ebony pencil

"Fishing once more? "ebony pencil ebony penciltebony pencile 128 .In using this system, absentee voters wereebony pencil instructed to mark their ballots with number two pencils. The optical scanner rejected ballots which were marked withebony pencil instruments other than number two pencil. 2006, Barbara Slater Stern, curriculum and teaching dialogue: V. 8, page 33."Mrs. Landrycrashing down from the sky.

Yet despite this, their main feeling was one of exhilara-
ebony pencil tion; there was a sense of danger, without any real dan-
ger. Unless, of course, the Sea itself produced any more
surprises.

That was a distinct possibility, for as Mercer had
guessed, the water was now alive. Every spoonful con-
tained thousands of spherical, single-celled micro-organ-
isms, similar to the earliest forms of plankton that had
existed in the oceans of Earth.

Yet they showed puzzling differences; they lacked a
nucleus, as well as many of the other minimum require-
ments of even the most primitive terrestrial life-forms.
And although Laura Ernst - now doubling as research
ebony pencil scientist as well as ship's doctor - had proved that they
definitely generated oxygen, there were far too few of
them to account for the augmentation of Rama's atmo-
sphere. They should have existed in billions, not mere
thousands.

Then she discovered that their numbers were dwind-
ling rapidly, and must have been far higher during the
first hours of the Raman dawn. It was as if there had
been a brief explosion of life, recapitulating on a trillion-
fold swifter time-scale the early history of Earth. Now,
ebony pencil perhaps, it had exhausted itself; the drifting micro-organ-
isms were disintegrating, releasing their stores of chemi-
cals back into the Sea.

'If you have to swim for it,' Dr Ernst had warned the
mariners, 'keep your mouths closed. A few drops won't
matter - if you spit them out right away. But all those
weird organo-metallic salts add up to a fairly poisonous
package, and I'd hate to have to work out an antidote.'
ebony pencil
This danger, fortunately, seemed very unlikely. Reso-
lution could stay afloat if any two of her buoyancy tanks
were punctured. (When told of this, Joe Calvert had
muttered darkly: 'Remember the Titanic! ') And even if
she sank, the crude but efficient life-jackets would keep
their heads above, water. Although Laura had been re-
luctant to give a firm ruling on this, she did not think
that a few hours' immersion in the Sea would be fatal;
but she did not recommend it.
ebony pencil
After twenty minutes of steady progress, New York was
no longer a distant island. It was becoming a real place,
and details which they had seen only through telescopes
and photo-enlargements were now revealing themselves
as massive, solid structures. It was now strikingly appar-
ent that the 'city', like so much of Rama, was triplicated;
it consisted of three identical, circular complexes or super-
structures, rising from a long, oval foundation. Photo-
graphs taken from the Hub also indicated that each com-
plex was itself divided into three equal components, like a
pie sliced into 120-degree portions. This would greatly
ebony pencil simplify the task of exploration; presumably they had to
examine only one ninth of New York to have seen the
whole of it. Even this would be a formidable undertak-
ing; it would mean investigating at least a square kilo-
metre of buildings and machinery, some of which tow-
ered hundreds of metres into the air.

The Ramans, it seemed, had brought the art of triple-
redundancy to a high degree of perfection. This was
demonstrated in the airlock system, the stairways at the
Hub, the artificial suns. And where it really mattered,
they had even taken the next step. New York appeared to
be an example of triple-triple redundancy.

Ruby was steering Resolution towards the central com-
ebony pencil plex, where a flight of steps led up from the water to the
very -top of the wall or levee which surrounded the island.
There was even a conveniently-placed mooring post to
which boats could be tied; when she saw this, Ruby be-
came quite excited. Now she would never be content un-
til she found one of the craft in which the Ramans sailed
their extraordinary sea.

Norton was the first to step ashore; he looked back at
his three companions and said: 'Wait here on the boat
until I get to the top -of the wall. When I wave, Pieter
and Boris will join me. You stay at the helm, Ruby, so
ebony pencil that we can cast off at a moment's notice. If anything
happens to me, report to Karl and follow his instructions.
Use your best judgement - but no heroics. Understood?'
'Yes, Skipper. Good luck!'

Commander Norton did not really believe in luck; he
never got into a situation until he had analysed all the
factors involved and had secured his line of retreat. But
once again Rama was forcing him to break some of his
cherished rules. Almost every factor here- was unknown -
as unknown as the Pacific and the Great Barrier Reef had
been to his hero, three and a half centuries ago... Yes, he
could do with all the luck that happened to be lying
around.
ebony pencil
The stairway was a virtual duplicate of the one down
which they had descended on the other side of the Sea;
doubtless his friends over there Were looking straight
across at him through their telescopes. And 'straight' was
now the correct word; in this one direction, parallel to
the axis of Rama, the Sea was indeed completely flat. It
might well be the only body of water in the universe of
which this was true, for on all other worlds, every sea or
ebony pencil lake must follow the surface of a sphere, with equal cur-
vature in all directions.

'Nearly at the top,' he reported, speaking for the record
and for his intently listening second-in-command, five
kilometres away, 'still completely quiet - radiation nor-
mal. I'm holding the meter above my head, just in case
this wall is acting as a shield for anything. And if there
are any hostiles on the other side, they'll shoot that first.'

He was joking, of course. And yet - why take any
chances, when it was just as easy to avoid them?

ebony pencil When he - took the last step, he found that the flat-
topped embankment was about ten metres thick; on the
inner side, an alternating series of ramps and stairways
led down to the main level of the city, twenty metres
below. In effect, he was standing on a high wall which
completely surrounded New York, and so was able to get
a grandstand view of it.

It was a view almost stunning in its complexity, and his
first act was to make a slow panoramic scan with his cam-
era. Then he waved to his companions and radioed back
across the Sea: 'No sign of any activity - everything
ebony pencil quiet. Come on up - we'll start exploring.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - NY, Rama

It was not a city; it was a machine. Norton had come to
that conclusion in ten minutes, and saw no reason to
change it after they had made a complete traverse of the
island. A city - whatever - the nature of its occupants -
surely had to provide some form of accommodation: there
was nothing here of that - nature, unless it was under-
ground. And if that was the case, where were the en-
trances, the stairways, the elevators? He had not found
anything that even qualified as a simple door...

The closest analogy he had ever seen to this place on
ebony pencil Earth was a giant chemical processing plant. However,
there were no stockpiles of raw materials, or any indica-
tions of a transport system to move them around. Nor
could he imagine where the finished product would
emerge - still less what that product could possibly be. It
was all very baffling, and more than a little frustrating.

'Anybody care to make a guess?' he said at last, to all
who might be listening. 'If this is a factory, what does it
make? And where does it get its raw materials?'

'I've a suggestion, Skipper,' said Karl Mercer, over on
the far shore. 'Suppose it uses the Sea. According to Doc,
ebony pencil that contains just about anything you can think of.'

It was a plausible answer, and Norton had already con-
sidered it. There could well be buried pipes leading to
the Sea - in fact, there must be, for any conceivable
chemical plant would require large quantities of water.
But he had a suspicion of plausible answers; they were so
often wrong.

'That's a good idea, Karl; but what does New York do
with its seawater?'

ebony pencil For a long time, nobody answered from ship, Hub or
Northern plain. Then an unexpected voice spoke.

'That's easy, Skipper. But you're all going to laugh at
me.'

'No, we're not, Ravi. Go ahead.'

Sergeant Ravi McAndrews, Chief Steward and Simp
Master, was the last person on this ship who would norm-
ally get involved in a technical discussion. His IQ was
modest and his scientific knowledge was minimal, but
he was no fool and had a natural shrewdness which
everyone respected.

'Well, it's a factory all right, Skipper, and maybe the
Sea - provides the raw material ... after all, that's how it
all happened on Earth, though in a different way ... I
believe New York is a factory for making - Ramans.
ebony pencil
Somebody, somewhere, snickered, but became quickly
silent and did not identify himself.

'You know, Ravi,' said his commander at last, 'that
theory is crazy enough to be true. And I'm not sure if I
want to see it tested ... at least, until I get back to the
mainland.'

This celestial New York was just about as wide as the
island of Manhattan, but its geometry was totally differ-
ent. There were few straight thoroughfares; it was a maze
ebony pencil of short, concentric arcs, with radial spokes linking them.
Luckily, it was impossible to lose one's bearings inside
Rama; a single glance at the sky was enough to establish
the north-south axis of the world.

They paused at almost every intersection to make a
panoramic scan. When all these hundreds of pictures
were sorted out, it would be a tedious but fairly straight-
forward job to construct an accurate scale model of the
city. Norton suspected that the resulting jigsaw puzzle
would keep scientists busy for generations.

It was even harder to get used to the silence here than
it had been out on the plain of Rama. A city-machine
should make some sound; yet there - was not even the
ebony pencil faintest of electric hums, or the slightest whisper of mech-

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