engraved pencils

"Fishing once more? "engraved pencils engraved pencilstengraved pencilse 128 .In using this system, absentee voters wereengraved pencils instructed to mark their ballots with number two pencils. The optic 'Can you sum up your ideas in less than - oh, a thou-
sand bits?'

'Yes, I think so.'

'Well, if you can make it sound like a straightforward
scientific theory, I'll send it, top priority, to the Rama
Committee. Then a copy can go to your Church at the
same time, and everyone will be happy.'

engraved pencils

'Thank you, Commander, I really appreciate it.'

'Oh, I'm not doing this to save my conscience. I'd just
bike to see what the Committee makes of it. Even if I
don't agree with you all along the line, you may have hit
on something important.'

'Well, we'll know at perihelion, won't we?'

'Yes. We'll know at perihelion.'

When Boris Rodrigo had left, Norton called the bridge
and gave the necessary authorization. He thought he had
solved the problem rather neatly; besides, just suppose
that Boris was right.

engraved pencils

He might have increased his chances of being among
the saved.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - After the Storm

As they drifted along the now familiar corridor of the
Alpha Airlock complex, Norton wondered if they had
let impatience overcome caution. They had waited
aboard Endeavour for forty-eight hours - two precious
days - ready for instant departure if events should justify
it. But nothing had happened; the instruments left in
engraved pencils Rama had detected no unusual activity. Frustratingly, the
television camera on the Hub had been blinded by a fog
which had reduced visibility to a few metres and bad
only now started to retreat.

When they operated the final airlock door, and floated
out into the cat's-cradle of guide-ropes around the Hub,
Norton was struck first by the change in the light. It was
no longer harshly blue, but was much more mellow and
gentle, reminding him of a bright, hazy day on Earth.

He looked outwards along the axis of the world - and
engraved pencils could see nothing except a glowing, featureless tunnel of
white, reaching all the way to those strange mountains at
the South Pole. The interior of Rama was completely
blanketed with clouds, and nowhere was a break visible in
the overcast. The top of the layer was quite sharply de'
fined; it formed a smaller cylinder inside the larger one
of this spinning world, leaving a central core, five or six
kilometres wide, quite clear except for a few stray wisps
of cirrus.

engraved pencils

The immense tube of cloud was bit from underneath
by the six artificial suns of Rama. The locations of the
three on this Northern continent were dearly defined by
diffuse strips of light, but those on the far side of the
Cylindrical Sea merged together into a continuous, glow-
ing band.

What is happening down beneath those clouds? Nor-
ton asked himself. But at least the storm, which had
centrifuged them into such perfect symmetry about the
axis of Rama, had now died away. Unless there were
some other surprises, it would be safe to descend.

It seemed appropriate, \n this return visit, to use the
engraved pencils team that had made the first deep penetration into
Rama. Sergeant Myron - like every other member of En-
deavour's crew - now fully met Surgeon-Commander
Ernst's physical requirements; he even maintained, with
convincing sincerity, that he was never going to wear his
old uniforms again.

As Norton watched Mercer, Calvert and Myron 'swim-
ming' quickly and confidently down the ladder, he re-
minded himself how much had changed. That first time
engraved pencils they had descended in cold and darkness; now they were
going towards light and warmth. And on all earlier visits,
they had been confident that Rama was dead. That
might yet be true, in a biological sense. But something
was stirring; and Boris Rodrigo's phrase would do as well
as any other. The spirit of Rama was awake.

When they had reached the platform at the foot of the
ladder and were preparing to start down the stairway,
Mercer carried out his usual routine test of the atmo-
engraved pencils sphere. There were some things that he never took for
granted; even when the people around him were breath-
ing perfectly comfortably, without aids, he had been
known to stop for an air check before opening his helmet.
When asked to justify such excessive caution, he had an-
swered: 'Because human senses aren't good enough,
that's why. You may think you're fine, but you could fall
flat on your face with the next deep breath.'

He booked at his meter, and said 'Damn!'

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'What's the trouble?' asked Calvert.

'It's broken - reading too high. Odd; I've never known
that to happen before. I'll check it on my breathing cir-
cuit.'

He plugged the compact little analyser into the test
point of his oxygen supply, then stood in thoughtful
engraved pencils silence for a while. His companions booked at him with
anxious concern; anything that upset Karl was to be
taken very seriously indeed.

He unplugged the meter, used it to sample the Rama
atmosphere again, then called Hub Control.

'Skipper! Will you take an 02 reading?'

engraved pencils

There was a much longer pause than the request justi-
fied. Then Norton radioed back: 'I think there's some-
thing wrong with my meter.'

A slow smile spread across Mercer's face.

'It's up fifty per cent, isn't it?'

'Yes, what does that mean?'

'It means that we can all take off our masks. Isn't that
convenient?'

'I'm not sure,' replied Norton, echoing the sarcasm in
Mercer's voice. 'It seems too good to be true.' There was
no need to say any more. Like all spacemen, Commander
Norton had a profound suspicion of things that were too
engraved pencils good to be true.

Mercer cracked his mask open a trifle, and took a cau-
tious sniff. For the first time at this altitude, the air was
perfectly breathable. The musty, dead smell had gone; so
had the excessive dryness, which in the past had caused
several respiratory complaints. Humidity was now an as-
tonishing eighty per cent; doubtless the thawing of the
Sea was responsible for this. There was a muggy feeling
in the air, though not an unpleasant one. It was like a
summer evening, Mercer told himself, on some tropical
engraved pencils coast. The climate inside Rama had improved dramatic-
ally during the last few days...

And why? The increased humidity was no problem;
the startling rise in oxygen was much more difficult to
explain.

As he recommenced the descent, Mercer began a whole
series of mental calculations. He 'had not arrived at any
satisfactory result by the time they entered the cloud
layer.

It was a dramatic experience, for the transition was
very abrupt. At one moment they were sliding down-
wards in clear air, gripping the smooth metal of the hand-
engraved pencils rail so that they would not gain speed too swiftly in this
quarter-of-a-gravity region. Then, suddenly, they shot in-
to a blinding white fog, and visibility dropped to a few
metres. Mercer put on the brakes so quickly that Calvert
almost bumped into him - and Myron did bump into
Calvert, nearly knocking him off the rail.

'Take it easy,' said Mercer. 'Spread out so we can just
see each other. And don't let yourself build up speed, in
case I have to stop suddenly.'

In eerie silence, they continued to glide, downwards
through 'the fog. Calvert could just see Mercer as a vague
shadow ten metres ahead, and 'when he looked back,
engraved pencils 'Myron was at the same distance behind him. In some
ways, this was even spookier than descending in the
complete darkness of the Raman night; then, at least, the
searchlight beams had shown them what lay ahead. But'
this was like diving in poor visibility in the open sea.

It was impossible to tell how far they had travelled,
and Calvert guessed they had almost reached the fourth
level when Mercer suddenly braked again. When they
had bunched together, he whispered: 'Listen! Don't you
engraved pencils hear something?'

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