by Arthur C.
Reggie Wilson had excused himself an hour earlier and had gone to his room for a nap. The remaining five crew members onboard the Newton had spent most of the afternoon struggling, without success, to reach an agreement on the activities for the second sortie. Since the two scientists Brown and Takagishi had radically different opinions on what should be done, no consensus was possible. Meanwhile, behind them on the large monitor, there had been intermittent views of the space cadets and Admiral Heilmann working inside Rama. The current picture showed Tabori and Turgenyev at the campsite adjoining the Cylindrical Sea. They had just finished assembling the second motorboat and were checking its electrical subsystems.
"…The sequence of sorties has been carefully designed," Takagishi was reading, "to be consistent with the mission policies and priorities document, ISA-NT-0014. The primary goals of the first sortie are to establish the engineering infrastructure and to examine the interior on at least a superficial level. Of particular importance will be the identification of any characteristics of this second Rama spacecraft that are in any way different from the first.
"Sortie number two is designed to complete the mapping of the inside of Rama, focusing particularly on regions unexplored seventy years ago, as well as the collections of buildings called cities and any interior differences identified on the first sortie. Encounters with biots will be avoided on the second sortie, although the presence and location of the various kinds of biots will be part of the mapping process.
"Interaction with the biots will be delayed until the third sortie. Only after careful and prolonged observation will any attempt be made—"
"That's enough, Dr. Takagishi," David Brown interrupted. "We all have the gist of it. Unfortunately that sterile document was prepared months before launch. The situation we face now was never contemplated. We have the lights going on and off. And we have located and are tracking a herd of six crab biots just beyond the southern edge of the Cylindrical Sea."
"I disagree," said the Japanese scientist respectfully. "You said yourself that the unpredicted lighting profile did not represent a fundamental difference between the two spacecraft. We are not facing an unknown Rama. I submit that we should implement the sorties in accordance with the original mission plan."
"So you favor dedicating this entire second sortie to mapping, including or perhaps even featuring a detailed exploration of New York?" asked O'Toole.
"Exactly, General O'Toole. Even if one takes the position that the strange sound heard by cosmonauts Wakefield, Sabatini, and myself does not constitute an official difference, the careful mapping of New York is clearly one of the highest priority activities. And it is vital that we accomplish it on this sortie. The temperature in the Central Plain has already risen to minus five degrees. Rama is carrying us closer and closer to the Sun. The spacecraft is heating from the outside in. I predict the Cylindrical Sea will begin to melt from the bottom in three or four more days—"
"I have never said that New York was not a legitimate target for exploration," David Brown interrupted again, "but I have maintained from the very beginning that the biots are the true scientific treasure of this voyage. Look at these amazing creatures," he said, filling the center screen with a film of the six crab biots moving slowly across a bland region in the Southern Hemicylinder. "We may never have another opportunity to capture one. The drones have almost finished reconnoitering the entire interior and no other biots have been spotted."
The rest of the crew members, including Takagishi, looked at the monitor with rapt attention. The bizarre assemblage of aliens, arranged in a triangular formation with a slightly larger specimen in the lead, approached a jumbled mound of loose metal. The lead crab moved directly into the obstacle, paused a few seconds, and then used its claws to chop the elements of the mound into still smaller pieces. The two crabs in the second row transferred the metal fragments onto the backs of the remaining three members of the troop. This new material increased the size of the small piles already on the tops of the shells of the three crab biots in the back row.
"They must be the Raman garbage crew," Francesca said. Everyone laughed.
"But you can see why I want to move quickly," David Brown continued. "Right now the short film we just saw is on its way to all the television networks on Earth. Over a billion of our fellow men and women will watch it today with the same mixture of fear and fascination that all of you just felt. Imagine what kind of laboratories we will be able to build to study such a creature. Imagine what we will learn—"
"What makes you think you can capture one?" General O'Toole asked. "They look as if they could be quite formidable."
"We are certain that these creatures, although they appear to be biological, are actually robots. Hence the name 'biots,' which became popular during and after the first Rama expedition. Based on all the reports from Norton and the other Rama I cosmonauts, each of these biots is designed to perform a singular function. They have no intelligence as we know it. We should be able to outsmart them … and capture them."
A camera close-up of the scissorlike claws appeared on the giant screen. They were obviously very sharp. "I don't know," said General O'Toole. "I'd be inclined to follow Dr. Takagishi's suggestion and observe them for quite a while before trying to catch one."
"I disagree," said Francesca. "Speaking as a journalist, no story could be bigger than the attempted capture of one of those things. Everyone on Earth will watch. We may never have another chance like this." She paused for a moment. "The ISA has been pushing us for some upbeat news. The Borzov incident didn't exactly convince the taxpayers of the world that their space money is being wisely spent."
"Why can't we do both tasks on the same sortie?" General O'Toole asked. "One subteam could explore New York and the other would go after a crab."
"No way," replied Nicole. "If the goal of this sortie is to seize a biot, then all of our resources should be applied in that direction. Remember, we are limited in both manpower and time."
"Unfortunately," David Brown now said with a wan smile, "we can't make this decision by committee. Since we don't have complete agreement, I must make the choice … Therefore, the purpose of the next sortie will be to capture a crab biot. I presume that Admiral Heilmann will agree with me. If he doesn't, we will submit the issue to a vote of the crew."
The meeting broke up slowly. Dr. Takagishi wanted to offer one more argument, to point out that the majority of the biot species seen by the first Rama explorers did not materialize until after the thawing of the Cylindrical Sea. But nobody wanted to listen anymore. Everyone was tired.
Nicole approached Takagishi and clandestinely activated her biometry scanner. The warning file was empty. "Clean as a whistle," she said with a smile.
Takagishi looked at her very seriously. "Our decision is a mistake," he said somberly. "We should be going into New York."
27
TO CATCH A BIOT
Be very careful," Admiral Heilmann said to Francesca. "It makes me nervous to see you leaning out like that."
Signora Sabatini had hooked her ankles underneath the seats of the helicopter and was now stretching out beyond the plane of the door. She was holding a small video camera in her right hand. Three or four meters below her, apparently oblivious to the whirring machine overhead, the six crab biots plodded methodically along. They were still in their phalanx formation, arranged like the first three rows of a set of bowling pins.
"Move out over the sea," Francesca shouted to Hiro Yamanaka. "They're coming to the edge and will be turning again."
The helicopter veered sharply to the left and flew over the side of the five-hundred-meter cliff that separated the southern half of Rama from the Cylindrical Sea. The bank here was ten times higher above the water than its northern counterpart. David Brown gasped as he looked down at the frozen sea half a kilometer below him,
"This is ridiculous, Francesca," he said. "What do you hope to accomplish? The automatic camera in the nose of the copter will take ad
equate pictures,"
"This camera was specifically designed for zoom action," she said. "Besides, a little jitter gives the images more verisimilitude." Yamanaka steered back toward the bank. The biots were now about thirty meters directly ahead. The lead biot came up to within half a body length of the edge, paused for a fraction of a second, and then turned abruptly to its right. Another quick ninety-degree right turn completed the maneuver and left the biot heading in the exact opposite direction. The other five crabs followed their leader, executing their turns row by row with military precision.
"I got it that time," Francesca said happily, pulling herself back into the helicopter. "Head on and full frame. And I think I caught a glimmer of movement in the leader's blue eye just before it turned."
The biots were now ambling away from the cliff at their normal speed of ten kilometers per hour. Their movement caused a slight indentation in the loamy soil. Their heading was along a path parallel to their last previous sweep toward the sea. From above, the whole region looked like a suburban yard in which part of the grass had been mowed—on one side the ground was neat and packed, while in the territory not yet covered by the biots there was no orderly pattern in the soil markings.
"This could get boring," Francesca said, playfully reaching up and putting her arms around David Brown's neck. "We may have to amuse ourselves with something else."
"We'll only watch them one more strip. Their pattern is fairly simple." He ignored Francesca's light tickling on his neck. It seemed as if he were going through some kind of checklist in his mind. At length Brown spoke into the communicator. "What do you think, Dr. Takagishi? Is there anything else we should do at this time?"
Back in the scientific control center on the Newton, Dr. Takagishi was following the progression of the biots on the monitor. "It would be extremely valuable," he said, "if we could find out more about their sensory capabilities before we try to capture one of them. So far they have not responded to noises or to distant visual stimuli. In fact, they have apparently not even noticed our presence. As I'm sure you would agree, we don't have enough data yet to come to any definitive conclusions. If we could expose them to an entire range of electromagnetic frequencies and calibrate their responses, then we might have a better idea—"
"But that would take days," Dr. Brown interrupted. "And in the final analysis we would still have to take our chances. I can't imagine what we might learn that would materially alter our plans."
"If we found out more about them first," Takagishi argued, "then we could design a better, safer capture procedure. It might even occur that we would learn something that would dissuade us altogether—"
"Unlikely," was David Brown's abrupt response. As far as he was concerned, this particular discussion was over. "Hey there, Tabori," he now shouted. "How are you guys coming with the huts?"
"We're almost finished," the Hungarian answered. "Another thirty minutes at the most. Then I'll be ready for a nap."
"Lunch comes first," Francesca interjected. "You can't go to sleep on an empty stomach."
"What are you cooking, beautiful?" Tabori bantered.
"Osso buco a la Rama."
"That's enough," Dr. Brown said. He paused for a couple of seconds. "O'Toole," he then continued, "can you handle the Newton all by yourself? At least for the next twelve hours?"
"Affirmative," was the response.
"Then send down the rest of the crew. By the time we all meet at the new campsite, it should be ready for occupancy. We'll have some lunch and a brief nap. Then we'll plan our biot hunt."
Below the helicopter the six crablike creatures continued their relentless march across the barren soil. The four human beings watched them encounter a distinct boundary, where the floor changed from dirt and small rocks into a fine wire mesh. As soon as they touched the narrow lane dividing the two sections, the biots executed a U-turn. They then headed back toward the sea along a parallel line adjacent to their last track. Yamanaka banked the helicopter, increased his altitude, and headed for the Beta campsite ten kilometers across the Cylindrical Sea,
They were all correct, Nicole was thinking. Seeing it on the monitor is nothing by comparison. She was descending on the chairlift into Rama. Now that she was beyond the halfway point, she had a breathtaking view in every direction. She remembered a similar feeling once, when she had been standing on the Tonto Plateau in the Grand Canyon National Park. But that was made by nature and took over a billion years, she said to herself. Rama was actually built by somebody. Or something.
The chair momentarily slowed. Shigeru Takagishi climbed off a kilometer below her. Nicole couldn't see him, but she could hear him talking to Richard Wakefield on the communicator. "Hurry up," she heard Reggie Wilson shout. "I don't like sitting here in the middle of nowhere." Nicole enjoyed being suspended on the chairlift. The amazing scene around her was temporarily almost static and she could study at her leisure any feature that was particularly interesting.
After one more stop for Wilson to disembark, Nicole was at last approaching the bottom of the Alpha chairlift herself. She watched, fascinated, as the resolution of her eyes improved quickly during the last three hundred meters of her descent. What had been a jumble of indistinct images resolved itself into a rover, three people, some equipment, and a small surrounding camp. After a few more seconds she could identify each of the three men. She had a quick flashback to another chairlift ride, this one in Switzerland some two months before. An image of King Henry flitted momentarily through her mind. It was replaced by the smiling face of Richard Wakefield just below her. He was giving her instructions on how best to ease herself out of the chair.
"It will never come to a complete stop," he was saying, "but it will slow down a lot. Unfasten your belt and then hit the ground walking, as if you were coming off a moving sidewalk."
He grabbed her by the waist and lifted her off the platform. Takagishi and Wilson were already in the backseat of the rover. "Welcome to Rama," Wakefield said.
"All right, Tabori," he then spoke into the communicator. "We're all here and ready to go. We're switching now to the listen-only mode for our drive."
"Hurry," Janos urged him. "We're having a hard time not eating your lunch… By the way, Richard, will you bring tool box C when you come? We've been talking about nets and cages and I may need a wider variety of gadgets."
"Roger," Wakefield replied. He jogged over to the campsite and entered the only large hut. He emerged with a long rectangular metal box that was obviously very heavy. "Shit, Tabori," he said into the radio, "what in the world is in here?"
They all heard a laugh. "Everything you could possibly need to catch a crab biot. And then some."
Wakefield switched off the transmitter and climbed in the rover. He started driving away from the stairway in the direction of the Cylindrical Sea. "This biot hunt is the stupidest goddamn idea I've ever heard," Reggie Wilson groused. "Somebody is going to get hurt."
There was quiet in the rover for almost a minute. To the right, at the limit of their vision, the cosmonauts could barely see the Raman city of London. "Well, how does it feel to be part of the second team?" Wilson said to nobody in particular.
After an awkward silence, Dr. Takagishi turned to address him. "Excuse me, Mr. Wilson," he said politely, "are you talking to me?"
"Sure I am," Wilson replied, nodding his head up and down. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that you were the number two scientist on this mission? I guess not," Wilson continued after a short pause. "But that's not surprising. Down on Earth I never knew that I was the number two journalist."
"Reggie, I don't think—" Nicole said before she was interrupted.
"As for you, Doctor"—Wilson leaned forward in the rover—"you may be the only member of the third team. I overheard our glorious leaders Heilmann and Brown talking about you. They'd like to leave you on the Newton permanently. But since we may need your skills—"
"That's enough," Richard Wakefield broke in. There was a threatening edge
in his voice. "You can stop being so unpleasant." Several tense seconds passed before Wakefield spoke again. "By the way, Wilson," he said in a friendlier tone, "if I remember correctly, you're a racing fanatic. Would you like to drive this buggy?"
It was the perfect suggestion. A few minutes later Reggie Wilson was in the driver's seat beside Wakefield, laughing wildly as he accelerated the rover around a tight circle. Cosmonauts des Jardins and Takagishi were bumping around in the backseat.
Nicole was observing Wilson very carefully. He's erratic again, she was thinking. That's at least three times in the last two days. Nicole tried to recall when she had last done a full scan on Wilson. Not since the day after Borzov died. I've checked the cadets twice in the interim… Dammit, she said to herself, I let my preoccupation with the Borzov incident make me careless. She made a mental note to scan everyone as soon as possible after she arrived at the Beta campsite.
"Say, my good professor," Richard Wakefield said once Wilson had finally straightened out and was heading for camp, "I have a question for you." He turned around and faced the Japanese scientist. "Have you figured out our strange sound from the other day? Or has Dr. Brown convinced you that it was just a figment of our collective imagination?"
Dr. Takagishi shook his head. "I told you at the time that it was a new noise." He stared off in the distance, across the unexplained mechanical fields of the Central Plain. "This is a different Rama. I know it. The checkerboard squares in the south are laid out in an entirely new pattern and no longer extend to the shore of the Cylindrical Sea. The lights now go on before the sea melts. And they go off abruptly, without dimming for several hours as the first Rama explorers reported, The crab biots now appear in herds instead of individually." He paused, still looking out across the fields. "Dr. Brown says that all these differences are trivial, but I think they mean something. It's just possible," Takagishi said softly, "that Dr. Brown is wrong."
