Rendezvous With Rama - Arthur C. Clarke Page 0,86

ridiculous. It was absurd to imagine that all these trillions of tons could suddenly start moving with sufficient acceleration to shake him loose. Nevertheless, for the remainder of the ascent Norton never let himself get far from the security of the handrail.

Lifetimes later, the stairway ended. Only a few hundred meters of vertical, recessed ladder were left. It was no longer necessary to climb this section, since one man at the hub, hauling on a cable, could easily hoist another against the rapidly diminishing gravity. Even at the bottom of the ladder a man weighed less than five kilos; at the top, virtually zero.

So Norton relaxed in the sling, grasping a rung from time to time to counter the feeble Coriolis force trying to push him off the ladder. He almost forgot his knotted muscles as he had his last view of Rama.

It was about as bright now as the light of a full moon on Earth. The over-all scene was perfectly clear, but he could no longer make out the finer details. The South Pole was now partially obscured by a glowing mist; only the peak of Big Horn protruded through it—a small, black dot, seen exactly head on.

The carefully mapped but still unknown continent beyond the sea was the same apparently random patchwork that it had always been. It was too foreshortened, and too full of complex detail, to reward visual examination, and Norton scanned it only briefly.

He swept his gaze around the encircling band of the sea, and noticed for the first time a regular pattern of disturbed water, as if waves were breaking over reefs set at geometrically precise intervals. Rama’s maneuvering was having some effect, but a slight one. He was sure that Sergeant Barnes would have sailed forth happily under these conditions had he asked her to cross the sea in her lost Resolution.

New York, London, Paris, Moscow, Rome…. He said farewell to all the cities of the Northern Hemisphere, and hoped the Ramans would forgive him for the damage he had done. Perhaps they would understand that it was all in the cause of science.

Then, finally, he was at the hub, and eager hands reached out to grab him and to hurry him through the air locks. His overstrained legs and arms were trembling so uncontrollably that he was almost unable to help himself, and he was content to be handled like a half-paralyzed invalid.

The sky of Rama contracted above him as he descended into the central crater of the hub. When the door of the inner air lock shut off the view forever, he found himself thinking: How strange that night should be falling, now that Rama is closest to the Sun!

CHAPTER 44

SPACE DRIVE

A hundred kilometers was an adequate safety margin, Norton had decided. Rama was now a huge black rectangle, exactly broadside on, eclipsing the Sun. He had used this opportunity to fly Endeavour completely into shadow, so that the load could be taken off the ship’s cooling systems and some overdue maintenance could be carried out. Rama’s protective cone of darkness might disappear at any moment, and he intended to make as much use of it as he could.

Rama was still turning. It had now swung through almost fifteen degrees, and it was impossible to believe that some major orbit change was not imminent. On the United Planets, excitement had reached a pitch of hysteria, but only a faint echo of this came to Endeavour. Physically and emotionally, her crew was exhausted; apart from a skeleton watch, everyone had slept for twelve hours after take-off from the North Pole base. On doctor’s orders, Norton himself had used electrosedation. Even so, he had dreamed that he was climbing an infinite stairway.

The second day back on the ship, everything had almost returned to normal, and the exploration of Rama already seemed part of another life. Norton started to deal with the accumulated office work and to make plans for the future; but he refused the requests for interviews that had somehow managed to insinuate themselves into the Survey and even SPACEGUARD radio circuits. There were no messages from Mercury, and the U.P. General Assembly had adjourned its session, though it was ready to meet again at an hour’s notice.

Norton was having his first good night’s sleep, thirty hours after leaving Rama, when he was rudely shaken back to consciousness. He cursed groggily, opened a bleary eye at Karl Mercer, and then, like any good commander, was instantly wide awake.

“It’s stopped turning?”

“Yes. Steady