Rama 2 by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee

Nicole was flabbergasted by the conversation that ensued between Fran­ceses Sabatini and David Brown. Neither one of them seemed to be even slightly concerned about the fate of Dr. Takagishi. Francesca insisted that she had to return to Beta immediately to cover all the breaking stories. Dr. Brown was anxious because he was away from the “primary” action of the expedition.

Each argued that his reasons for returning were more important. What if they both left New York? No, that would leave cosmonaut des Jardins alone. Maybe she should come with them and they could reinitiate the search for Takagishi when things calmed down in several hours, . . .

Nicole finally exploded. “Never,” she shouted suddenly at them, “never in my life have I seen such egotistical . . .” She could not think of a good noun. “One of our colleagues is missing and almost certainly needs our help. He may be injured or dying, yet all you two can do is argue about your own petty prerogatives. It’s really disgusting.”

She paused a second to catch her breath. “Let me tell you one thing,” Nicole continued, still fuming. “I am not going back to Beta right now. I don’t give a damn if you order me. I am staying here and finishing the search. At least I have my priorities straight. I know a man’s life is more important than image or status or even a stupid media project,”

David Brown blinked twice, as if he had been slapped in the face. Fran­cesca smiled. “Well, well,” she said, “so our reclusive life science officer knows more than we have given her credit for.” She looked over at David and then back at Nicole. “Will you excuse us for a moment, dear? We have a few matters to discuss in private.”

Francesca and Dr. Brown moved over beside the base of a skyscraper about twenty meters away and began an animated conversation. Nicole turned the other way. She was angry with herself for losing her temper. She was especially irritated that she had revealed her knowledge of their contract with Schmidt and Hagenest. They will assume Janos told me, she thought. After all, we have been close friends.

Francesca walked back to join Nicole while Dr. Brown radioed Admiral Heilmann. “David is calling for the helicopter to meet him next to the icemobile. He assures me that he can find his way out. I will stay here with you and search for Takagishi. At least that way I can photograph New York.”

There was no emotion in Francesca’s pronouncement. Nicole was unable to read her mood. “One other thing,” Francesca added. “I promised David we would conclude our search and be ready to return to camp in four hours or less.”

The two women hardly talked during the first hour of their search. Francesca was content to let Nicole choose the path. Every fifteen minutes they stopped to radio the Beta camp and obtain an updated fix on their position. “You’re now about two kilometers south and four kilometers east of the icemobile,” Richard Wakefield told them when they stopped for lunch. He had been delegated the job of keeping track of their progress. “You’re just east of the central plaza.”

They had gone to the central section first, for Nicole had thought that Takagishi would have headed there. They had found the open circular plaza with many low structures, but no sign of their colleague. Since then, Fran­cesca and Nicole had visited the two other plazas and carefully combed the length of two of the central pie portions. They had found nothing. Nicole admitted she was running out of ideas.

“This is quite an astonishing place/’ Francesca responded as she began to eat her lunch. They were sitting on a square metal box about a meter high. “My photographs can barely begin to capture it. Everything is so quiet, so tall, so . . alien.”

“Some of these buildings could not be described without your pictures. _ The polyhedrons, for example. There’s at least one in each slice, with the biggest one always right around the plaza. I wonder what they signify, if anything? And why are they located where they are?”

The emotional tension just below the surface in the two women remained suppressed. They chatted a little about what they had seen in their trek across New York. Francesca had been especially fascinated by a large trellis arrangement that they had found connecting two tall skyscrapers in the central unit. “What do you suppose that lattice or net thing was all about?” she asked idly. “It must have had twenty thousand loops and must have been fifty meters tall.”

“I guess it’s ridiculous for us to try to understand any of this,” Nicole said with a wave of her hand. She finished her lunch and glanced at her compan­ion. “Ready to continue?”

“Not quite,” Francesca said purposefully. She cleaned up the remains of her lunch and put them in the garbage pouch of her flight suit. “You and I still have some unfinished business.”

Nicole looked at her quizzically. “I think it’s time we took off the masks and raced each other honestly,” Francesca said in what was a deceptively friendly manner. “If you suspect that I gave Valeriy Borzov some medication on the day that he died, why don’t you ask me directly?”

Nicole stared at her adversary for several seconds. “Did you?” she asked at length.

“Do you think I did?” Franceses replied coyly. “And if so, why did 1 do it?”

“You’re just playing the same game at another level,” Nicole said after a pause. “You’re not willing to admit anything. You just want to find out how much I know. But I don’t need a confession from you. Science and technol­ogy are supporting me. Eventually the truth will be obvious.”

“I doubt it,” Francesca said casually. She jumped down from the box. “The truth always eludes those who search for it.” She smiled. “Now let’s go find the professor.”

On the western side of the central plaza the two women encountered another unique structure. From a distance it resembled a huge barn. The peak of its black roof was easily forty meters above the ground and it was more than a hundred meters long. There were two especially fascinating features about the bam. First, the two ends of the building were open. Second, although one could not see into it from the outside, all the walls and the roof were transparent from the inside. Francesca and Nicole took turns proving that it was not an optical illusion, Someone inside the barn could indeed see in all directions except down. In fact, the adjacent reflective skyscrapers had been precisely aligned so that all the nearby streets were visible from inside the barn.

“Fantastic,” said Francesca as she photographed Nicole standing on the other side of the wall.

“Dr. Takagishi told me,” Nicole said as she came around the comer, “that it was impossible to believe that New York was purposeless. The rest of Rama? Maybe. But nobody could have spent this much time and effort without some reason.”

“You almost sound religious,” Francesca said.

Nicole stared quietly at her Italian colleague. She’s needling me now, Nicole said to herself. She doesn’t really care what I think. Maybe what anybody thinks.

“Hey. Look at this,” Francesca said after a short silence. She had walked a short way into the interior of the bam and was pointing at the ground. Nicole came up beside her. In front of Francesca a narrow rectangular pit was cut in the floor. The pit was about five meters long, a meter and a half wide, and quite deep, maybe as much as eight meters. Most of the bottom was in shadow. The walls of the pit were straight up and down, without any sign of indentation.

“There’s another one over here. And another there. . . .” Altogether there were nine pits, each constructed in exactly the same manner, that were scattered over the south half of the bam. In the north half, nine small spheres rested on the surface in a carefully measured array. Nicole found herself wishing for a legend of some kind, an instructional guide that would explain the meaning or purpose of all these objects. She was starting to feel bewildered.

They had crossed almost the entire length of the barn when they heard a faint emergency signal on their communicators. “They must have found Dr. Takagishi,” Nicole said out loud as she rushed out one of the open ends of the bam. As soon as she was no longer underneath the roof, the volume of the emergency signal nearly shattered her eardrums. “Okay. Okay,” she radioed. “We can hear you. What’s up?”

“We’ve been trying to call you for over two minutes,”‘ she heard Richard Wakefield say. “Where in the hell have you been? I only used the emergency signal because of its higher gain.”