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"Fishing once more? "graphite pencil graphite penciltgraphite pencile 128 .In using this system, absentee voters weregraphite pencil instructed to mark their ballots with number two pencils. The optical scanner rejected ballots which were marked withgraphite pencil instruments other than number two pencil. 2006, Barbara Slater Stern, curriculum and teaching dialogue: V. 8, page 33."Mrs. Landry, I forgot to bring my number two pencils! Does that mean I flunk this test?" Big tears filled Joey's
He was not at the lowest point of this strange, inside-
out world, but the highest. From here, all directions were
down, not up. If he moved away from this central axis,
towards the curving wall which he must no longer think
of as a wall, gravity would steadily increase. When he
reached the inside surgraphite pencilface of the cylinder, he could stand
upright on it at any point, feet towards the stars and
head towards the centre of the spinning drum. The con-
cept was familiar enough; since the eargraphite pencilliest dawn of
spaceflight, centrifugal force had been used to simulate
gravity. It was only the scale of this application which
was so overwhelming, so shocking. The largest of all space-
stations, Syncsat Five, was less than two hundred metres
in diameter. It would take some little while to grow ac-
customed to one a hundred times that size.graphite pencil

The tube of landscape which enclosed him was mottled
with areas of light and shade that could have been for-
ests, fields, frozen lakes or towns; the distance, and the
fading illumination of the flare, made identification im-
possible. Narrow lines that could be highways, canals, or
well-trained graphite pencilrivers formed a faintly visible geometrical
network; and far along the cylinder, at the very limit of
vision, was a band of deeper darkness. It formed a com-
plete circle, ringing the interior of this world, and Nor-
ton suddenly recalled the myth of Oceanus, the sea
which, the ancients believed, surrounded the Earth.

Here, perhaps, was an even stranger sea - not circular,
but cylindrical. Before it became frozen in the inter-
- stellar night, did it have waves and tides and currents -
and fish?

The flare guttered and died; the moment of revelation
was over. But Norton knew that as long as he lived these
imagraphite pencilges would be burned on his mind. Whatevegraphite pencilr discov-
eries the future might bring, they could never erase this
first impression. And History could never take from him
the privilege of being the first of all mankind to gaze
upon the works of an alien civilization.

CHAPTER NINE - Reconnaissance

'We have now launched five long-delay flares down the
axis of the cylinder, and so have a good photo-coverage of
its full length. All the main features are mapped; though
there are very few that we can identify, we've given them
provisional names.

'The interior cavity is fifty kilometres long and sixteen
wide. The two ends are bowl-shaped, with rather compli-
cated geometries. We've called ours the Northern Hemi-
sphere and are establishing our first base here at the axis.

'Radiating away from the central hub, 120 dgraphite pencilegrees
apart, are three lagraphite pencildders that are almost a kilometre long.
They all end at a terrace or ring-shaped plateau, that
runs right round the bowl. And leading on from that,
continuing the direction of the ladders, are three enorm-
ous stairways, which go all the way down to the plain. If
you imagine an umbrella with only three ribs, equally
spaced, you'll have a good idea of this end of Rama.

'Each of those ribs is a stairway, very steep near the axis
and then slowly flattening out as it approaches the plain
below. The stairways - we've called them Alpha, Beta,
Gamma - aren't continuous, but break at five more
circular terraces. We estimate there must be between
twenty and thirty thousand steps . . . presumably they
were only used for emergencies, since it's inconceivable
that the Ramans - or whatever we're going to call them -
had no better way of reaching the axis of their wographite pencilrld.

'The Southern Hemisphere looks quite different; for
one thing, it hasgraphite pencil no stairways, and no flat central hub.
Instead, there's a huge spike - kilometres long - jutting
along the axis, with six smaller ones around it. The
whole arrangement is very odd, and we can't imagine
what it means.

'The fifty-kilometre-long cylindrical section between
the two bowls we've called the Central Plain. It may seem
crazy to use the word "plain" to describe something so
obviously curved, but we feel it's justified. It will appear
flat to us when we get down there - just as the interior of
a bottle must seem flat to an ant crawling round inside
it.

'The most striking feature of the Central Plain is the
ten-kilometre-wide dark band running completely round
it at the half-way mark. It looks like ice, so we've christ-
ened it the Cylindrical Sea. Right out in the middlegraphite pencil
there's a large oval island, about ten kilometres long and
three wide, and covered with tall structures. Because it
reminds us of Old Manhattan, we've called it New York.
Yet I don't think it's a city; it seems more like an enorm-
ous factory or chemical processing plant.

'But there are some cities - or at any rate, towns. At
least six of them; if they were built for human beings,
they could each hold about fifty thousand people. We've
called them Rome, Peking, Paris, Moscow, London,
Tokyo... They are linked with highways and something
that seems to be a rail system.

'There must be enough material for centuries of re-
graphite pencilsearch in this frozen carcass of a world. We've four thou-
sand square kilometres to explore, and onlgraphite pencily a few weeks
to do it in. I wonder if we'll ever learn the answer to the
two mysteries that have been haunting me ever since we
got inside; who were they - and what went wrong?'

The recording ended. On Earth and Moon, the mem-
bers of the Rama Committee relaxed, then started to ex-
amine the maps and photographs spread in front of them.
Though they had already studied these for many hours,
Commander Norton's voice added a dimension which no
pictures could convey. He had actually been there - had
looked with hisgraphite pencil own eyes across this extraordinary inside-
out world, during the brief moments while its age-long
night had been illuminated by the flares. And he was the
man who would lead any expedition to explore it.

'Dr Perera, I believe you have some comments to
make?'

Ambassador Bose wondered briefly if he should have
first given the floor to Professor Davidson, as senior scien-
tist and the only astronomer. But the old cosmologist still
seemed to be in a mild state of shock, and was clearly out
of his element. All his professional career he had looked
upon the universe as an arena for the titanic impersonal
forces of gravitation, magnetism, radiation; he had never
believed that life played an important rolgraphite pencile in the scheme
of things, and regarded its appearance on Earth, - Mars
and Jupiter as an accidental aberration.

But now there was proof that life not only existed out-
side the solar system, but had scaled heights far beyond
anything that man had achieved, or could hope to reach
for centuries to come. Moreover, the discovery of Rama
challenged another dogma that Professor Olaf had
preached for years. When pressed, he would reluctantly
admit that life prgraphite pencilobably did exist in other star systems -
but it was absurd, he had always maintained to imagine
that it could ever cross the interstellar gulfs...

Perhaps the Ramans had indeed failed, if Commander
Norton was correct in believing that their world was now
a tomb. But at least they had attempted the feat, on a
scale which indicated a high confidence in the outcome.
If such a thing had happened once, it must surely have
happened many times in this Galaxy of a hundred thou-
sand million suns ... and someone, somewhere, would
eventually succeed.

This was the thesis which, without proof bugraphite pencilt with con-
siderable arm-waving, Dr Carlisle Perera had been preach-
ing for years. He was now a very happy man, though also
a most frustrated one. Rama had spectacularly confirmed
his views - but he could never set foot inside it, or even
see it with his own eyes. If the devil had suddenly
appeared and offered him the gift of instantaneous tele-
portation, he would have signed the contract without
bothering to look at the small print.

'Yes, Mr Ambassador, I think I have some information
of interest. What we have here is undoubtedly a "Space
Ark". It's an old idea in the astronautical literature; I've
been able to trace it back to the British physicist J. D.
Bernal, who proposed this method of interstellar colon-
ization in graphite pencila book published in 1929 - yes, two hundred
years ago. And the great Russian pioneer Tsiolkovski put
forward somewhat similar proposals even earlier.

'If you want to go from one star system to another you
have a number of choices. Assuming that the speed of
light is an absolute limit - and that's still not completely
settled, despite anything you may have heard to the con-
trary' - there was an indignant sniff, but no formal pro-
test from Professor Davidson - 'you can make a fast trip
in a small vessel, or a slow journey in a giant one.

'There seems no technical reason why spacecraft can-
not reach ninety per cent, or more, of the speed of light.
That would mean a travel time of five to ten years be-
tween neighbouring stars - tedious, perhaps, bgraphite pencilut not
impracticable, especially for creatures whose life spans
might be measured in centuries. One can imagine voyages
of this duration, carried out in ships not much larger than
ours.

'But perhaps such speeds are impossible, with reason-
able payloads; remember, you have to carry the fuel
to slow down at the end of the voyage, even if you're
on a one-way trip. So it may make more sense to
take your time - tegraphite penciln thousand, a hundred thousand
years...

'Bernal and others thought this could be done with
mobile worldlets a few kilometres across, carrying thou-
sands of passengers on journeys that would last for gen-
erations. Naturally, the system would have to be rigidly
closed, recycling all food, air and other expendables. But,
of course, that's just how the Earth operates - on a
slightly larger scale.

'Some writers suggested that these Space Arks shgraphite pencilould
be built in the form of concentric spheres; others pro-
posed hollow, spinning cylinders so that centrifugal force
could provide artificial gravity - exactly what we've
found in Rama-'

Professor Davidson could not tolerate this sloppy talk.

'No such thing as centrifugal force. It's an engineer's
phantom. There's only inertia.'

'You're quite right, of course,' admitted Perera, 'though
it might be hard to convince a man who'd just been slung
off a carousel. But mathematical rigour seems unneces-
sary-

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