Rendezvous With Rama

chapter 25. Maiden Flight
Dragonfly was certainly a good name. The long, tapering wings were almost invisible, except when the light struck them from certain angles and was refracted into rainbow hues. It was as if a soap bubble had been wrapped round a delicate tracery of aerofoil sections; the envelope enclosing the little flyer was an organic film only a few molecules thick, yet strong enough to control and direct the movements of a fifty-kph air flow. The pilot - who was also the power plant and the guidance system - sat on a tiny seat at the centre of gravity, in a semi-reclining position to reduce air resistance. Control was by a single stick which could be moved backwards and forwards, right and left; the only "instrument" was a piece of weighted ribbon attached to the leading edge, to show the direction of the relative wind.

Once the flyer had been assembled at the Hub, Jimmy Pak would allow no one to touch it. Clumsy handling could snap one of the single-fibre structural members, and those glittering wings were an almost irresistible attraction to prying fingers. It was hard to believe that there was really something there...

As he watched Jimmy climb into the contraption, Commander Norton began to have second thoughts. If one of those wire-sized struts snapped when Dragonfly was on the other side of the Cylindrical Sea, Jimmy would have no way of getting back - even if he was able to make a safe landing. They were also breaking one of the most sacrosanct rules of space exploration; a man was going alone into unknown territory, beyond all possibility of help. The only consolation was that he would be in full view and communication all the time; they would know exactly what had happened to him, if he did meet with disaster.

Yet this opportunity was far too good to miss; if one believed in fate or destiny, it would be challenging the gods themselves to neglect the only chance they might ever have of reaching the far side of Rama, and seeing at close quarters the mysteries of the South Pole. Jimmy knew what he was attempting, far better than anyone in the crew could tell him. This was precisely the sort of risk that had to be taken; if it failed, that was the luck of the game. You couldn't win them all...

"Now listen to me carefully, Jimmy," said Surgeon-Commander Ernst. "It's very important not to overexert yourself. Remember, the oxygen level here at the axis is still very low. If you feel breathless at any time, stop and hyperventilate for thirty seconds - but no longer."

Jimmy nodded absentmindedly as he tested the controls. The whole rudder-elevator assembly, which formed a single unit on an outrigger five metres behind the rudimentary cockpit, began to twist around; then the flap-shaped ailerons, halfway along the wing, moved alternately up and down.

"Do you want me to swing the prop?" asked Joe Calvert, unable to suppress memories of two-hundred-year-old war movies. "Ignition! Contact!" Probably no one except Jimmy knew what he was talking about, but it helped to relieve the tension.

Very slowly, Jimmy started to move the foot-pedals. The flimsy, broad fan of the airscrew - like the wing, a delicate skeleton covered with shimmering film - began to turn. By the time it had made a few revolutions, it had disappeared completely and Dragonfly was on her way.

She moved straight outwards from the Hub, moving slowly along the axis of Rama. When she had travelled a hundred metres, Jimmy stopped pedalling; it was strange to see an obviously aerodynamic vehicle hanging motionless in midair. This must be the first time such a thing had ever happened, except possibly on a very limited scale inside one of the larger space stations.

"How does she handle?" Norton called.

"Response good, stability poor. But I know what the trouble is - no gravity. We'll be better off a kilometre lower down."

"Now wait a minute, is that safe?"

By losing altitude, Jimmy would be sacrificing his main advantage. As long as he stayed precisely on the axis, he - and Dragonfly - would be completely weightless. He could hover effortlessly, or even go to sleep if he wished. But as soon as he moved away from the central line around which Rama spun, the pseudo-weight of centrifugal force would reappear.

And so, unless he could maintain himself at this altitude, he would continue to lose height - and at the same time, to gain weight. It would be an accelerating process, which could end in catastrophe. The gravity down on the plain of Rama was twice that in which Dragonfly had been designed to operate. Jimmy might be able to make a safe landing; he could certainly never take off again. But he had already considered all this, and he answered confidently enough: "I can manage a tenth of a gee without any trouble. And she'll handle more easily in denser air."

In a slow, leisurely spiral, Dragonfly drifted across the sky, roughly following the line of Stairway Alpha down towards the plain. From some angles, the little sky-bike was almost invisible; Jimmy seemed to be sitting in midair pedalling furiously. Sometimes he moved into spurts of up to thirty kilometres an hour; then he would coast to a halt, getting the feel of the controls, before accelerating again. And he was always very careful to keep a safe distance from the curving end of Rama.

It was soon obvious that Dragonfly handled much better at lower altitudes; she no longer rolled around at any angle but stabilized so that her wings were parallel to the plain seven kilometres below. Jimmy completed several wide orbits, then started to climb upwards again. He finally halted a few metres above his waiting colleagues and realized, a little belatedly, that he was not quite sure how to land this gossamer craft.

"Shall we throw you a rope?" Norton asked half-seriously.

"No, Skipper - I've got to work this out myself. I won't have anyone to help me at the other end."

He sat thinking for a while, then started to ease Dragonfly towards the Hub with short bursts of power. She quickly lost momentum between each, as air drag brought her to rest again. When he was only five metres away, and the sky-bike was still barely moving, Jimmy abandoned ship. He let himself float towards the nearest safety line in the Hub webwork, grasped it, then swung around in time to catch the approaching bike with his hands. The manoeuvre was so neatly executed that it drew a round of applause.

"For my next act - " Joe Calvert began.

Jimmy was quick to disclaim any credit.

"That was messy," he said. "But now I know how to do it. I'll take a sticky-bomb on a twenty-metre line; then I'll be able to pull myself in wherever I want to."

"Give me your wrist, Jimmy," ordered the Doctor, "and blow into this bag. I'll want a blood sample, too. Did you have any difficulty in breathing?"

"Only at this altitude. Hey, what do you want the blood for?"

"Sugar level; then I can tell how much energy you've used. We've got to make sure you carry enough fuel for the mission. By the way, what's the endurance record for sky-biking?"

"Two hours twenty-five minutes three point six seconds. On the Moon, of course - a two kilometre circuit in the Olympic Dome."

"And you think you can keep it up for six hours?"

"Easily, since I can stop for a rest at any time. Sky biking on the Moon is at least twice as hard as it is here."

"OK Jimmy - back to the lab. I'll give you a Go-No-Go as soon as I've analysed these samples. I don't want to raise false hopes but I think you can make it." A large smile of satisfaction spread across Jimmy Pak's ivory-hued countenance. As he followed Surgeon-Commander Ernst to the airlock, he called back to his companions: "Hands off, please! I don't want anyone putting his fist through the wings."

"I'll see to that, Jimmy," promised the Commander. "Dragonfly is off limits to everybody - including myself."