Betlejem






„... And presently even the eye could see the changes in the corona. A faintly glowing tube or tunnel, a hundred thousand kilometers long, ha appeared high in the outer atmosphere of the Sun. It was slightly curved, bending along the orbit Rama was tracing, and Rama itself-or the protective cocoon around it-was visible as a glittering bead racing faster and faster down that ghostly tube through the corona.



For it was still gaining speed. Now it was moving at more than two thousand kilometers a second, and there was no question of its ever remaining a captive of the Sun. Now at last, the Ramans' strategy was obvious. They had come so close to the Sun merely to tap its energy at the source and to speed themselves even faster on the way to their ultimate, unknown goal.



Soon it seemed that they were tapping more then energy. No one could ever be certain of this, because the nearest observing instruments were thirty milion kilometers away, but there were definite indciations that matter was flowing from the Sun into Rama itself, as if it was replacing the leakage and losses of ten thousand centuries in space.



Faster and faster Rama swept around the Sun, moving more swiftly than any object that had ever traveled through the solar system. In less than two hours its direction of motion had swung through more than ninety degrees, and it had given a final, almost contemptuous proof of its total lack of interest in all the worlds whose peace of mind it had rudely disturbed.



It was dropping out of ecliptic, down into the southern sky, far below the plane in which all the planets move. Though that, surely, could not be its ultimate goal, it was aimed squarely at the Greater Magellanic Cloud, and the lonely gulfs beyond the Milky Way.”



muza


---

wykorzystano fragment powieści "Spotkanie z Ramą" Arthura C. Clarke'a



Koniec Cyklu Słonecznego