For a fleeting moment Eponine was speechless. And embarrassed. Here her friend was dying or dead and all she could think about was Dr. Turner’s practically perfect blue eyes. “No,” she said at length, definitely flustered.
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“I’m the girlfriend. . . . Nurse Henderson is my roommate. . . . She should be here any minute.”
Kimberly and two ISA guard escorts arrived at that moment. “His heart stopped completely forty-five seconds ago,” Dr. Turner said to Kimberly. “It’s too late to move him to the infirmary. I’m going to open him up and try to use the Komori stimulator. Did you bring your gloves?”
While Kimberly pulled on her gloves, Dr. Turner ordered the crowd away from his patient. Eponine didn’t move. When the guards grabbed her by the arms, the doctor mumbled something and the guards released her.
Dr. Turner handed Kimberly his set of surgical tools and then, working with both incredible speed and skill, cut a deep incision into Walter’s chest. He laid back the folds of the skin, exposing the heart and rib cage. “Have you been through this procedure before, Nurse Henderson?” he asked.
“No,” Kimberly replied.
“The Komori stimulator is an electrochemical device that attaches to the heart, forcing it to beat and continue to pump blood. If the pathology is temporary, like a blood clot or a spastic valve, then sometimes the problem can be fixed and the patient’s heart will start functioning again.”
Dr. Turner inserted the stamp-sized Komori stimulator behind the left ventricle of the heart and applied the power from the portable control system on the floor beside him. Walter’s heart began to beat slowly three or four seconds later. “We have about eight minutes now to find the problem,” the doctor said to himself.
He finished his analysis of the organ’s primary subsystems in less than a minute. “No clots,” he mumbled, “and no bad vessels or valves. … So why did it stop beating?”
Dr. Turner gingerly lifted up the throbbing heart and inspected the muscles underneath. The muscular tissue around the right auricle was discolored and soft. He touched it very lightly with the end of one of his pointed instruments and portions of the tissue flaked off.
“My God,” the doctor said, “what in the world is this?” While Dr. Turner was holding the heart up, Walter
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Brackeen’s heart contracted again and one of the long fiber structures in the middle of die discolored muscular tissue started to unravel. “What the—” Turner blinked twice and put his right hand on his cheek.
“Look at this, Nurse Henderson,” he said quietly. “It’s absolutely amazing. The muscles here have atrophied completely. I’ve never seen anything like it. We cannot help this man.”
Eponine’s eyes filled with tears as Dr. Turner withdrew the Komori stimulator and Walter’s heart stopped beating again. Kimberly started to remove the clamps holding back me skin and tissue around the heart, but the doctor stopped her. “Not yet,” he said. “Let’s take him over to the infirmary so I can perform a full autopsy. I want to learn whatever I can.”
The guards and two of Walter’s roommates eased the large man onto a gurney and the body was removed from the living quarters. Malcolm Peabody sobbed quietly on Walter’s bunk. Eponine walked over to him. They shared a silent hug and then sat together, holding hands, for most of the rest of the night.
9
Y:
fou’ll be in charge here while I’m inside,” Commander Macmillan said to his deputy, a handsome young Russian engineer named Dmitri Ulanov. “Under all circumstances, your primary responsibility is the safety of the passengers and crew. If you hear or see anything threatening or even suspicious, blow the pyros and move the Pinta away from Rama.”
It was the morning of the first reconnaissance mission from the Pinta into the interior of Rama. The spacecraft from Earth had docked the previous day on one of the circular ends of the huge cylindrical spacecraft. The Pinta had been parked right beside the external seal, in the same general location as the earlier Raman expeditions in 2130 and 2200.
As part of the preparations for the initial sortie, Kenji Watanabe had briefed the scouting party the night before on the geography of the first two Ramas. When he had finished with his comments, he had been approached by his friend Max Puckett.
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“Do you think our Rama will look like all those pictures you showed us?” Max had asked.
“Not exactly,” Kenji had replied. “I expect some changes. Remember that the video said that an Earth habitat had been constructed somewhere inside Rama. Nevertheless, since the exterior of this spacecraft is identical to the other two, I don’t think everything inside will be changed.”
Max had looked perplexed. “This is all way beyond me,” he had said, shaking his head. “By the way,” he had added a few seconds later, “you’re sure you’re not responsible for me being in the scouting party?”
“As I told you this afternoon,” Kenji replied, “none of us onboard the Pinta had anything to do with the scouting selections. All sixteen members were chosen by the ISA and HA back on Earth.”
“But why have I been equipped with this goddamn arsenal? I have a state-of-the-art laser machine gun, self-guiding grenades, even a set of mass-sensitive mines. I have more firepower now than I had during the peacekeeping invasion of Belize.”
Kenji had smiled. “Commander Macmillan, as well as many members of the military staff at COG Headquarters, still believes this whole affair is a trap of some kind. Your designator in this scouting operation is ‘soldier.’ My personal belief is that none of your weapons will be necessary.”
Max was still grumbling the next morning when Macmillan left Dmitri Ulanov in charge of the Pinta and personally led the scouting party into Rama. Although he was weightless, the military equipment that Max was carrying on the outside of his space suit was unwieldy and severely restricted his freedom of movement. “This is ridiculous,” he mumbled to himself. “I’m a farmer, not a goddamn commando.”
The initial surprise came only minutes after the scouts from the Pinta had moved inside the external seal. Following a short walk down a broad corridor, the group came to a circular room from which three tunnels led deeper into the interior of the alien spaceship, Two of the tunnels
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were blocked with multiple metal gates. Commander Macmillan called Kenji in for consultation.
“This is a completely different design,” Kenji said in response to the commander’s questions. “We may as well throw out our maps.”
“Then I presume we should proceed down the unblocked tunnel?” Macmillan asked.
“That’s your call,” Kenji replied, “but I don’t see any other option, except to return to the Pinta.”
The sixteen men trudged slowly down the open tunnel in their space suits. Every few minutes they would launch flares into the darkness ahead of them so that they could see where they were going. When they were about five hundred meters into Rama, two small figures suddenly appeared at the other end of the tunnel. Each of the four soldiers plus Commander Macmillan quickly pulled out his binoculars.
“They’re coming toward us,” said one of the soldier scouts excitedly.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Max Puckett, a shiver going down his spine, “it’s Abraham Lincoln!”
“And a woman,” said another, “in some kind of uniform.”
“Prepare to fire,” ordered lan Macmillan.
The four soldier scouts scurried to the head of the party and knelt down, their guns pointed down the runnel. “Halt,” shouted Macmillan as the two strange figures drew within two hundred meters of the scouting party.
Abraham Lincoln and Benita Garcia stopped. “State your purpose,” they heard the commander shout.
“We are here to welcome you,” Abraham Lincoln said in a loud, deep voice.
“And to take you to New Eden,” Benita Garcia added.
Commander Macmillan was thoroughly confused. He did not know what to do next. While he hesitated, the others in the scouting party talked among themselves.
“It’s Abraham Lincoln, come back as a ghost,” the American Terry Snyder said.
“The other one is Benita Garcia—I saw her statue in Mexico City once.”
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“Let’s get the hell out of here. This place gives me the creeps,” another scout said.
“What would ghosts be doing in orbit around Mars?”
“Excuse me, Commander,” ‘Kenji said at length to the befuddled Macmillan. “What do you intend to do now?”
The Scotsman turned to face his Japanese Rama expert. “It’s difficult to decide on exactly the proper action pattern, of course,” he said. “I mean, those two certainly look harmless enough, but remember the Trojan horse. Hah! Well, Watanabe, what do you suggest?”
“Why don’t I go forward, perhaps alone, or maybe even with one of the soldiers, to talk to them? Then we’ll know—”
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