Rama II Part 12

"Do you think we're really in danger?" Hiro Yamanaka asked Dr. Takagi-shi while the new capture tactics were being reviewed by Brown, Tabori, and Wakefield. The j.a.panese pilot was staring off in the distance at the ma.s.sive structures in the southern bowl, thinking, perhaps for the first time, of the vulnerability of their position.

"Probably not/' his countryman replied, "but it's insane to take such-"

"Insane is a perfect word for it," Reggie Wilson interrupted.

"You and I were the only two vocal opponents of continuing this stupidity. But our objections were made to sound foolish and even cowardly. Personally, 1 wish one of those G.o.dd.a.m.n things would challenge the esteemed Dr. Brown to a duel. Or better still, a bolt of lightning would come shooting out of those spires over there."

He pointed at the great horns that Yamanaka had been regarding earlier. Wilson's voice changed and there was a fearful edge to it. "We are over our heads here. I can feel it in the air. We are being warned of danger by powers that none of us can begin to understand. But we are ignoring the warnings."

Nicole turned away from her colleagues and glanced at the lively planning meeting taking place fifteen meters away from her. Engineers Wakefield and Tabori were definitely enjoying the challenge of outwitting the biots. Nicole wondered if perhaps Rama really was sending them some kind of a warning. Poppyc.o.c.k, she said to herself, repeating David Brown's expression. She shuddered involuntarily as she recalled the several seconds when the crab biots had devastated the metal snare. I'm overreacting. And so is Wilson. There's no reason to be afraid.

Yet, as she turned again and looked through the binoculars to study the biot formation half a kilometer away, there was a palpable fear in her that would not be a.s.suaged. The six crabs had not moved in almost two hours. They were still locked in their original arrangement. What are you really all about, Rama? Nicole asked herself for the umpteenth time. Her next question startled her. She had never verbalized it before. And how many of us mil make it back to Earth to tell your tale?

On the second capture attempt Francesca wanted to be on the ground beside the biots. As before, Turgenyev and Tabori were up in the prime helicopter along with the most important equipment. Brown, Yamanaka, and Wakefield were in the other helicopter. Dr. Brown had invited Wakefield to provide him with real-time advice; Francesca had of course persuaded Richard to take some aerial pictures for her to complement the automatic images from the helicopter system.

Reggie Wilson drove the ground-based cosmonauts to the biot site in the rover. "Now here's a good job for me," he said as they approached the location of the alien crabs.

"Chauffeur." He gazed up at the distant ceiling of Rama.

"You hear that, you guys? I'm versatile. I can do many things." He looked over at Francesca beside him in the front seat. "By the way, Mrs. Sabatini, were you planning to thank Nicole for her spectacular work? It was her action shots on the ground that captured the audience in your last transmission."

Francesca was busy checking all her video equipment and at first ignored Reggie's comment. When he repeated his jibe, she responded, without looking up, "May I remind Mr. Wilson that I do not need his unsolicited advice on how to conduct my business?"

"There was a time," Reggie mused out loud, shaking his head, "when things were very different." He glanced at Francesca. There was no indication that she was even listening. "Back when I still believed in love," he said in a louder voice. "Before I knew about betrayal. Or ambition and its selfishness."

He jerked the rover wheel vigorously to the left and brought it to a stop about forty meters west of the biots. Francesca jumped out without a word.

Within three seconds she was chattering to David Brown and Richard Wakefield on the radio about the video coverage of the capture. The ever polite Dr. Takagishi thanked Reggie Wilson for driving the rover.

"We're coming in," Tabori shouted from above. He managed to position the dangling nexus properly on his second attempt. The nexus was a round, heavy sphere about twenty centimeters in diameter, with a dozen small holes or indentations on its surface. It was slowly dropped onto the center of the sh.e.l.l of one of the outside biots. Next Janos, transmitting a barrage of commands from the hovering helicopter to the processor in the nexus, ordered the extension of the ma.s.sed threads of metal rolled up inside the sphere. The crabs did not stir as the threads wrapped themselves around the target biot.

"What do you think, inspector?" Janos hollered at Richard Wakefield in the other helicopter.

Richard surveyed the strange apparatus. The thick cable was attached to a ring stanchion at the rear of the helicopter. Fifteen meters below, the metal ball sat on the back of the target biot, thin filaments extending from inside the ball around the top and bottom of the carapace. "Looks fine," Richard replied. "Now there's only the single question remaining. Is the helicopter stronger than their collective grip?"

David Brown commanded Irina Turgenyev to lift the prey. She slowly increased the speed of the blades and tried to ascend. The tiny slack in the cable disappeared but the biots barely moved. "They're either very heavy or they're holding onto the ground somehow," Richard said. "Hit them with a sharp burst."

The sudden jolt in the cable lifted the entire biot formation momentarily skyward. The helicopter strained as the biot ma.s.s dangled two or three meters off the ground. The two crabs not attached to the target biot dropped first, falling into a motionless heap seconds after takeoff. The other three crabs lasted longer, ten seconds altogether before they finally disengaged their claws from their companion and fell to the ground below. There were universal cries of joy and congratulations as the helicopter climbed higher into the sky.

Francesca was filming the capture sequence from a distance of about ten meters. After the last three biots, including the leader, had released their grips on the target crab and fallen onto the Raman soil, she leaned back to record the helicopter as it headed for the banks of the Cylindrical Sea with its prey. It took her two or three seconds to realize that everyone was shouting at her.

The lead biot and its final two companion crabs had not crumbled into a heap when they had hit the ground. Although slightly damaged, they were active and on the move within moments after landing. While Francesca was filming the departure of the helicopter, the lead biot sensed her presence and headed toward her. The other two followed a step behind.

They were only four meters away when Francesca, still filming, finally understood that she was now the prey. She turned around and started to run. "Run to the side," Richard Wakefield screamed into the communicator, "they can only go in straight lines."

Francesca zigged and zagged but the biots continued to follow her. Her original burst of adrenaline enabled her to extend the distance separating her from the crabs to ten meters. Later, however, as she began to tire, the relentless biots were closing in on her. She slipped and almost fell. By the time Francesca regained her stride the lead biot was no more than three meters away.

Reggie Wilson had raced toward the rover as soon as it was clear that the biots were chasing Francesca. Once he was at the controls of the vehicle, he headed for her rescue at top speed. He had originally intended to pick her up and move her out of the way of the biot onslaught. They were too close to her, however, so Reggie decided to smash into the three crabs from the side. There was a crash of metal on metal as the lightweight vehicle rammed the biots. Reggie's plan worked. The momentum of the crash carried Reggie and the crabs several meters to the side. The threat to Francesca was over.

But the biots were not incapacitated. Far from it. Despite the fact that one of the follower crabs had lost a leg and the lead biot had a slightly damaged claw, within seconds all three of them were at work in the wreckage. They started slicing the rover into chunks with their claws, and then they used their fearful collection of probes and rasps to tear the chunks into still smaller pieces.

Reggie was momentarily stunned by the impact of the rover against the biots. The alien crabs had been heavier than he had antic.i.p.ated and the damage to his vehicle was severe. As soon as he realized that the biots were still active, he started to jump out of the rover. But he couldn't. His legs were wedged underneath the collapsed dashboard.

His unmitigated terror lasted no longer than ten seconds. There was nothing anyone could do. Reggie Wilson's horrified shrieks echoed through the vastness of Rama as the biots chopped him apart exactly as if he were part of the rover. It was accomplished swiftly and systematically. Both Francesca and the automatic camera in the helicopter filmed the final seconds of his life. The pictures were transmitted live back to the Earth.

30 POSTMORTEM II.

Nicole sat quietly in her hut at the Beta campsite. She could not erase from her mind the horrible image of Reggie Wilson's face, contorted in terror as he was being hacked to pieces. She tried to force herself to think of something else. So what now, she wondered. What will happen to the mission now?

Outside it was dark again in Rama. The lights had vanished abruptly three hours before, after a period of illumination thirty-four seconds less than during the previous Raman day. The disappearance of the lights should have prompted much discussion and speculation. But it didn't. None of the cosmonauts wanted to talk about anything. The awful memory of Wilson's death weighed too heavily on everyone. The normal crew meeting after dinner had been postponed until morning because David Brown and Admiral Heilmann were in an extended conference with ISA officials back on Earth. Nicole had not partic.i.p.ated in any of the conversations, but it was not difficult for her to imagine their content. She realized that there was a very real possibility the mission would now be aborted. The hue and cry from the public might demand it. After all, they had witnessed one of the most gruesome scenes. . . .

Nicole thought of Genevieve sitting in front of the television at Beauvois, watching while Cosmonaut Wilson was being methodically subdivided by the biots. She shuddered. Then she chastised herself for being self-centered. The real honor, she said to herself, must have been in Los Angeles. She had met the Wilson family twice during the early parties right after the crew selections were announced. Nicole remembered the boy particularly. Randy was his name. He was seven or eight, wide-eyed and beautiful. He loved sports. He had brought Nicole one of his prized possessions, a program from the 2184 Olympics in nearly perfect condition, and had asked her to sign the page featuring the women's triple jump. She had tousled his hair as he had thanked her with a huge smile.

The image of Randy Wilson watching his father die on television was too much for her. Several tears wedged themselves into the corners of her eyes. What a nightmare this year has been for you, little boy, she thought. The roller coaster of life. First the joy of having your father selected as a cosmonaut. Then all the Francesca nonsense and the divorce. Now this terrible tragedy.

Nicole was becoming depressed and her mind was still too active for sleep. She decided that she wanted some company. She walked over to the next hut and knocked softly on the door.

"Is someone out there?" she heard from inside.

"Hot, Takagishi-san," she replied. "It's Nicole. May I come in?"

He walked over to the door and opened it. "This is an unexpected surprise," he said. "Is the visit professional?"

"No," she answered as she entered. "Strictly informal. I was not ready to sleep. I thought-"

"You are welcome to visit me any time," he said with a friendly smile. "You do not need a reason." He looked at her for several seconds. "I am deeply disturbed by what happened this afternoon. I feel responsible. I don't think I did enough to stop-"

"Come on, Shigeru," Nicole replied. "Don't be ridiculous. You're not to blame. At least you spoke up. I'm the doctor and I didn't even say anything."

Her eyes wandered aimlessly around Takagishi's hut. Beside his cot, sitting on a small piece of cloth on the floor, Nicole saw a curious white figurine with black markings. She walked over to it and bent down on her knees, "What's this?" she asked.

Dr. Takagishi was slightly embarra.s.sed. He came over beside Nicole and picked up the tiny fat oriental man. He held it between his index finger and his thumb. "It's a netsuke heirloom from my wife's family," he said. "It's made from ivory."

He handed the little man to Nicole. "He is the king of the G.o.ds. His companion, a similarly plump queen, rests on the table beside my wife's bed in Kyoto. Back before elephants became endangered, many people collected figures like this. My wife's family has a superb collection."

Nicole studied the little man in her hand. He had a benign, serene smile on his face. She imagined the beautiful Machiko Takagishi back in j.a.pan and for a few seconds she envied their marital bond. It would make events like Wilson's death much easier to deal with, she thought.

"Would you like to sit down?" Dr. Takagishi was saying. Nicole positioned herself on a box next to the cot and they talked for twenty minutes. Mostly they shared memories of their families. They referred obliquely to the afternoon disaster several times, but they avoided detailed discussion of Rama and the Newton mission altogether. What they both needed were the comforting images of their daily lives on Earth.

"And now," Takagishi said, finishing his cup of tea and putting it on the end table beside Nicole's, "I have a strange request for Dr. des Jardins. Would you please go over to your hut and bring back your biometry equipment? I would like to be scanned."

Nicole started to laugh but noticed the seriousness in her colleague's face. When she returned with her scanner several minutes later, Dr. Takagishi told her the reason for his request. "This afternoon," he said, "I felt two very sharp pains in my chest. It was during the excitement, after Wilson crashed into the biots, and I realized . . ." He did not complete his sentence. Nicole nodded and activated the scanning instrument.

Neither of them said anything for the next three minutes. Nicole checked all the warning data, displayed graphs and charts of his cardiac performance, and shook her head regularly. When she was finished she faced her friend with a grim smile. "You've had a slight heart attack," she said to Dr. Takagishi. "Maybe two very close together. And your heart has been irregular ever since." She could tell that he had expected the news. "I'm sorry," she said. "I have some medicine with me that I can give you, but it's only a stopgap measure. We must go back to the Newton immediately so we can treat this problem properly."

"Well." He smiled wanly. "If our predictions are correct, then it will be light again in Rama in about twelve hours. I a.s.sume we'll go then."

"Probably," she answered. "I'll talk to Brown and Heilmann about it right away. My guess is that you and I will leave first thing in the morning."

He reached out and took her hand. "Thank you, Nicole," he said.

She turned away. For the second time in an hour there were tears in the corners of her eyes. Nicole left Takagishi's hut and headed for the edge of camp to talk to David Brown.

"Ah, it is you." She heard Richard Wakefield's voice in the dark. "I thought for certain you were asleep. I have some news for you."

"h.e.l.lo, Richard," Nicole said as the figure holding the flashlight emerged from the darkness.

"I couldn't sleep," he said. "Too many grisly pictures in my head. So I decided to work on your problem." He smiled. "It was even easier than I thought. Would you like to come to my hut for an explanation?"

Nicole was confused. She had been preoccupied with what she was going to say to Brown and Heilmann about Takagishi. "You do remember, don't you?" Richard inquired.

"The problem with the RoSur software and the manual commands."

"You've been working on that?" she asked. "Down here?"

"Certainly. All I had to do was have O'Toole transmit the data that I needed. Come on, let me show you." Nicole decided seeing Dr. Brown could wait for a few more minutes. She walked beside Richard. He knocked on another hut as they went by. "Hey Tabori, guess what?" he shouted.

"I found our lovely lady doctor wandering around in the dark. Do you want to join us?"

"I explained some of it to him first," Richard said to Nicole.

"Your hut was dark and I figured you were asleep." Janos stumbled out of his door less than a minute later and acknowledged Nicole with a smile. "All right, Wakefield," he said, "but let's not prolong it. I was finally drifting off." Back in Wakefield's hut, the British engineer thoroughly enjoyed recounting what had happened to the robot surgeon when the Newton had experienced the unexpected torque.

"You were right, Nicole," he said, "that there were manual commands input to RoSur. And these commands did indeed shut down the normal fault protection algorithms. But none of them was input until during the Raman maneuver." Wakefield smiled and continued, watching Nicole carefully to ensure that she was following his explanation. "Apparently, when Janos fell and his fingers. .h.i.t the control box, he generated three commands. At least that's what RoSur thought; it was told that there were three manual commands in it's queue. Of course they were all garbage. But RoSur had no way of knowing this.

"Maybe now you can appreciate some of the nightmares that plague system software designers. There's just no way anybody could ever antic.i.p.ate all possible contingencies. The designers had protected against one inadvertent garbage command-someone brushing the control box during an operation, for example-but not several bad commands. Manual commands were essentially considered to be emergencies by the overall system design. Hence they had the highest priority in the interrupt structure of the RoSur software and were always processed immediately, The design acknowledged, however, that there could be a single 'bad' manual command and had the capability of rejecting it and moving on to the next priority interrupts, which included fault protection."

"Sorry," said Nicole. "You've lost me. How could a design be structured to disregard a single bad command, but not several? I thought this simple processor operated in series." Richard turned to his portable computer and, working from notes, called up on the monitor a ma.s.s of numbers arrayed in rows and columns. "Here are the operations, instruction by instruction, that the RoSur software implemented after there were manual commands in its queue."

"They repeat," Janos observed, "every seven operations."

"Exactly," Richard replied. "RoSur tried three times to process the first manual command, was unsuccessful in each attempt, and then went on to the next command. The software operated exactly as it was designed-"

"But why," Tabori asked, "did it go back to the first command afterward?"

"Because the software designers never considered the possibility of multiple bad manual commands. Or at least never designed for the condition. The internal question the software asks after finishing with the processing of each command is whether or not there is another manual command in the buffer. If there is not, then the software rejects the first command and is free to handle another interrupt. If there is, however, the software is told to store the rejected command and process the next command. Now, if two commands in a row are rejected, the software a.s.sumes that the command processor hardware is broken, swaps to the redundant hardware set, and tries again to process the same manual commands. You can understand the reasoning. Suppose one . . ."

Nicole listened for several seconds as Richard and Janos talked about redundant subsystems, buffered commands, and queue structures. She had very little training in either fault protection or redundancy management and could not follow the exchange. "Just a moment," she interjected at length, "you've lost me again. Remember, I'm not an engineer. Can't somebody give me a summary in normal English?"

Wakefield was apologetic. "Sorry, Nicole," he said. "You know what an interrupt-driven software system is?" She nodded. "And you are familiar with the way priorities operate in such a system? Good. Then the explanation is simple. The fault protection interrupts based on the accelerometer and imaging data were lower priority than the manual commands inadvertently entered by Janos when he was falling. The system became locked in a software loop trying to process the bad commands and never had a chance to heed the fault signals from the sensor subsystems. That's why the scalpel kept cutting." For some reason Nicole was disappointed. The explanation was clear enough, and she had certainly not wanted the a.n.a.lysis to implicate Janos or any other member of the crew. But it was too simple. It had not been worth all her time and energy.

Nicole sat down on the cot in Richard Wakefield's hut. "So much for my mystery," she said.

Janos sat beside her. "Cheer up, Nicole," he said. "This is good news. At least now we know for certain that we didn't foul up the initialization process. There's a logical explanation for what happened."

"Great," she replied sarcastically. "But General Borzov is still dead. And now Reggie Wilson is too." Nicole thought about the American journalist's erratic behavior over the last several days and remembered her earlier conversation with Francesca. "Say," she said spontaneously, "did either of you ever hear General Borzov complain of headaches or any other discomfort? Especially on the day of the banquet?" Wakefield shook his head. "No," said Janos. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, I asked the portable diagnostician, based on Borzov's biometry data, to give me the possible causes of his symptoms, given that the general was not having an appendicitis. The most likely cause was listed as drug reaction. Sixty-two percent probable. I thought that maybe he might have had an adverse reaction to some medication."

"Really?" Janos said, his curiosity piqued. "Why have you never said anything about this to me before?"

"I was going to ... several times," Nicole answered. "But I didn't think you were interested. Remember when I stopped by your room on the Newton the day after General Borzov died? It was right after the crew meeting. From the way you responded I concluded that you didn't want to rehash-"

"Goodness." Janos shook his head. "How we humans fail to communicate. It was just a headache. Nothing more or less. I certainly didn't mean to give you the impression that I was unwilling to talk about Valeriy's death."

"Speaking of communicating," Nicole said as she rose wearily from the cot, "I must go to see Dr. Brown and Admiral Heilmann before I go to bed." She looked at Wakefield. "Thanks a lot for your help, Richard. I wish I could say that I felt better now."

Nicole walked over beside Janos. 'Tm sorry, friend," she said. "I should have shared my whole investigation with you. It probably would have been over much faster-"

^ "It's fine," Janos replied. "Don't worry about it." He smiled. "Come on, I'll walk with you as far as my suite." Nicole could hear the loud conversation inside before she knocked on the door to the hut. David Brown, Otto Heilmann, and Francesca Sabatini were arguing about how to reply to the latest directions from Earth.

"They're overreacting," Francesca was saying. "And they'll realize it as soon as they have some time to reflect. This is not the first mission to suffer a loss of human life. They didn't cancel the American s.p.a.ce shuttle when that schoolteacher and her crew were killed."

"But they have ordered us to return to the Newton as soon as possible/' Admiral Heilmann protested.

"So tomorrow we'll talk to them again and explain why we want to survey New York first. Takagishi says the sea will start to melt in another day or two and we'll have to leave anyway. Besides, Wakefield and Takagishi and I did hear something that night, even if David doesn't believe us."

"I don't know, Francesca," Dr. Brown was starting to respond when he finally heard Nicole's knock. "Who's there?" he asked crossly.

"Cosmonaut des Jardins, I have some important medical information-"

"Look, des Jardins," Brown interrupted quickly, "we're very busy. Can't it wait until morning?"

All right, Nicole said to herself. I can wait until morning. She wasn't anxious to answer Dr. Brown's questions about Takagishi's heart condition anyway. "Roger," she said out loud, laughing at herself for using the expression. Within seconds Nicole could hear the discussion start again behind her. She walked slowly back to her hut. Tomorrow has to be a better day, she said as she crawled onto her cot. 31 ORVIETO PRODIGY Good night, Otto," David Brown said as the German admiral left his hut. "See you in the morning." Dr. Brown yawned and stretched. He looked at his watch. It was a little more than eight hours until the lights should come on again. He pulled off his flight suit and had a drink of water. He had just laid down on his cot when Francesca entered his hut.

"David," she said, "we have more problems." She walked over and gave him a short kiss. "I've been talking to Janos. Nicole suspects that Valeriy was drugged."

"Whaaat?" he replied. He sat up on his cot. "How could she?

There was no way-"

"Apparently there was some evidence in his biometry data and she cleverly found it. She mentioned it to Janos tonight."

"You didn't react when he told you, did you? I mean, we must be absolutely-"

"Of course not," Francesca answered. "Anyway, Janos would never suspect anything in a thousand years. He is a total innocent. At least where things like this are concerned."

"d.a.m.n that woman," David Brown said. "And d.a.m.n her biometry." He rubbed his face with his hands. "What a day. First that stupid Wilson tries to be a hero. Now this. ... I told you we should have destroyed all the data from the operation. It would have been an easy matter to wipe out the central files. Then things would never-"

"She would still have his biometry records," Francesca countered. "That's where the prime evidence is. You would have to be an absolute genius to take the data from the operation itself and deduce anything." She sat down and cradled Dr. Brown's head against her chest. "Our big mistake was not when we failed to destroy the files. That would have aroused suspicion at the ISA. Our error was in underestimating Nicole des Jardins."

Dr. Brown shook free from the embrace and stood up.

"Dammit, Francesca, it's your fault. I never should have let you talk me into it. I knew at the time-"

"You knew at the time," Francesca sharply interrupted, "that you, Dr. David Brown, were not going on the first sortie into Rama. You knew at the time that your future millions as the hero and perceived leader of this expedition would be seriously compromised if you stayed onboard the Newton." Brown stopped pacing and faced Francesca. "You knew at the time," she continued more softly, "that I too had a vested interest in your going on the sortie. And that I could be counted on to provide you with support."

She took his hands and pulled him back toward the cot. "Sit down, David," Francesca said. "We've been over and over this. We did not kill General Borzov. We simply gave him a drug that created the symptoms of an appendicitis. We made the decision together, If Rama had not maneuvered and the robot surgeon had not malfunctioned, then our plan would have worked perfectly. Borzov would be on the Newton today, recovering from his appendectomy, and you and I would be here leading the exploration of Rama." David Brown removed his hands from hers and started to wring them. "I feel so ... so unclean," he said. "I've never done anything like this before. I mean, whether we like it or not, we are partially responsible for Borzov's death. Maybe even for Wilson's as well. We could be indicted." He was shaking his head again. There was a forlorn expression on his face. "I'm supposed to be a scientist," he said. "What has happened to me? How did I get mixed up in these things?"