ferby pencils

"Fishing on When she struck it with her hammer, a familiar pat-
tern of cracks radiated from the impact point, and she
had no difficulty in collecting as many pieces as she
wished. Some had already melted when she held up the
sample holder to the light; the liquid appeared to be
slightly turbid water, and she took a cautious sniff.ferby pencils

'Is that safe?' Rodrigo called down, with a' trace of
anxiety.

'Believe me, Boris,' she answered, 'if there are any
pathogens around here that have slipped through my de-
tectors, our insurance policies lapsed a week ago.

But Boris had a point. Despite all the tests that had
been carried out, there was a very slight risk that this
substance might be poisonous, or might carry some un-
known disease. In normal circumstances, Dr Ernst would
not have taken even this minuscule chance. Now, how-
ever, time was short and the stakes were enormous. If it
became necessary to quarantine Endeavour, that would
ferby pencils be a very small price to pay for her cargo of knowledge.

'It's water, but I wouldn't care to drink it - it smells
like an algae culture that's gone bad. I can hardly wait to
get it to the lab.'

'Is the ice safe to walk on?'

'Yes, solid as a rock.'

'Then we can get to New York.'

'Can we, Pieter? Have you ever tried to walk across
four kilometres of ice?'

ferby pencils

'Oh - I see what you mean. Just imagine what Stores
would say, if we asked for a set of skates! Not that many
of us would know how to use them, even if we had any
aboard.'

'And there's another problem,' put in Boris Rodrigo.
'Do you realize that the temperature is already above
ferby pencils freezing? Before long, that ice is going to melt. How
many spacemen can swim four kilometres? Certainly not
this one...'

Dr Ernst rejoined them at the edge of the cliff, and
held up the small sample bottle in triumph.

'It's a long walk for a few cc's of dirty water, but it may
teach us more about Rama than anything we've found so
far. let's head for home.'

They turned towards the distant lights of the Hub,
ferby pencils moving with the gentle, loping strides which had proved
the most comfortable means of walking under this re-
duced gravity. Often they looked back, drawn by the hid-
den enigma of the island out there in the centre of the
frozen sea.

And just once, Dr Ernst thought she felt the faint sus-
picion of a breeze against her cheek.

It did not come again, and she quickly forgot all about
it.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Kealakekua

ferby pencils

'As you know perfectly well, Dr Perera,' said Ambassador
Bose in a tone of patient resignation, 'few of us share your
knowledge of mathematical meteorology. So please take
pity on our ignorance.'

'With pleasure,' answered the exobiologist, quite un-
abashed. 'I can explain it best by telling you what is go-
ing to happen inside Rama - very soon.

'The temperature is now about to rise, as the solar heat
pulse reaches the interior. According to the latest in-
formation I've received, it's already above freezing point.
The Cylindrical Sea will soon start to thaw; and unlike
bodies of water on Earth, it will melt from the bottom
ferby pencils upwards. That may produce some odd effects; but I'm
much more concerned with the atmosphere.

'As it's heated, the air inside Rama will expand - and
will attempt to rise towards the central axis. And this is
the problem. At ground level, although it's apparently
stationary, it's actually sharing the spin of Rama - over
eight hundred kilometres an hour. As it rises towards the
axis it will try to retain that speed - and it won't be able
to do so, of course. The result will be violent winds and
turbulence; I estimate velocities of between two and
three hundred kilometres an hour.

'Incidentally, very much the same thing occurs on
ferby pencils Earth. The heated air at the Equator - which shares the
Earth's sixteen-hundred-kilometres-an-hour spin - runs
into the same problem when it rises and flows north and
south.'

'Ah, the Trade Winds! I remember that from my
geography lessons'

'Exactly, Sir Robert. Rama will have Trade Winds,
with a vengeance. I believe they'll last only a few hours,
and then spine kind of equilibrium will be restored.
Meanwhile, I should advise Commander Norton to evac-
uate - as soon as possible. Here is the message I propose
sending.'

With a little imagination, Commander Norton told him-
self, he could pretend that this was an improvised night
camp at the foot of some mountain in a remote region of
ferby pencils Asia or America. The clutter of sleeping pads, collapsible
chain and tables, portable power plant, lighting equip-
ment, electrosan toilets, and miscellaneous scientific ap-
paratus would not have looked out of place on Earth -
especially as there were men and women working here
without life-support systems.

Establishing Camp Alpha had been very hard work, for
everything had had to be man-handled through the chain
of airlocks, sledded down the slope from the Hub, and
then retrieved and unpacked. Sometimes, when the brak-
ing parachutes had failed, a consignment had ended up a
good kilometre away out on the plain: Despite this, sev-
ferby pencils ual crew members had asked permission to make the
ride; Norton had firmly forbidden it. In an emergency,
however, he might be prepared to reconsider the ban.

Almost all this equipment would stay here, for the lab-
our of carrying it back was unthinkable - in fact, impos-
sible. There were times when Commander Norton felt an
irrational shame at leaving so much human litter in this
strangely immaculate place. When they finally departed,
he was prepared to sacrifice some of their precious time to
leave everything in good order. Improbable though it
was, perhaps millions of years hence, when Rama shot
through some other star system, it might have visitors
ferby pencils again. He would like to give them a good impression of
Earth.

Meanwhile, he had a rather more immediate problem.
During the last twenty-four hours he had received almost
identical messages from both Mars and Earth. It seemed
an odd coincidence; perhaps they had been commiserat-
ing with each other, as wives who lived safely on different
planets were liable to do under sufficient provocation.
Rather pointedly, they had reminded him that even
ferby pencils though he was now a great hero, he still had family re-
sponsibilities.

The Commander picked up a collapsible chair, and
walked out of the pool of light into the darkness sur-
rounding the camp. It was the only way he could get any
privady, and he could also think better away from the
turmoil. Deliberately turning his back on the organized
confusion behind him, he began to speak into the re-
corder slung around his neck.

'Original for personal file, dupes to Mars and Earth.
Hello, darling - yes, I know I've been a lousy correspond-
ent, but I haven't been aboard ship for a week. Apart
from a skeleton crew, we're all camping inside Rama, at
the foot of the stairway we've christened Alpha.

'I have three parties out now, scouting the plain, but
ferby pencils we've made disappointingly slow progress, because every-
thing has to be done on foot. If only we had some means
of transport! I'd be very happy to settle for a few electric
bicycles ... they'd be perfect for the job.

'You've met my medical officer, Surgeon-Commander
Ernst-' He paused uncertainly; Laura had met one of
his wives, but which? Better cut that out--

Erasing the sentence, he began again.

'My MO, Surgeon-Commander Ernst, led the first
group to reach the Cylindrical Sea, fifteen kilometres
from here. She found that it was frozen water, as we'd
expected - but you wouldn't want to drink it. Dr Ernst
says it's a dilute organic soup, containing traces of almost
any carbon compound you care to name, as well as phos-
phates and nitrates and dozens of metallic salts. There's
not the slightest sign of life - not even any dead micro-
ferby pencils organisms. So we still know nothing about the biochemis-
try of the Ramans ... though it was probably not wildly
different from ours.

Something brushed lightly against his hair; he had
been too busy to get it cut, and would have to do some-
thing about that before he next put on a space-helmet ...

'You've seen the viddies of Paris and the other towns
we've explored on this side of the Sea ... London, Rome,
Moscow. It's impossible to believe that they were ever
built for anything to live in. Paris looks like a giant stor-
age depot. London is a collection of cylinders linked to-
gether by pipes connected to what are obviously pumping
stations. Everything is sealed up, and there's no way of
ferby pencils finding what's inside without explosives or lasers. We
won t try these until there are no alternatives.

t slats, ferby pencilspencils showing horoscopes, cosmetic pencils, carpenters pencils, pencils made of recycled material (not wood), plastic pencils, surface treated pencils, printed pattern pencils, a variety of transfer film pencils etc. For the holidays, year round gifts or as incentives, pencils are a perfect teacher gift. Quality no 2 pencil, plus erasers that erase! Any 1-line message, up to 36 letters and spaces will be stamped in gold with your name, slogan or special imprint. "The rewards help students remember ferby pencilsthe d 2b pencil often as well." ferby pencils