derwent inktense pencils

Now, as his eyes readjusted themselves after the gloom
of the glass temple, Norton could believe him. The long
day of Rama was drawing to its close.

It was still as warm as ever, yet Norton felt himself
derwent inktense pencils shivering. He had known this sensation once before, dur-
ing a beautiful summer day on Earth. There had been
an inexplicable weakening of light as if darkness was fall-
ing from the air, or the sun had lost its strength - though
there was not a cloud in the sky. Then he remembered; a
partial eclipse was in progress.

'This is it,' he said grimly. 'We're going home. Leave
derwent inktense pencils all the equipment behind - we won't need it again.'

Now, he hoped, one piece of planning was about to
prove its worth. He had selected London for this raid
because no other town was so close to a stairway; the foot
of Beta was only four kilometres away.

They set off at the steady, loping trot which was the
most comfortable mode of travelling at half a gravity.
derwent inktense pencils Norton set a pace which, he estimated, would get them to
the edge of the plain without exhaustion, and in the
minimum of time. He was acutely aware of the eight
kilometres they would still have to climb when they had
reached Beta, but he would feel much safer when they
had actually started the ascent.

The first tremor came when they had almost reached
the stairway. It was very slight, and instinctively Norton
turned towards the south, expecting to see another dis-
play of fireworks around the Horns. But Rama never
seemed to repeat itself exactly; if there were any electrical
discharges above those needle-sharp mountains, they were
too faint to be seen.

'Bridge,' he called, 'did you notice that?'

'Yes, Skipper - very small shock. Could be another atti-
tude change. We're watching the rate gyro - nothing yet.
Just a minute! Positive reading! Can just detect it - less
than a microradian per second, but holding.'

So Rama was beginning to turn, though with almost
imperceptible slowness. Those earlier shocks might have
been a false alarm - but this, surely, was the real
thing.

'Rate increasing five microrad. Hello, did you feel
that shock?'

'We certainly did. Get all the ship's systems opera-
derwent inktense pencils tional. We may have to leave in a hurry.'

'Do you expect an orbit change already? We're still a
long way from perihelion.

'I don't think Rama works by our textbooks. Nearly at
Beta. We'll rest there for five minutes.'

Five minutes was utterly inadequate, yet it seemed an
age. For there was now no doubt that the light was fail-
ing, and failing fast.

Though they were all equipped with flashlights, the
derwent inktense pencils thought of darkness here was now intolerable; they had
grown so psychologically accustomed to the endless day
that it was hard to remember the conditions under which
they had first explored this world. They felt an over-
whelming urge to escape - to get out into the light of the
Sun, a kilometre away on the other side of these cylindri-
cal walls.

'Hub Control!' called Norton. 'Is the searchlight oper-
ating? We may need it in a hurry.'

'Yes, Skipper. Here it comes.

A reassuring spark of light started to shine eight kilo-
metres above their heads. Even against the now fading
derwent inktense pencils day of Rama, it looked surprisingly feeble; but it had
served them before, and would guide them once again if
they needed it.

This, Norton was grimly aware, would be the longest
and most nerve-wracking climb they had ever done. What-
ever happened, it would be impossible to hurry; if they
over-exerted themselves, they would simply collapse some-
where on that vertiginous slope, and would have to wait
until their protesting muscles permitted them to continue.
derwent inktense pencils By this time, they must be one of the fittest crews that
had ever carried out a space mission; but there were lim-
its to what flesh and blood could do.

After an hour's steady plodding they had reached the
fourth section of the stairway, about three kilometres
from the plain. From now on, it would be much easier;
gravity was already down to a third of Earth value. Al-
though there had been minor shocks from time to time,
no other unusual phenomena had occurred, and there
was still plenty of light. They began to feel more optimis-
tic, and even to wonder if they had left too soon. One
thing was certain, however; there was no going back.
derwent inktense pencils They had all walked for the last time on the plain of
Rama.

It was while they were taking a ten-minute rest on the
fourth platform that Joe Calvert suddenly exclaimed:
'What's that noise, Skipper?'

'Noise! - I don't hear anything.'

'High-pitched whistle - dropping in frequency, you
must hear it.'

'Your ears are younger than mine - oh, now I do.'

The whistle seemed to come from everywhere. Soon it
was loud, even piercing, and falling swiftly in pitch.
Then it suddenly stopped.

A few seconds later it came again, repeating the same
sequence. It had all the mournful, compelling quality of
a lighthouse siren sending out its warnings into the fog-
shrouded night. There was a message here, and an urgent
one. It was not designed for their ears, but they under-
stood it. Then, as if to make doubly sure, it was re-
derwent inktense pencils inforced by the lights themselves.

They dimmed almost to extinction, then started to
flash. Brilliant beads, like ball lightning, raced along the
six narrow valleys that had once illuminated this world.
They moved from both Poles towards the Sea in a syn-
chronized, hypnotic rhythm which could have only one
meaning. 'To the Sea!' the lights were calling, 'To the
Sea I' And the summons was hard to resist; there was not
a man who did not feel a compulsion to turn back, and to
derwent inktense pencils seek oblivion in the water of Rama.

'Hub Control!' Norton called urgently. 'Can you see
what's happening?'

The voice of Pieter came back to him; he sounded
awed, and more than a little frightened.

'Yes, Skipper. I'm looking across at the Southern conti-
nent. There are still scores of biots over there - including
some big ones. Cranes; Bulldozers - lots of Scavengers.
And they're all rushing back to the Sea faster than I've
ever seen them move before. There goes a Crane - right
over the edge! Just like Jimmy, but going down a lot
quicker ... it smashed to pieces when it hit ... and here
come the Sharks - they're tearing into it... ugh; it's not a
derwent inktense pencils pleasant sight...

'Now I'm looking at the plain. Here's a Bulldozer that
seems to have broken down ... it's going round and
round in circles. Now a couple of Crabs are tearing into
it, pulling it to pieces ... Skipper, I think you'd better get
back right away.'

'Believe me,' Norton said with deep feeling, 'we're com-
ing just as quickly as we can.

Rama was battening down the hatches, like a ship pre-
paring for a storm. That was Norton's overwhelming im-
pression, though he could not have put it on a logical
basis. He no longer felt completely rational; two compul-
derwent inktense pencils sions were warring in his mind - the need to escape, and
the desire to obey those bolts of lightning, that still
flashed across the sky, ordering him to join the biots in
their march to the sea.

One more section of stairway - another ten-minute
pause, to let the fatigue poisons drain from his muscles.
Then on again - another two kilometres to go, but let's
try not to think about that-
The maddening sequence of descending whistles ab-
ruptly ceased. At the same moment, the fireballs racing
along the slots of the Straight Valleys stopped their sea-
ward strobing; Rama's six linear suns were once more
derwent inktense pencils continuous bands of light.

But they were fading fast, and sometimes they flick-
ered, as if tremendous jolts of energy were being drained
from waning power sources. From time to time, there
were slight tremors underfoot; the bridge reported that
Rama was still swinging with imperceptible slowness, like
a compass needle responding to a weak magnetic field.
This was perhaps reassuring; it was when Rama stopped
its swing that Norton would really begin to worry.

All the biots had gone, so Pieter reported. In the whole
interior of Rama, the only movement was that of human
beings, crawling with painful slowness up the curving
derwent inktense pencils face of the north dome.

Norton had long since overcome the vertigo he had felt
on that first ascent, but now a new fear was beginning to
creep into his mind. They were so vulnerable here, on
this endless climb from plain to Hub. Suppose that, when
it had completed its attitude change, Rama started to
accelerate?

Presumably its thrust would be along the axis. If it was
in the northward direction, that would be no problem;
they would be held a little more firmly against the slope
which they were ascending. But if it was towards the
south, they might be swept off into space, to fall back
derwent inktense pencils eventually on the plain far below.

He tried to reassure himself with the thought that any
possible acceleration would be very feeble. Dr Perera's
calculations had been most convincing; Rama could not
possibly accelerate at more than a fiftieth of a gravity, or
the Cylindrical Sea would climb the southern cliff and
flood an entire continent. But Perera had been in a com-
fortable study back on Earth, not with kilometres of
overhanging metal apparently about to crash down upon
his head. And perhaps Rama was designed for periodic
flooding-

No, that was ridiculous. It was absurd to imagine that
all these trillions of tons could suddenly start moving
with sufficient acceleration to shake him loose. Neverthe-
less, for all the remainder of the ascent, Norton never let
derwent inktense pencilsderwent inktense pencils Lifetimes later, the stairway ended; - only a few hun-
dred metres 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 bot-
tom of the ladder a man weighed less than five kilos; at
the top, practically zero.

So Norton relaxed in the sling, grasping a rung from
time to time to counter the feeble Coriolis force still try-
ing to push him off the ladder. He almost forgot his knot-
ted muscles, as he had his last view of Rama.
It was about as bright now as a full moon on Earth; the
overall scene was perfectly clear, but he could no longer
make out the finer details. The South Pole was now par-
tially obscured by a glowing mist; only the peak of Big
Horn protruded through it - a small, black dot, seen ex-
actly head-on.

The carefully-mapped but still unknown continent be-
yond 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 eyes round the encircling band of the Sea,
derwent inktense pencils turbed water, as if waves were breaking over reefs set at
geometrically precise intervals. Rama's manoeuvring was
having some effect, but a very 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.