“I know that. But I have the answer.”
Lt. Pak’s attitude was a curious mixture of complete confidence and barely suppressed nervousness. Norton was quite baffled; what was the kid worried about? Surely he knew his commanding officer well enough to be certain that no reasonable proposal would be laughed out of court.
“Well, go on. If it works, I’ll see your promotion is retroactive.”
That little half-promise, half-joke didn’t go down as well as he had hoped. Jimmy gave a rather sickly smile, made several false starts, then decided on an oblique approach to the subject.
“You know, Commander, that I was in the Lunar Olympics last year.”
“Of course. Sorry you didn’t win.”
“It was bad equipment; I know what went wrong. I have friends on Mars who’ve been working on it, in secret. We want to give everyone a surprise.”
“Mars? But I didn’t know…”
“Not many people do—the sport’s still new there; it’s only been tried in the Xante Sportsdome. But the best aerodynamicists in the solar system are on Mars; if you can fly in that atmosphere, you can fly anywhere.”
“Now, my idea was that if the Martians could build a good machine, with all their know-how, it would really perform on the Moon—where gravity is only half as strong.”
“That seems plausible, but how does it help us?”
Norton was beginning to guess, but he wanted to give Jimmy plenty of rope.
“Well, I formed a syndicate with some friends in Lowell City. They’ve built a fully aerobatic flyer with some refinements that no one has ever seen before. In lunar gravity, under the Olympic dome, it should create a sensation.”
“And win you the gold medal.”
“I hope so.”
“Let me see if I follow your train of thought correctly. A sky-bike that could enter the Lunar Olympics, at a sixth of a gravity, would be even more sensational inside Rama, with no gravity at all. You could fly it right along the axis, from the North Pole to the South—and back again.”
“Yes—easily. The one-way trip would take three hours, non-stop. But of course you could rest whenever you wanted to, as long as you kept near the axis.”
“It’s a brilliant idea, and I congratulate you. What a pity sky-bikes aren’t part of regular Space Survey equipment.”
Jimmy seemed to have some difficulty in finding words. He opened his mouth several times, but nothing happened. “All right, Jimmy. As a matter of morbid interest, and purely off the record, how did you smuggle the thing aboard?”
“Er—‘Recreational Stores’.”
“Well, you weren’t lying. And what about the weight?”
“It’s only twenty kilograms.”
“Only! Still, that’s not as bad as I thought. In fact, I’m astonished you can build a bike for that weight.”
“Some have been only fifteen, but they were too fragile and usually folded up when they made a turn. There’s no danger of Dragonfly doing that. As I said, she’s fully aerobatic.”
“Dragonfly—nice name. So tell me just how you plan to use her; then I can decide whether a promotion or a court martial is in order. Or both.”
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.