With trembling hands he lifted his binoculars to his eyes. In a few seconds O’Toole located the enlarged speck. He quickly changed the binocular resolution and the speck split into three parts, each a bird soaring in formation far off in the distance. O’Toole blinked but the image did not change. There were indeed three birds flying in the Raman sky!
Joy filled General O’Toole. He yelled with delight as he followed the birds with his binoculars until he could no longer see them. The remaining thirty minutes of the ride to the top of the Alpha stairway seemed like a lifetime.
The American officer immediately climbed into another chair and descended again into Rama. He wanted desperately to see those birds one more time. If I could somehow photograph them, he thought, planning to drive back to the Cylindrical Sea if necessary, then I could prove to everyone that there are also living creatures in this amazing world.
Starting two kilometers above the floor O’Toole searched in vain for the birds as he descended. Only slightly disheartened by his failure to find them, he was subsequently dumbfounded by what he saw when he dropped his binoculars from his eyes and prepared to disembark from the chair. Richard Wakefield and Nicole des Jardins were standing side by side at the bottom of the lift.
General O’Toole embraced them each with a vigorous hug and then, with tears of happiness running down his cheeks, he knelt on the soil of Rama. “Dear God,” he said as he offered his silent prayer of thanks. “Dear God,” he repeated.
57
THREE’S COMPANY
The three cosmonauts talked avidly for over an hour. There was so much to tell. When Nicole told of her fright upon encountering the dead Takagishi in the octospider lair, O’Toole was momentarily silent and then shook his head. “There are so many unanswered questions here!” he said, staring up at the high ceiling. “Are you really malevolent after all?” he asked rhetorically.
Richard and Nicole both praised the general’s courage in not entering his code to activate the weapons. They were also both horrified that the COG had ordered the destruction of Rama. “It is absolutely unforgivable for us to use nuclear weapons against this spaceship,” Nicole said. “I am convinced that it is not fundamentally hostile. And I believe that Rama maneuvered to intercept the Earth because it has a specific message for us.”
Richard lightly chided Nicole for developing her opinion more on the basis of emotions than facts. “Perhaps,” she rejoined, “but there is a serious logical flaw as well in this decision to destroy. We now have hard evidence that this vehicle communicated with its predecessor. There is good reason to suspect that a Rama III is out there somewhere, probably coming in this direction. If the Rama fleet is potentially hostile, there is no way the Earth will be able to escape. We may succeed in destroying this second craft — but in so doing we will almost certainly alert their next ship. Since their technology is so much more advanced than ours, we would have no possibility of surviving their concerted attack.”
General O’Toole looked at Nicole with admiration. “That’s an excellent point,” he said. “It’s a shame you weren’t available for the ISA discussions. We never considered—”
“Why don’t we postpone the rest of this conversation until we’re back on the Newton?” Richard said suddenly. “According to my watch, it will be dark again in another thirty minutes, before any of us have reached the top of the lift. I don’t want to ride in the dark any longer than is necessary.”
The three cosmonauts believed that they were leaving Rama for the last time. As the remaining minutes of light dwindled, each cosmonaut gazed intently at the magnificent alien landscape that stretched out into the distance. For Nicole, the dominant feeling was one of elation. Cautious by nature with her expectations, until this moment in the chairlift she had not allowed herself the intense pleasure of believing that she would ever again hold her beloved Genevieve in her arms. Her mind was now flooded by the bucolic beauty of Beauvois and she imagined in detail the joy of her reunion scene with her father and daughter. It could be as little as a week or ten days, Nicole said to herself expectantly. By the time she reached the top she was having difficulty containing her jubilation.
During his ride Michael O’Toole reviewed, one more time, his activation decision– When dark came to Rama, suddenly and at the predicted moment, he had finished developing his plan for communicating his decision to the Earth. They would phone ISA management immediately. Nicole and Richard would summarize their stories and Nicole would present her reasons for thinking that the destruction of Rama would be “unforgivable.” O’Toole was convinced that his order to activate the weapons would then be rescinded.
The general switched on his flashlight just before his chair reached the top of the stairway. He stepped off in the weightless environment and stood beside Nicole. They waited for Richard Wakefield before proceeding together around the ramp to the ferry passageway, only a hundred meters away. After the trio had boarded the ferry and were ready to move through the Rama shell toward the Newton, Richard’s flashlight beam fell on a large metal object on the side of the passage. “Is that one of the bombs?” he asked.
The nuclear weapon system did indeed resemble an oversized bullet. How curious, Nicole thought, recoiling as an instant shudder ran through her system. It could be any shape, of course. I wonder what subconscious aberration made the designers choose that particular form…
“But what’s that weird contraption at the top?” Richard was asking O’Toole.
The general’s brow furrowed as he stared at a bizarre object illuminated by the center of the beam of light. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “I’ve never seen it before.” He disembarked from the ferry. Richard and Nicole followed him.
General O’Toole shuffled over to the weapon and studied the strange attachment fixed above the numerical keyboard. It was a fiat plate, slightly larger than the keyboard itself, that was anchored by angular joints to the sides of the weapon. On the underside of the plate, momentarily retracted, were ten tiny punches — at least that’s what they looked like to O’Toole. His observation was confirmed seconds later when one of the punches extended and hit the number “5” on the keyboard several centimeters below. The “5” was followed in rapid succession by a “7,” and then by eight more numbers before a green light flashed the successful completion of the first decade.
Within seconds the apparatus entered ten more digits and another green light flashed. O’Toole froze in terror. My God, he thought, that’s my code! Somehow they’ve broken — His panic subsided an instant later when, after the third decade of digits, the red light announced that an error had been made.
“Apparently,” General O’Toole said a short time later in response to an inquiry from Richard, “they have jerryrigged this scheme to try to enter the code in my absence, They only have the first two decades correct. For a moment I was afraid…” O’Toole paused, aware of strong emotions stirring within him.
“They must have assumed you weren’t coming back,” Nicole said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“If Heilmann and Yamanaka did it,” O’Toole replied. “Of course we can’t rule out completely the possibility that the contraption might have been placed there by the aliens… or even the biots.”