Rendezvous With Rama - Arthur C. Clarke [67]
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 . . .'
'I will,' said Jimmy. 'It had better be good.'
He did not interrupt the Commander again, and made no comment when Norton had finished. Yes, it made sense, and was so absurdly simple that it would take a genius to think of it. And, perhaps, someone who did not expect to do it himself . . .
Jimmy had never tried high-diving, or made a delayed parachute drop, which would have given him some psychological preparation for this feat. One could tell a man that it was perfectly safe to walk a plank across an abyss—yet even if the structural calculations were impeccable, he might still be unable to do it. Now Jimmy understood why the Commander had been so evasive about the details of the rescue. He had been given no time to brood, or to think of objections.
'I don't want to hurry you,' said Norton's persuasive voice from half a kilometre below. 'But the sooner the better.' Jimmy looked at his precious souvenir, the only flower in Rama. He wrapped it very carefully in his grimy handkerchief, knotted the fabric, and tossed it over the edge of the cliff.
It fluttered down with reassuring slowness, but it also took a very long time getting smaller, and smaller, and smaller, until he could no longer see it. But then Resolution surged forward, and he knew that it had been spotted.
'Beautiful!' exclaimed the Commander enthusiastically. 'I'm sure they'll name it after you. OK—we're waiting . . .'
Jimmy stripped off his shirt—the only upper garment anyone ever wore in this now-tropical climate—and stretched it thoughtfully. Several times on his trek he had risked his life.
For the last time, he looked back at the hollow world he alone had explored, and the distant, ominous pinnacles of the Big and Little Horns. Then, grasping the shirt firmly with his right hand, he took a running jump as far out over the cliff as he could. Now there was no particular hurry; he had a full twenty seconds in which to enjoy the experience. But he did not waste any time, as the wind strengthened around him and Resolution slowly expanded in his field of view. Holding his shirt with both hands, he stretched his arms above