Rama 2 by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee

He bent down on his knees and examined the electronics. There was no damage that was obvious. He had just pulled out his transceiver to begin a methodical check of all the science instruments when he noticed a ropelike object about fifteen centimeters in diameter at the edge of the flashlight beam illuminating the science package. Dr. Takagishi picked up his light and walked over to the object. It was striped, black and gold, and stretched off into the distance for twelve meters or so, disappearing behind an odd metal shed about three meters tall. He felt the thick rope. It was soft and fuzzy on the top. When he tried to turn it over to feel the bottom, the object began to move. Takagishi dropped it immediately and watched it slither slowly away from him toward the shed. The motion was accompanied by the sound of brushes dragging against metal.

Dr. Takagishi could hear the sound of his own heartbeat. Again he fought the urge to run away. He remembered his dawn meditations as a college student in the garden of his Zen master. He would not be afraid. He ordered his feet to march in the direction of the shed.

The black and gold rope disappeared. There was silence in the plaza. Takagishi approached the shed with his light beam on the ground at the spot where the thick rope had last been visible. He came around the corner and thrust the beam into the shed. He could not believe what he saw. A mass of black and gold tentacles writhed underneath the light.

A high-frequency whine suddenly exploded in his ears. Dr. Takagishi looked over his left shoulder and was thunderstruck. His eyes bugged out of his head. His scream was lost as the noise intensified and three of the tenta­cles reached out to touch him. The walls of his heart gave way and he slumped, already dead, into the grasp of the amazing creature.

33 MISSING PERSON

“Admiral Heilmann.”

“Yes, General O’Toole.”

“Are you by yourself?”

“Certainly. I just woke up a few minutes ago. My meeting with Dr. Brown is not for another hour. Why are you calling so early?”

“While you were sleeping I received a coded top secret message from COG military headquarters. It’s about Trinity. They wanted to know the status.”

“What do you mean, General?”

“Is this line secure, Admiral? Have you turned off the automatic re­corder?”

“Now I have.”

“They asked two questions. Did Borzov die without telling anyone his RQ? Does anyone else on the crew know about Trinity?” “You know the answers to both questions.”

“I wanted to be certain that you hadn’t talked to Dr. Brown. They in­sisted that I check with you before encoding my answer. What do you think this is all about?”

“I don’t know, Michael. Maybe somebody down on Earth is getting ner­vous. Wilson’s death probably scared them.”

“It certainly scared me. But not to the point that I would think about Trinity. I wonder if they know something that we don’t.”

“Well, I guess we’ll find out soon enough. All the ISA officials have been insisting that we should evacuate Rama at the first available opportunity. They didn’t even like our decision to rest the crew for several hours first. This time I don’t think they will change their minds.”

“Admiral, do you remember that hypothetical discussion we had with General Borzov during the cruise, about the conditions under which we would activate Trinity?”

“Vaguely. Why?”

“Do you still disagree with his insistence that we must know why the Trinity contingency is being called for? You said at the time that if the Earth thought great danger was imminent, you didn’t personally need to under­stand the rationale.”

“I’m afraid I’m not following you, General. Why are you asking me these questions?”

“I would like your permission, Otto, when I encode the response to COG military headquarters, to find out why they are asking about the status of Trinity at this particular time. If we are in danger, we have a right to know.”

“You may request additional information, Michael, but I would bet that their inquiry is strictly routine.”

Janos Tabori awakened while it was still dark inside Rama. As he pulled on his flight suit, he made a mental list of the activities that would be required to transport the crab biot to the Newton. If the order to leave Rama was confirmed, they would be departing soon after dawn. Janos consulted the formal evacuation procedure stored on his pocket computer and updated it by adding the new tasks associated with the biot.

He checked his watch. Dawn was only fifteen minutes away, assuming of course that the Rama diurnal cycle was regular. Janos laughed to himself. Rama had produced so many surprises already that there was no certainty the lights would return on schedule. If they did, however, Janos wanted to watch the Raman “sunrise.” He could eat his breakfast after dawn.

A hundred meters from his hut the caged crab biot was immobile, as it had been since it was hoisted away from its companions the previous day. Janos shone his flashlight through the tough, transparent cage wall and checked to see if there were any signs that the biot might have moved during the night. Having established that the biot had not changed position, Janos walked away from the Beta campsite in the direction of the sea.

As he waited for the burst of light, he found himself thinking about the very end of his conversation with Nicole the night before. There was some­thing not quite right about her offhand revelation of the possible cause of General Borzov’s pain on the night he died. Janos remembered vividly the healthy appendix; there was no doubt that the primary diagnosis had been incorrect. But why had Nicole not talked to him about the backup drug diagnosis? Especially if she was conducting an investigation into the is­sue. . .

Janos reached the inescapable conclusion that Dr. des Jardins had either lost faith in his ability or somehow suspected that he might have himself administered the drugs to General Borzov without consulting her. Either way he should find out what she was thinking. A strange idea, born from his own feelings of guilt, next crossed his mind. Could it be, he mused, that Nicole somehow knows about the Schmidt and Hagenest project and suspects all four of us?

For the first time, Janos himself wondered if perhaps Valeriy Borzov’s pain had not been natural. He recalled the chaotic meeting the four of them had had two hours after David Brown had learned that he would be left onboard the Newton during the first sortie. “You must talk to him, Otto/’ a frus­trated Dr. Brown had said to Admiral Heilmann. “You must convince him to change his mind.”

Otto Heilmann had then admitted it was unlikely General Borzov would change the personnel assignments based on his request. “In that case/’ Dr. Brown had replied angrily, “we can say good-bye to all the incentive awards in our contract.”

Throughout the meeting Francesca Sabatini had remained quiet and seemingly unworried. As he was leaving, Janos had overheard Dr. Brown berating her. “And why are you so calm?” he had said. “You stand to lose as much as anyone else. Or do you have a plan I don’t know about?”

Janos had glimpsed Francesca’s smile for only a fraction of a second. But he had remarked to himself at the time that she had seemed oddly confident. Now, as Cosmonaut Tabori awaited dawn on Rama, that smile returned to haunt him. With Francesca’s knowledge of drugs it would have been well within her capability to give General Borzov something that would induce appendicitis symptoms. But would she have done something so … so blatantly dishonest, just to enhance the value of their postmission media proj­ect?

Again Rama was instantaneously flooded with light. As always, it was a feast for the eyes. Janos turned around slowly, looking in all directions and studying both bowls of the immense structure. With the light now brightly shining, he resolved to talk to Franceses at the first opportunity.

It was Irina Turgenyev, strangely enough, who asked the question. The cosmonauts were almost finished with their breakfast. Dr. Brown and Admi­ral Heilmann, in fact, had already left the table to conduct another of their interminable conference calls with ISA management. “Where’s Dr. Takagi-shi?” she said innocently. “He’s the last member of the crew that I would expect to be late for anything.”

“He must have slept through his alarm,” Janos Tabori answered, pushing his folding chair away from the table. “Ill go check on him.”

When Janos returned a minute later he was perplexed. “He wasn’t there,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “I guess he went out for a walk.”

Nicole des Jardins had an immediate sinking feeling in her stomach. She rose abruptly without finishing her breakfast. “We should go look for him,” she said, her concern undisguised, “or he won’t be ready when we leave.”