Rendezvous With Rama - Arthur C. Clarke Page 0,78

much on Earth.

The huge, curving exterior wall of the fifty-kilometer cylinder was slowly falling away beneath him as the scooter aimed itself directly at the bomb. Yet it was impossible to judge Rama’s size, since it was completely smooth, and so lacking in features that it was difficult to tell that it was spinning.

One hundred seconds into the mission he was approaching the halfway point. The bomb was too far away to show any details, but it was much brighter against the jet-black sky. It was strange to see no stars—not even brilliant Earth or dazzling Venus. The dark filters which protected his eyes against the deadly glare made that impossible. Rodrigo guessed that he was breaking a record; probably no other man had ever engaged in extra-vehicular work so close to the Sun. It was lucky for him that solar activity was low.

At two minutes ten seconds, the flip-over Light started flashing, thrust dropped to zero, and the scooter spun through 180 degrees. Full thrust was back in an instant, but now he was decelerating at the same mad rate of three meters per second squared—rather better than that, in fact, since he had lost almost half his propellant mass. The bomb was twenty-five kilometers away. He would be there in another two minutes. He had hit a top speed of fifteen hundred kph—which, for a space scooter, was utter insanity, and probably another record. But this was hardly a routine EVA, and he knew precisely what he was doing.

The bomb was growing; and now he could see the main antenna, holding steady on the invisible star of Mercury. Along that beam the image of his approaching scooter had been flashing at the speed of light for the last three minutes. There were still two to go before it reached Mercury.

What would the Hermians do when they saw him? There would be consternation, of course. They would realize instantly that he had made a rendezvous with the bomb several minutes before they even knew he was on the way. Probably some stand-by observer would call higher authority; that would take more time. But even in the worst possible case—even if the officer on duty had authority to detonate the bomb and pressed the button immediately—it would take another five minutes for the signal to arrive.

Though Rodrigo was not gambling on it—Cosmo Christers never gambled—he was quite sure that there would be no such instantaneous reaction. The Hermians would hesitate to destroy a reconnaissance vehicle from Endeavour, even if they suspected its motives. They would certainly attempt some form of communication first—and that would mean more delay.

And there was an even better reason: they would not waste a gigaton bomb on a mere scooter. Wasted it would be if it was detonated twenty kilometers from its target. They would have to move it first. Oh, he had plenty of time…. But he would continue to assume the worst. He would act as if the triggering impulse were going to arrive in the shortest possible time—just five minutes.

As the scooter closed in across the last few hundred meters, Rodrigo quickly matched the details he could now see with those he had studied in the photographs taken at long range. What had been only a collection of pictures became hard metal and smooth plastic—no longer abstract, but a deadly reality.

The bomb was a cylinder about ten meters long and three in diameter—by a strange coincidence, almost the same proportions as those of Rama. It was attached to the framework of the carrier vehicle by an open latticework of short I beams. For some reason, probably to do with the location of the center of mass, it was supported at right angles to the axis of the carrier, so that it conveyed an appropriately sinister hammer-head impression. It was indeed a hammer, one powerful enough to smash a world.

From each end of the bomb a bundle of braided cables ran along the cylindrical side and disappeared through the latticework into the interior of the vehicle. All communication and control was here; there was no antenna of any kind on the bomb itself. Rodrigo had only to cut those two sets of cables and there would be nothing left but harmless inert metal.

Although this was exactly what he had expected, it seemed a little too easy. He glanced at his watch; it would be another thirty seconds before the Hermians, even if they had been watching when he rounded the edge of Rama, could