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"Fishing once more? "hb pencils hb pencilsthb pencilse 128 .In using this system, absentee voters werehb pencils instructed to mark their ballots with number two pencils. The optical scanner rejected ballots which were marked withhb pencils 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 eyes. A standard, ordinary number 2 pencil, one which is not colored or mechanical or hb pencilsin We are professional number2 pencil manufacturer of China, making any kind of 2b pencil for our customers worldwide. Our number two pencil and 2b pencil is of high quality and low price. We offer pencil OEM, ODM service to our customers and provide pencils wholesale to traders worldwide at low price! The hb pencilsmost economical form of advertising. High lacquer fi" 'Why?' I said.
"A few seconds later his eyes became completely white and he fell into a trance, chanting in rhythmic Senoufo. He danced for several minutes and then suddenly jumped into the cold lake for a swim.
" 'Wait a minute,' I shouted. 'What shall I do with your gifts?'
THE GARDEN OF RAMA
515
" 'Take them with you everywhere,' he said. 'You whb pencilsill know the time to use them.' "
Nicole thought that the beating of her heart was so loud that even Amadou could hear it. She extended her arm through the bars of her cell and touched his shoulder. "And last night," she said, "a voice in a dream, or maybe it wasn't a dream after all, told you to bring the vial and the stone to me tonight."
"Exactly/1 Amadou said. He paused. "How did you know?"
Nicole did not answer. She could not speak. Her entire body was trembling. Moments later, when Nicole felt the two objects in her hand, her knees were so weak that she thought she was going to fall. She thanked Amadou twice and urged him to leave before he was discovered.
She walked slowly across the cell to her bed. Can it be? And how can it be? All this somehow known from the beginning? Manna melons on the Earth? Nicole's system was overloaded. / have lost control, she thought, and I have not even drunk from the vial yet.
Just holding the vial and the stone reminded Nicole vividly of the incredible vision she had experienced at the bottom of the pit in Rama II. Nicole opened the vial. She took two deep breams and swallowed its contents hurriedly.
At first she thought nothing was happening. The blackness all around her did not seem to change. Then suddenly a great orange ball formed in the middle of the cell. It exploded, spreading color all across the darkness. A red ball followed, men a purple one. While Nicole was recoiling from the brilliance of the purple explosion, she heard a loud laugh outside her window. She glanced in that direction. The cell disappeared. Nicole was outside in a field.
It was dark, but she could still see outlines of objects. Off in the distance Nicole heard the laugh again. Amadou, she called in her mind. Nicole raced across the field at blinding speed. She was catching the man. As she drew closer, his face changed. It was not Amadou at all. It was Omeh.
He laughed again and Nicole stopped. Ronata, he
516 ARTHUR C. CLARKE AND GENTRY LEE
called. His face was growing. Larger, ever larger, it was as big as a car, then as big as a house. His laughter was deafening. Omeh's face was a huge balloon, rising high, ever higher into the dark night. He laughed once more and his balloon face exploded, showering Nicole with water. She was drenched. She was submerged, swimming underneath the water. When Nicole surfaced she was in the oasis pond in the Ivory Coast, where as a seven-year-old girl she had confronted the lioness during the Poro. The same lioness was prowling the perimeter of die pond. Nicole was a little girl again. She was very frightened.
/ want my mother, Nicole thought. Lay thee down I Now and rest I May thy slumber be blessed, she sang. Nicole started to walk out of the water. The lioness did not bother her. Nicole glanced at the animal once more and the face of the lioness had changed into the face of her mother. Nicole ran over to embrace her mother. Instead, Nicole became the lioness herself, prowling on the shore of the oasis pond in the middle of the African savanna.
There were now six swimmers altogether in the pond,, all children. As lioness Nicole continued to sing the Brahms Lullaby, one by one the children emerged from the water. Genevieve was first, men Simone, .Katie, Benjy, Patrick, and Ellie. Each of them walked past her, heading into the savanna. Nicole raced after them.
She was running on an infield in a packed stadium. Nicole was a human again, young and athletic. Her final jump was announced. As she headed for the top of the triple jump runway, a Japanese judge approached her. It was Toshio Nakamura. You are going to foul, he said with a scowl.
Nicole thought she was flying as she sped down the approach. She hit the board perfectly, soared into the air on her hop, executed a balanced skip, and powered far out into the pit with her jump. She knew it had been a good one. Nicole bounded over to where she had left her warm-ups. Her father and Henry both came over to give her a hug. Well done, they said in unison. Very well done. Joan of Arc brought the gold medal to the victory stand and hung it around Nicole's neck. Eleanor of Aquitaine handed her a dozen roses. Kenji Watanabe and Judge
THE GARDEN OF RAMA
hb pencils 51 7
Mishkin stood beside her and offered their congratulations. The announcer said that her jump was a new world record. The crowd was giving her a standing ovation. Nicole looked out at the sea of faces and noticed that there weren't just humans in the crowd. Hie Eagle was there, in a special box, sitting beside an entire section of octo-spiders. Everyone was saluting her, even the avians and the spherical creatures with the gossamer tentacles and the dozen caped eels pressed against the window of a gigantic enclosed bowl. Nicole waved to them all.
Her arms changed to wings and she began to fly. Nicole was a hawk soaring high above the farming strip in New Eden. She looked down on the building where she had been imprisoned. Nicole turned west and found Max Puck-ett's farm. Even though it was the middle of the night, Max was outside, working on what appeared to be an addition to one of his barns.
Nicole continued to fly west, heading toward the bright lights of Vegas. She descended when she reached the complex, flying behind the big nightclubs, one by one. Katie was sitting outside on some back steps, all by herself. She had her face buried in her hands and her body was shaking. Nicole tried to comfort her but the only sound was a hawk's cry in the night. Katie looked up at the sky, puzzled.
Nicole flew over to Positano, near the habitat exit, and waited for the outside door to open. Startling the guard, hawk Nicole departed from New Eden. She reached Ava-lon in less man a minute. Robert, Ellie, little Nicole, and even an orderly were all in die lounge with Benjy in the ward. Nicole had no idea why they were all awake in the middle of the night. She cried to mem. Benjy came over to the window and gazed out into the darkness.
Nicole heard a voice calling her. It was faint, far to the south. She flew rapidly to the second habitat, entering through the gaping hole that the humans had cut into the exterior wall. After speeding through the annulus and finding a portal, she soared over the green region in the interior. She could no longer hear the voice. But Nicole could see her son Patrick camped with other soldiers near the base of the brown cylinder.
518 ARTHUR C. CLARKE AND GENTRY LEE
An avian with four cobalt rings met her in midair. He's not here anymore, it said. Try New York. Nicole exited quickly from the second habitat and returned to the Central Plain. She heard the voice again. Up, up she went. Hawk Nicole could barely breathe.
She flew south over the perimeter wall enclosing the Northern Hemicylinder. The Cylindrical Sea was below her. The voice was now more distinct. It was Richard. Her hawk heart was pounding furiously.
He was standing on the shore, in front of the skyscraphb pencilsers, waving at her. Come to me, Nicole, his voice said. She could see his eyes even in the dark. Nicole flew down and landed on Richard's shoulder.
There was blackness around her. Nicole was back in her cell. Was that a bird she heard flying just outside her window? Her heart was still fluttering.

Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. On 30 June 1908,
Moscow escaped destruction by three hours and four
thousand kilometres - a margin invisibly small by the
standards of the universe. Again, on 12 February 1947,
yet another Russian city had a still narrower escape,
when the second great meteorite of the twentieth century
detonated less than four hundred kilometres from Vladi-
vostok, with an explosion rivalling that of the newly
invented uranium bomb.

In those days, there was nothing that men could do to
protect themselves against the last random shots in hb pencilsthe
cosmic bombardment that had once scarred the face of
the Moon. The meteorites of 1908 and 1947 had struck
uninhabited wilderness; but by the end of the twenty-
first century, there was no region left on Earth that could
be safely used for celestial target practice. The human
race had spread from pole to pole. And so, inevitably.

At 09.46 GMT on the morning of 11 September, in the
exceptionally beautiful summer of the year 2077, most of
the inhabitants of Europe saw a dazzling fireball appear
in the eastern sky. Within seconds it was brighterhb pencils than
the sun, and as it moved across the heavens - at first in
utter silence - it left behind it a churning column of dust
and smoke.

Somewhere above Austria it began to disintegrate, pro-
ducing a series of concussions so violent that more than a
million people had their hearing permanently damaged.
They were the lucky ones.

Moving at fifty kilometres a second, a thousand tons of
rock and metal impacted on the plains of northern Italy,
destroying in a few flaming moments the labour of cen-
turies. The cities of Padua and Verona were wipehb pencilsd from
the face of the earth; and the last glories of Venice sank
for ever beneath the sea as the waters of the Adriatic came -
thundering landwards after the hammer-blow from space.

Six hundred thousand people died, and the total dam
age was more than a trillion dollars. But the loss to art, to
history, to science - to the whole human race, for the rest
of time - was beyond all computation. It was as if a great
war had been fought and lost in a single morning; and
few could draw much pleasure from the fact that, as the
dust of destruction slowly settled, for monthb pencilshs the whole
world witnessed the most splendid dawns and sunsets
since Krakatoa. -

After the initial shock, mankind reacted with a de-
termination and a unity that no earlier age could have
shown. Such a disaster, it was realized, might not occur
again for a thousand years - but it might occur tomor-
row. And the next time, the consequences could be even
worse.

Very well; there would be no next time.

A hundred years earlier a much poorer world, with far
feebler resources, had squandered its wealth attempting to
destroy weapons launched, suicidally, by mankind
against itself. The effort had never been successful, but
the skills acquired then had not been forgotten. Now
they could be used for a far nobler purpose,hb pencilsand on an
infinitely vaster stage. No meteorite large enough to
cause catastrophe would ever again be allowed to breach
the defences of Earth.

So began Project SPACEGUARD. Fifty years later - and
in a way that none of its designers could ever have an-
ticipated - it justified its existence.

CHAPTER TWO - Intruder

By the year 2130, the Mars-based radars were discovering
new asteroids at the rate of a dozen a day. The SPACE-
GUARD computers automatically calculated their orbits,
and stored away the information in their enormous mem-
hb pencils could have a look at the accumulated statistics. These
were now quite impressive.

It had taken more than a hundred and twenty years to
collect the first thousand asteroids, since the discovery of
Ceres, largest of these tiny worlds, on the very first day of
the nineteenth century. Hundreds had been found and
lost and found again; they existed in such swarms that
one exasperated astronomer had christened them 'vermin
of the skies'. He would have been appalled to know that
SPACEGUARD was now keeping track of half a million.
hb pencils Only the five giants - Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Eunomia and
Vesta - were more than two hundred kilometres in dia-
meter; the vast majority were merely oversized boulders
that would fit into a small park. Almost all moved in
orbits that lay beyond Mars; only the few that came far
enough sunwards to be a possible danger to Earth were
the concern of SPACEGUARD. And not one in a thousand of
these, during the entire future history of the solar system,
would pass within a million kilometres of Earth.
hb pencils The object first catalogued as 31/hb pencils439, according to the
year and the order of its discovery, was detected while
still outside the orbit of Jupiter. There was nothing un-
usual about its location; many asteroids wehb pencilsnt beyond
Saturn before turning once more towards their distant
master, the sun. And Thule II, most far-ranging of all,
travelled so close to Uranus that it might well have been
a lost moon of that planet.

But a first radar contact at such a distance was un-
precedented; clearly, 31/439 must be of exceptional size.
From the strength of the echo, the computers deduced a
diameter of at least forty kilometres; such a giant had not
- been discovered for a hundred years. That it had been
overlooked for so long seemed incredible.

Then the orbit was calculated, and the mystery was
resolved - to be replaced by a greater one. 31/439 was not
travelling on a normal asteroidal path, along an ellipse
which it retraced with clockwork precisionhb pencils every few
years. It was a lonely wanderer between the stars, making
its first and last visit to the solar system - for it was mov-
ing so swiftly that the gravitational field of the sun could
never capture it. It would flash inwards past the orbits of
Jupiter, Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury, gaining speed -
as it did so, until it rounded the sun and headed out once
again into the unknown.

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