascinating but essentially meaningless. No matter how long he stared at its complexity, he was unlikely to learn anything. The camera would record far more details than he could possibly assimilate; and one day—perhaps years hence—some student might find in them the key to Rama’s secrets.

After leaving New York, he crossed the other half of the sea in only fifteen minutes. Though he was not aware of it, he had been flying fast over water, but as soon as he reached the south coast he unconsciously relaxed, and his speed dropped by several kilometers an hour. He might be in wholly alien territory, but at least he was over land.

As soon as he had crossed the great cliff that formed the sea’s southern limit, he panned the TV camera completely around the circle of the world.

“Beautiful!” said Hub Control. “This will keep the map makers happy. How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine—just a little fatigue, but no more than I expected. How far do you make me from the pole?”

“Fifteen point six kilometers.”

“Tell me when I’m at ten; I’ll take a rest then. And make sure I don’t get low again. I’ll start climbing when I’ve five to go.”

Twenty minutes later the world was closing in upon him. He had come to the end of the cylindrical section and was entering the southern dome.

He had studied it for hours through the telescopes at the other end of Rama, and had learned its geography by heart. Even so, that had not fully prepared him for the spectacle all around him.

In almost every way the southern and northern ends of Rama differed completely. Here was no triad of stairways, no series of narrow, concentric plateaus, no sweeping curve from hub to plain. Instead, there was an immense central spike, more than five kilometers long, extending along the axis. Six smaller ones, half the size, were equally spaced around