Rendezvous With Rama - Arthur C. Clarke [47]
Her passengers took their places on the improvised bucket seats, and Ruby opened the throttle. The twenty-kilowatt motor started to whirr, the chain-drives of the reduction gear blurred, and Resolution surged away to the cheers of the spectators.
Ruby had hoped to get fifteen kph with this load, but would settle for anything over ten. A half-kilometre course had been measured along the cliff, and she made the round trip in five and a half minutes. Allowing for turning time, this worked out at twelve kph; she was quite happy with that.
With no power, but with three energetic paddlers helping her own more skilful blade, Ruby was able to get a quarter of this speed. So even if the motor broke down, they could get back to shore in a couple of hours. The heavy-duty power cells could provide enough energy to circumnavigate the world; she was carrying two spares, to be on the safe side. And now that the fog had completely burned away, even such a cautious mariner as Ruby was prepared to put to sea without a compass.
She saluted smartly as she stepped ashore.
'Maiden voyage of Resolution successfully completed, Sir. Now awaiting your instructions.'
'Very good . . . Admiral. When will you be ready to sail?'
'As soon as stores can be loaded aboard, and the Harbour Master gives us clearance.'
'Then we leave at dawn.'
'Aye, aye, Sir.'
Five kilometres of water does not seem very much on a map; it is very different when one is in the middle of it. They had been cruising for only ten minutes, and the fifty-metre cliff facing the Northern Continent already seemed a surprising distance away. Yet, mysteriously, New York hardly appeared much closer than before . . .
But most of the time they paid little attention to the land; they were still too engrossed in the wonder of the Sea. They no longer made the nervous jokes that had punctuated the start of the voyage; this new experience was too overwhelming. Every time, Norton told himself, he felt that he had grown accustomed to Rama, it produced some new wonder. As Resolution hummed steadily forward, it seemed that they were caught in the trough of a gigantic wave—a wave which curved on either side until it became vertical—then overhung until the two flanks met in a liquid arch sixteen kilometres above their heads. Despite everything that reason and logic told them, none of the voyagers could for long throw off the impression that at any minute those millions of tons of water would come crashing down from the sky. Yet despite this, their main feeling was one of exhilaration; there was a sense of danger, without any real danger. Unless, of course, the Sea itself produced any more surprises. That was a distinct possibility, for as Mercer had guessed, the water was now alive. Every spoonful contained thousands of spherical, single-celled micro-organisms, similar to the earliest forms of plankton that had existed in the oceans of Earth.
Yet they showed puzzling differences; they lacked a nucleus, as well as many of the other minimum requirements of even the most primitive terrestrial life forms. And although Laura Ernst—now doubling as research scientist as well as ship's doctor—had proved that they definitely generated oxygen, there were far too few of them to account for the augmentation of Rama's atmosphere. They should have existed in billions, not mere thousands. Then she discovered that their numbers were dwindling rapidly, and must have been far higher during the first hours of the Raman dawn. It was as if there had been a brief explosion of life, recapitulating on a trillionfold swifter time-scale the early history of Earth. Now, perhaps, it had exhausted itself;