Chapter 45 Chapter 45: Fire Phoenix

The data on the new orbit became more and more clear, and it seemed that Rama was doomed.At perihelion less than half a million kilometers above the hell of dissolved hydrogen, no solid matter can withstand such temperatures.The alloy of Rama's shell was about to start melting ten times farther away. Endeavor has passed its own perihelion and is now reassuringly increasing its separation from the Sun.Rama is still in a much closer and faster orbit, and is clearly within the outer ring of the halo.Endeavor will have the best front-seat seats for the final act of the play. At this time, 5 million kilometers away from the sun, and still accelerating, Rama began to spin out of its cocoon.What hitherto had been a shiny little stick in Endeavor's most powerful telescope now burst into flames, almost as if disintegrating.Seeing this, Newton felt a pang of intense sadness at the annihilation of this marvel.Then he realized that Rama was still there, only shrouded in a dazzling halo.

After a while it disappeared again, and in its place was a bright star-like thing, with no disk to see - Rama seemed to be compressed into a small ball. It was some time before they figured out what was going on.Rama is really gone.It is enclosed in a fully reflecting sphere about one hundred kilometers in diameter.Only the reflected shadow of the sun itself on a certain part of the sphere can be seen.In this protective bubble, Rama was protected from the fire of hell on the sun. As time passed, the spherical protective bubble gradually became an ellipse, and the major axis of the ellipse pointed to Rama's flight direction.Just then, the first anomalous reports came from what appeared to be a 200-year-old robotic observatory dedicated to long-term observation of the sun.

Near the area where Rama is located, certain changes occur in the sun's magnetic field.The millions of kilometers of force lines that pass through the corona and drive from it a strong stream of thermions (with speeds that sometimes defy the sun's strong gravitational pull) surround themselves around the shimmering ellipsoid.So far nothing has been seen visually, but instruments orbiting satellites are reporting every change in magnetic field lines and ultraviolet radiation. Soon even the eyes can observe changes in the corona.A 100,000-kilometer-long pipe of hot gas appears above the sun's outer atmosphere.It curves along Rama's trajectory, while Rama herself—or the protective cocoon that surrounds it—snaps faster and faster down that heat pipe through the corona like a shimmering pearl.

Rama is now moving at 2,000 kilometers per second and accelerating.There's no longer any question of it being a sun catcher.Now, at last, Rama's strategy is clearly visible.They came so close to the sun only to draw energy, so that they could fly at a faster speed to their final goal unknown to mankind. It was soon discovered that what they absorbed was not only energy, although no one could be sure of this.Because the nearest observation instrument is 30 million kilometers away, but there are clear readings there, indicating that matter also flows from the sun to the interior of Rama, as if to supplement its leakage and loss in space for 10,000 centuries.

Rama is circling the sun faster and faster than any object that has ever orbited the solar system.Within two hours it had turned at an angle of more than ninety degrees, expressing contemptuously one last time that it had no interest in the worlds it disturbed. It has now begun to deviate from the ecliptic, flying south, much lower than the plane in which the planets orbit.Obviously that is not its ultimate goal, it is heading towards the large Magellanic Cloud and the vast space behind the Milky Way.