He stopped for a second as the green light flashed. In that instant an image flashed into his mind of one of the frescoes on the second floor of the shrine of St. Michael in Rome. A young man in a blue robe, his eyes uplifted to the heavens, was standing on the steps of the Victor Emmanuel Monument, preaching to an appreciative multitude. General O’Toole beard a voice, loudly and distinctly. The voice said “No.”
The general spun around quickly. “Did anybody say anything?” he said, staring at the other cosmonauts. They shook their heads. Befuddled, O’Toole turned back to the bomb. He tried to remember the second decade of digits. But it was no good. His heart was racing at breakneck speed. His mind kept saying, over and over again, What was that voice? His resolve to perform his duty had vanished.
Michael O’Toole took a deep breath, turned around again, and walked across the huge bay. When he passed his stunned colleagues he heard Admiral Heilmann yell, “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to my room!” O’Toole said without breaking stride.
“Aren’t you going to activate the bombs?” Dr. Brown said behind him.
“No,” replied General O’Toole. “At least not yet”
56
AN ANSWERED PRAYER
General O’Toole stayed in his room the rest of the day. Admiral Heilmann dropped by about an hour after O’Toole’s failure to enter his code. After some meaningless small talk (Heilmann was terrible at that sort of thing), the admiral asked the all-important question.
“Are you ready to proceed with the activation?”
O’Toole shook his head. “I thought I was this morning, Otto, but…” There was no need for him to say anything more.
Heilmann rose from his chair. “I’ve given orders for Yamanaka to take the first two bullets to the passageway inside Rama. They’ll be there by dinner if you change your mind. The other three will be left in the bay for the time being.” He stared at his colleague for several seconds. “I hope you come to your senses before too much longer, Michael. We’re already in deep trouble at headquarters.”
When Francesca came in with her camera two hours later, it was clear from her choice of words that the attitude toward the general, at least among the remaining cosmonauts, was that O’Toole was suffering from acute nervous tension. He wasn’t being defiant. He wasn’t making a statement. None of the rest of the crew could have tolerated those alternatives, because they would all look bad by association. No, it was obvious that there was something wrong with his nerves.
“I’ve told everyone not to bother you with calls,” Francesca said compassionately as she glanced around the room, her television mind already framing the images of the coming interview. “The phones have been ringing like crazy, especially since I sent down the tape from this morning.” She walked over to his desk, checking the objects on its top. “Is this Michael of Siena?” Francesca asked, picking up the small statue.
O’Toole managed a wan smile. “Yes,” he said. “And I think you know the man on the cross in the picture.”
“Very well,” Francesca replied. “Very well indeed… Look, Michael, you know what’s coming. I would like for this interview to paint you in the best possible light. Not that I’m going to treat you with kid gloves, you understand, but I want to make certain that those wolves down there hear your side of the story—”
“They’re already screaming for my hide?” O’Toole interrupted.
“Oh, yes,” she answered. “And it will get much worse. The longer you delay activating the bombs, the more wrath will be aimed at you.”
“But why?” O’Toole protested. “I haven’t committed a crime. I’ve simply delayed activating a weapon whose destructive power exceeds—”
“That’s irrelevant,” Francesca retorted, “In their eyes you haven’t done your job, namely to protect the people on the planet Earth. They’re frightened. They don’t understand all this extraterrestrial crap. They’ve been told that Rama will be destroyed and now you’ve refused to remove their nightmares.”
“Nightmares,” mumbled O’Toole, “that’s what Bothwell—”
“What about President Bothwell?” inquired Francesca.
“Oh, nothing,” he said. He looked away from her probing eyes. “What else?” O’Toole asked impatiently.
“As I was saying, I want you to look as good as possible. Comb your hair again and put on a fresh uniform, not a flight suit. I’ll daub a little makeup on your face so you don’t look washed out.” She returned to the desk. “We’ll place your family photos in full view next to Jesus and Michael. Think carefully about what you’re going to say. Of course I’ll ask why you failed to activate the weapons this morning.”
Francesca walked over and put her hand on O’Toole’s shoulder. “In my introduction I will have suggested that you’ve been under a strain. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but admitting a little weakness will probably play well. Particularly in your country.”
General O’Toole squirmed while Francesca finished the preparations for the interview. “Do I have to do this?” he asked, becoming more and more uncomfortable as the journalist essentially rearranged his room.
“Only if you want anybody to think you’re not Benedict Arnold,” was her curt reply.
Janos came in to visit just before dinner. “Your interview with Francesca was very good,” he lied. “At least you raised some moral issues that all of us should consider.”
“It was dumb of me to bring up all that philosophical crap,” O’Toole fretted. “I should have followed Francesca’s advice and blamed everything on my fatigue.”
“Well, Michael,” said Janos, “what’s done is done. I didn’t come in here to review the events of the day. I’m certain you’ve done that plenty of times already. I came in here to see if I could be any help.”
“I don’t think so, Janos,” he replied. “But I do appreciate the thought.”
There was a long hiatus in the conversation. At length Janos stood up and shuffled toward the door. “What do you do now?” he asked quietly.
“I wish I knew,” O’Toole answered. “I don’t seem to be able to come up with a plan.”
The combined Rama-Newton spacecraft continued to hurtle toward the Earth. With each passing day the Rama threat loomed greater, a huge cylinder moving at hyperbolic speed toward what would be a calamitous impact if no new midcourse corrections were made. The estimated crash point was in the state of Tamil Nadu, in south India, not far from the city of Madurai. Physicists were on the network news every night, explaining what could be expected. “Shock waves” and “ejecta” became terms bandied about at dinner parties.
Michael O’Toole was vilified by the global press. Francesca had been right. The American general became the focus of a world’s fury. There were even suggestions that he should be court-martialed and executed, onboard the Newton, for his failure to follow orders. A lifetime of important accomplishments and selfless contributions was forgotten. Kathleen O’Toole was forced to leave the family apartment in Boston and take refuge with a friend in Maine.
The general was tortured by his indecision. He knew that he was doing irreparable damage to his family and his career by his failure to activate the weapons. But each time he convinced himself he was ready to execute the order, that loud and resounding “No” echoed again in his ears.
O’Toole was only marginally coherent in his final interview with Francesca, the day before the scientific ship left to return to the Earth. She asked some very tough questions. When Francesca asked him why, if Rama were going to orbit the Earth, it had not yet made a deflection maneuver, the general perked up momentarily and reminded her that aerobraking — dissipating energy in the atmosphere as heat — was the most efficient method of achieving orbit around a planetary body with an atmosphere. But when she gave him a chance to amplify his statement, to discuss how Rama might reconfigure itself to have aerodynamic surfaces, O’Toole did not answer. He just stared at her distractedly.