Rama II

36 IMPACT COURSE

Francesca had also been startled when the lights of Rama had sud­denly begun to flash. Her initial impulse had been to run inside, just under the roof of the barn. Once there, she felt slightly more protected. What’s going on now? she thought as the reflected lights from the adjacent buildings forced her to close her eyes to keep from becoming dizzy.

When she heard Nicole’s cry for help, Francesca started to rush over to help her fellow cosmonaut. However, she tripped on one of the spheres and banged her knee as she fell. When she rose, Francesca could see in the strobing light that Nicole’s position was very precarious. Only the backs of Nicole’s shoes were visible. Francesca stood quite still and waited. Her mind had already raced ahead. She had a nearly perfect image of the pits in her memory, including a fairly accurate assessment of the depth. Ifshe falls she’ll be injured, she thought, maybe even killed. Francesca remembered the smooth walk. She won’t be able to climb out.

The flashing lights gave an eerie overtone to the scene. As Francesca watched, she saw Nicole’s body rise barely out of the pit and her hands scramble for a hold on the lip. In the next flashes of light the shoes changed angle with respect to the pit and then abruptly disappeared. Francesca heard no scream.

If she had not controlled herself, Francesca would have hurried over to the pit and looked into it. TVb, she said to herself, still standing amid the small spheres, ! must not look. If by chance she is still conscious, she might see me. Then I will have no options.

Already Francesca was thinking about the possibilities offered by Nicole’s fall. She was certain, based on their earlier exchange, that Nicole intended to do her utmost to prove that Borzov had ingested a pain-inducing drug on the last day of his life. It might be possible for Nicole even to identify the particular compound and then eventually, since it was not common, to trace its purchase back to Francesca. The scenario was unlikely, even implausible. But it could happen.

Francesca remembered using her special permits to buy the dimethyldexfl, along with a batch of other items, at a hospital pharmacy in Copenhagen two years earlier. At the time there had been a suggestion that the drug, in very small doses, could produce mild reelings of euphoria in highly stressed individuals. A single journal article in an obscure Swedish mental health publication the following year had contained the information that sizable doses of dimethyldexil would produce acute pain that simulated an appendi­citis.

As Francesca walked rapidly away from the barn in a northerly direction, her agile mind worked through all the possibilities. She was performing her usual risk!reward trade-off. The primary issue she was facing, now that she had left Nicole in the pit, was whether or not to tell the truth about Nicole’s fall. But why did you leave her there? somebody would ask. Why didn’t you radio us that she had fallen and stand by until help could arrive?

Because I was confused and frightened and the lights were flashing. And Richard had sounded so very concerned about our leaving. I thought it would be easier for us to all talk together at the helicopter. Was that believable? Barely. But it was easy to keep straight. So I still have the partial truth option, Francesca thought as she passed the octahedron near the central plaza. She realized she had walked too far to the east, checked her personal navigator, and then changed her direction. The lights of Rama continued to flash.

And what are my other choices:” Wakefield talked with us just outside the barn. He knows where we were. A search party would definitely find her.

Unless… Francesca thought again about the possibility that Nicole might eventually implicate her in the drugging of General Borzov. The resulting scandal would certainly result in a messy investigation and probably a crimi­nal indictment. In any case, Francesca’s reputation would be sullied and her future career as a journalist would be seriously compromised.

With Nicole out of the picture, on the other hand, there was virtually zero probability that anyone would ever learn that Francesca had drugged Borzov. The only person who knew the facts was David Brown, and he had been a co-conspirator. Besides, he had even more to lose than she did.

So the issue, Francesca thought, is whether or not I can make up a believ­able story that both reduces the chance Nicole will be found and does not implicate me if she is. That’s a very difficult task.

She was nearing the Cylindrical Sea. Her personal navigator told her that she was only six hundred meters away. Dammit, Francesca answered herself after thinking very carefully about her situation, ! don’t really have a com­pletely safe option. I mil have to choose one or the other. Either way there’s a significant risk.

Francesca stopped moving north and paced back and forth between two skyscrapers. As she was walking, the ground underneath her feet began to tremble. Everything was shaking. She dropped to her knees to steady herself. She heard Janos Tabori’s voice very faintly on the radio. “It’s all right, everybody, don’t be alarmed. It looks as if our vehicle is undergoing a maneu­ver. That must have been what the warnings were all about… By the way, Nicole, where are you and Francesca? Hiro and Richard are about to take off in the helicopter.”

“I’m close to the sea, maybe two minutes away,” Francesca answered. “Nicole went back to check on something.”

“Roger,” Janos replied. “Are you there, Nicole? Do you copy, cosmonaut des Jardins?”

There was silence on the radio.

“As you know, Janos,” Francesca interjected, “communications are very spotty from here. Nicole knows where to meet the helicopter. She’ll be along quickly, I’m certain.” She paused a moment. “Say, where are the others? Is everyone all right?”

“Brown and Heilmann are on the radio with Earth. ISA management will be completely freaked out now. They were already demanding that we leave Rama before this maneuver began.”

“We’re just boarding the helicopter,” Richard Wakefield said. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

It’s done. I’ve made my choice, Francesca said to herself when Richard was finished. She was surprisingly elated. Immediately she began to rehearse her story. “We were near the large octahedron in the central plaza when Nicole spotted an alley off to our right that we had not noticed before. The street leading to the alley was extremely narrow and she remarked that it was probably a region where communications could not penetrate. I was already tired — we had been walking so fast. She told me to go ahead to the helicop­ter…”

“And you never saw her again?” Richard Wakefield interrupted. Francesca shook her head. Richard was standing on the ice next to her. Beneath them the ice was vibrating as the long maneuver continued. The lights were now on. They had stopped their flashing when the maneuver began.

Pilot Yamanaka was sitting in the cockpit of his helicopter. Richard checked his watch. “It’s almost five minutes since we landed here. Some­thing must have happened to her.” He glanced around. “Maybe she’s com­ing out somewhere else.”

Richard and Francesca climbed into the helicopter and Yamanaka took off. They cruised up and down the island coast, twice circling over the solitary icemobile. “Edge into New York,” Wakefield commanded. “Maybe we’ll be able to spot her.”

From the helicopter it was virtually impossible to see the ground in the city. The “copter had to fly above the tallest buildings. The streets were very narrow and the shadows played games with the eyes. Once Richard thought he saw something moving between the buildings, but it turned out to be an optical illusion.

“All right, Nicole, all right. Where in the hell are you?”

“Wakefield,” Dr. David Brown’s sonorous voice sounded in the helicop­ter, “I want you three to come back to Beta immediately. We need to have a meeting.” Richard was surprised to hear that it was Dr. Brown. Janos had been the one monitoring their communication link since they had left Beta.

“What’s the hurry, boss?” Wakefield replied. “We still haven’t made our scheduled rendezvous with Nicole des Jardins. She should be coming out of New York any minute.”

“I’ll give you the details when you get here. We have some difficult deci­sions to make. I’m certain that des Jardins will radio when she reaches the shore.”

It did not take them long to cross the frozen sea. Near the Beta campsite, Yamanaka landed the helicopter on the shaking ground and the three cosmo­nauts descended. The remaining four members of the crew were waiting for them.

“This is one incredibly long maneuver,” Richard said with a smile as he approached the others. “I hope the Ramans know what they’re doing.”

“They probably do,” Dr. Brown said somberly. “At least the Earth thinks that they do.” He looked carefully at his watch. “According to the naviga­tion section in mission control, we should expect this maneuver to last an­other nineteen minutes, give or take a few seconds.”

“How do they know?” inquired Wakefield. “Have the Ramans landed on Earth and handed out a flight plan while we’ve been up here exploring?”

Nobody laughed. “If the vehicle stays at this attitude and acceleration rate,” Janos said with uncharacteristic seriousness, “then in nineteen more minutes it will be on an impact course.”

“Impact with what?” Francesca asked.

Richard Wakefield did some quick mental computations. “With the Earth?” he guessed. Janos nodded.

“Jesus!” Francesca exclaimed.

“Exactly,” David Brown said. “This mission has become an Earth security concern. The COG Executive Council is meeting at this very moment to consider all contingencies. We have been told in the strongest possible lan­guage that we must leave Rama as soon as the maneuver is completed. We are to take nothing except the crab biot and our personal belongings. We are—”

“What about Takagishi? And des Jardins?” Wakefield asked.

“We will leave the icemobile where it is, along with a rover here at Beta. They are both easy to operate. We will still be in radio contact from the Newton.” Dr. Brown stared directly at Richard. “If this spacecraft is really on an Earth impact course,” he said dramatically, “our individual lives are no longer very important. The entire course of history is about to be changed.”

“But what if the navigation engineers are wrong? What if Rama has just happened to make a maneuver that momentarily intersects an Earth impact trajectory? It could be—”

“Extremely unlikely. You remember that group of short-burst maneuvers at the time of Borzov’s death? They changed the orientation of Rama’s orbit so that an Earth impact could be achieved with one long maneuver at exactly the right time. The engineers on Earth figured it out thirty-six hours ago. They radioed O’Toole before dawn this morning to expect the maneuver. I didn’t want to say anything while everyone was out looking for Takagishi.”

“That explains why everyone is so anxious for us to clear out of here!” Janos noted.

“Only partially,” Dr. Brown continued. “There is clearly a different feel­ing about Rama and the Ramans down on Earth. ISA management and the world leaders on the COG Executive Council are apparently convinced that Rama is implacably hostile.”

He stopped for several seconds, as if he were reassessing his own attitude.

“I think they are reacting emotionally myself, but I cannot persuade them differently. I personally see no evidence of hostility, only a disinterest in and disregard for a wildly inferior being. But the televised account of Wilson’s death has done its damage. The world’s populace cannot be herebeside us, cannot grasp the majesty of this place. they can only react viscerally to the horror—”

“If you don’t think the Ramans have hostile intentions,” Francesca inter­rupted, “then how do you explain this maneuver? It can’t be coincidence. They or it has decided for some reason to head for the Earth. No wonder the people down there are traumatized. Remember, the first Rama never ac­knowledged its visitors in any way. This is a dramatically different response. The Ramans are telling us they know—”

“Hold it. Hold it,” Richard said. “I think we’re jumping to conclusions a little too fast. We have twelve more minutes before we should start pushing the panic buttons.”

“All right, Cosmonaut Wakefield,” Francesca said, now remembering that she was a reporter and activating her video camera, “for the record, what do you think it will mean if this maneuver does culminate in a trajectory that impacts the Earth?”

When Richard finally spoke he was very serious. “People of the Earth,” he said dramatically, “if Rama has indeed changed its course to visit our planet, it is not necessarily a hostile act. There is nothing, I repeat nothing, that any of us have seen or heard that indicates the species that created this space vehicle wishes us any harm. Certainly Cosmonaut Wilson’s death was dis­turbing, but it was probably an isolated response from a specific set of robots rather than a part of a sinister plan.

“I see this magnificent spacecraft as a single machine, almost organic in its complexity. It is extraordinarily intelligent and programmed for long-term survival. It is neither hostile nor friendly. It could easily have been designed to track any incoming satellites and compute where the visiting spacecraft must have originated. Rama’s orbit change to fly in the vicinity of the Earth might therefore be nothing more than its standard response to an encounter initiated by another spacefaring species. It may simply be coming to find out more about us.”

“Very good,” Janos Tabori said with a grin. “That was borderline philo­sophical.”

Wakefield laughed nervously.

“Cosmonaut Turgenyev,” Francesca said as she changed the direction of the camera, “do you agree with your colleague? Right after General Borzov died, you openly expressed some concern that perhaps some “higher force,” meaning the Ramans, might have had a hand in his death. What are your feelings now?”

The normally taciturn Soviet pilot stared directly into the camera with her sad eyes. “Da,” she said, “I think Cosmonaut Wakefield is a very brilliant engineer. But he has not answered the difficult questions. Why did Rama maneuver during General Borzov’s operation? Why did the biots cut Wilson to pieces? Where is Professor Takagishi?”

Irina Turgenyev paused a moment to control her emotions. “We will not find Nicole des Jardins. Rama may be only a machine, but we cosmonauts have already seen how dangerous it can be. If it is heading for the Earth, I fear for my family, my friends, for all humanity. There is no way to predict what it might do. And we would be powerless to stop it.”

Several minutes later Francesca Sabatini carried her automatic video equipment out beside the frozen sea for one final sequence. She carefully checked the time before switching on the camera at precisely fifteen seconds before the maneuver was expected to end. “The picture you are seeing is jumping up and down,” she said in her best journalistic voice, “because the ground underneath us here on Rama has been shaking continuously since this maneuver started forty-seven minutes ago. According to the navigation engineers, the maneuver will stop in the next few seconds if Rama has changed course to impact the Earth. Their calculations are, of course, based on assumptions about Rama’s intentions—”

Francesca stopped in midsentence and took a deep breath. “The ground is no longer shaking. The maneuver is over. Rama is now on an Earth impact trajectory.”