Rendezvous with Rama

Jimmy would not have been flying sky-bikes unless he had been slim and wiry, so he knew he could crawl through the interstices of the grid. But getting out again might be quite a different matter; it would certainly be impossible for him to turn around, so he would have to retreat backwards. Hub Control was delighted with his discovery, when he had described the flower and sca

31. Terminal Velocity

Commander Norton had never yet lost a man, and he had no intention of starting now. Even before Jimmy had set off for the South Pole, he had been considering ways of rescuing him in the event of accident; the problem, however, had turned out to be so difficult that he had found no answer. All that he had managed to do was to eliminate every obvious solution.

How does one climb a half-kilometre vertical cliff; even in reduced gravity? With the right equipment—and training—it would be easy enough. But there were no piton-guns aboard Endeavour, and no one could think of any other practical way of driving the necessary hundreds of spikes into that hard, mirror surface.

He had glanced briefly at more exotic solutions, some frankly crazy. Perhaps a simp, fitted with suction pads, could make the ascent. But even if this scheme was practical, how long would it take to manufacture and test such equipment—and to train a simp to use it? He doubted if a man would have the necessary strength to perform the feat.

Then there was more advanced technology. The EVA propulsion units were tempting, but their thrust was too small, since they were designed for zero-gee operation. They could not possibly lift the weight of a man, even against Rama’s modest gravity.

Could an EVA thrust be sent up on automatic control, carrying only a rescue line? He had tried out this idea on Sergeant Myron, who had promptly shot it down in flames. There were, the engineer pointed out, severe stability problems; they might be solved, but it would take a long time—much longer than they could afford.

What about balloons? There seemed a faint possibility here, if they could devise an envelope and a sufficiently compact source of heat. This was the only approach that Norton had not dismissed, when the problem suddenly ceased to be one of theory, and became a matter of life and death, dominating the news in all the inhabited worlds.

While Jimmy was making his trek along the edge of the Sea, half the crackpots in the solar system were trying to save him. At Fleet Headquarters, all the suggestions were considered, and about one in a thousand was forwarded to Endeavour. Dr. Carlisle Perera arrived twice—once via the Survey’s own network, and once by PLANETCOM, RAMA PRIORITY. It had taken the scientist approximately five minutes of thought and one millisecond of computer time.

At first, Commander Norton thought it was a joke in very poor taste. Then he saw the sender’s name and the attached calculations, and did a quick double take.

He handed the message to Karl Mercer.

“What do you think of this?” he asked, in as noncommittal a tone of voice as he could manage.

Karl read it swiftly, then said, “Well I’m damned! He’s right, of course.”

“Are you sure?”

“He was right about the storm, wasn’t he? We should have thought of this; it makes me feel a fool.”

“You have company. The next problem is—how do we break it to Jimmy?”

“I don’t think we should… until the last possible minute. That’s how I’d prefer it, if I was in his place. Just tell him we’re on the way.” Though he could look across the full width of the Cylindrical Sea, and knew the general direction from which Resolution was coming, Jimmy did not spot the tiny craft until it had already passed New York. It seemed incredible that it could carry six men—and whatever equipment they had brought to rescue him.

When it was only a kilometre away, he recognized Commander Norton, and started waving. A little later the skipper spotted him, and waved back.

“Glad to see you’re in good shape, Jimmy,” he radioed. “I promised we wouldn’t leave you behind. Now do you believe me?”

Not quite, Jimmy thought; until this moment he had still wondered if this was all a kindly plot to keep up his morale. But the Commander would not have crossed the Sea just to say goodbye; he must have worked out something. “I’ll believe you, Skipper,” he said, “when I’m down there on the deck. Now will you tell me how I’m going to make it?”

Resolution was now slowing down, a hundred metres from the base of the cliff; as far as Jimmy could tell, she carried no unusual equipment—though he was not sure what he had expected to see.

“Sorry about that, Jimmy, but we didn’t want you to have too many things to worry about.”

Now that sounded ominous; what the devil did he mean?

Resolution came to a halt, fifty metres out and five hundred below; Jimmy had almost a bird’s-eye view of the Commander as he spoke into his microphone.

“This is it, Jimmy. You’ll be perfectly safe, but it will require nerve. We know you’ve got plenty of that. You’re going to jump.”

“Five hundred metres!”

“Yes, but at only half a gee.”

“So—have you ever fallen two hundred and fifty on Earth?”

“Shut up, or I’ll cancel your next leave. You should have worked this out for yourself… it’s just a question of terminal velocity. In this atmosphere, you can’t reach more than ninety kilometres an hour—whether you fall two hundred or two thousand metres. Ninety’s a little high for comfort, but we can trim it some more. This is what you’ll have to do, so listen carefully…”