Time was running out and all three of them were becoming exhausted. In the final hours, General O’Toole succumbed to fatigue and, at Nicole’s insistence, took a substantial nap. His biometry output had indicated that his heart was in stress. Richard even slept for ninety minutes. But Nicole never allowed herself the luxury of rest. She was determined to figure out some way to depict in pictures the destructive power of the weapons.
When the men awakened, Nicole convinced them to append to the second segment an additional short section demonstrating what would happen to a city or forest on Earth if a one-megaton nuclear bomb exploded in the vicinity. For these pictures to make any sense, of course, Richard had to expand his earlier glossary, in which he had defined the chemical elements and their symbols with mathematical precision, to include some more measures of size. “If they understand this,” he grumbled as he laboriously included scale tick marks beside his line drawings of buildings and trees, “then they’re smarter than even I gave them credit for.”
Finally the message was completed and stored. They reviewed the entire warning one last time and made a few corrections. “Of the commands that I have never been able to understand!” Richard said, “there are five that I have reason to suspect may be links to a different level processor. Of course, I am only guessing, but I believe it’s an educated guess. I will transmit our message five times, using each of these particular commands a single time, and hope that our warning somehow reaches the central computer.”
While Richard entered all the proper commands into the keyboard, Nicole and General O’Toole went for a walk. They climbed up the stairway and wandered around the skyscrapers of New York. “You believe that we were meant to board Rama and find the White Room, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Nicole answered.
“But for what purpose?” asked the general. “If the Ramans just wanted to make contact with us, why did they go to such elaborate lengths? And why are they risking our misinterpretation of their intent?”
“I don’t know,” Nicole said. “Maybe they’re testing us in some way. To find out what we’re like.”
“Goodness,” O’Toole replied, “what a terrible thought. We may be catalogued as the creatures who launch nuclear attacks against visitors.”
“Exactly,” said Nicole.
Nicole showed O’Toole the bam with the pits, the lattice where she had rescued the avian, the stunning polyhedrons, and the entrances to the other two lairs. She was becoming very tired, but she knew that she would not sleep until everything was resolved.
“Should we head back?” O’Toole said after he and Nicole had walked down to the Cylindrical Sea and verified that the sailboat was still intact where they had left it.
“All right,” Nicole answered wearily. She checked her watch. It was exactly three hours and eighteen minutes until the first nuclear missile would arrive at Rama.
62
THE FINAL HOUR
Nobody had spoken for five minutes. Each of the three cosmonauts sat enmeshed in his own private world, aware that the first missile was now less than an hour away. Richard raced through all the sensor outputs hurriedly, searching vainly for any indication that Rama was taking some protective action. “Shit,” he muttered, looking again at the close-up radar picture that showed the lead missile drawing closer and closer.
Richard walked over to where Nicole was sitting in the corner. “We must have failed,” he said quietly. “Nothing has changed.”
Nicole rubbed her eyes. “I wish I weren’t so tired,” she said. “Then maybe we could do something interesting for our last fifty minutes.” She smiled grimly. “Now I know what it must be like to be on Death Row.”
General O’Toole approached from the other side of the room. He was holding two of the small black balls in his left hand. “You know,” be said, “often I have wondered what I would do if I ever had a specified, finite time before I died. Now here I am, and my mind keeps focusing on a single thing.”
“What’s that?” Nicole asked.
“Have either of you ever been baptized?” he replied tentatively.
“Whaaat?” exclaimed Richard with a laugh of surprise.
“I thought not,” said General O’Toole. “What about you, Nicole?”
“No, Michael,” she answered. “My father’s Catholicism was more tradition than ceremony.”
“Well,” persisted the general. “I’m offering to baptize you both.”
“Here? Now?” inquired the astounded Wakefield. “Are my ears deceiving me, Nikki, or did I just hear this gentleman suggest that we spend the last hour of our life being baptized?”
“It won’t take—” O’Toole started to say.
“Why not, Richard?” Nicole interrupted. She stood up with a bright smile on her face. “What else do we have to do? And it’s a hell of a lot better than morbidly sitting around here waiting for the great fireball.”
Richard almost cackled. “This is wonderful!” he exclaimed. “I, Richard Wakefield, lifelong atheist, am considering being baptized on an extraterrestrial spaceship as the final action of my life. I love it!”
“Remember what Pascal wrote,” Nicole teased.
“Ah, yes,” Richard replied. “A simple matrix from one of the world’s great thinkers. “There may or may not be a God; I may or may not believe in Him. The only way I can lose is if there is a God and I do not believe in Him. Therefore I shall believe in Him to minimize my downside risk.’” Richard chuckled. “But I did not agree to believe in God, only to being baptized.”
“So you’ll do it,” Nicole said.
“Why not?” he replied, parroting her earlier comment. “Maybe that way I don’t have to stay in Limbo with the virtuous pagans and unbaptized children.” He grinned at O’Toole. “All right, General, we’re all yours. Do your thing.”
“Now you listen closely to this, TB,” Richard said. “You’re probably the only robot ever to be in a human’s pocket during a baptism.”
Nicole nudged Richard in the ribs. The patient General O’Toole waited a few moments and then began the ceremony.
At Richard’s insistence, they had left the lair and walked out into the open plaza. Richard had wanted the sky of Rama overhead and neither of the other two had objected. Nicole had gone over to the Cylindrical Sea to fill the baptismal flask with water while General O’Toole completed his preparations. The American general was taking the baptism seriously but was apparently not offended by Richard’s lighthearted banter.
Nicole and Richard knelt down in front of O’Toole. He sprinkled water on Richard’s head. “Richard Colin Wakefield, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
When O’Toole had finished baptizing Nicole in the same simple way, Richard stood up and grinned. “I don’t feel any different,” he said. “I’m just like I was before — scared shitless about dying in the next thirty minutes,”
General O’Toole had not moved. “Richard,” he said softly, “could I ask you to kneel again? I would like to say a short prayer.”
“What’s this?” Richard asked. “First a baptism, now a prayer?” Nicole looked up at him. Her eyes asked him to accede. “All right,” he said, “I guess I might as well go all the way.”
“Almighty God, please hear our prayer,” the general said in a strong voice. He also was kneeling now. His eyes were closed and his hands were clasped in front of him. “We three have gathered here in what may be our final hour to pay homage to Thee. We beseech Thee to consider how we may serve Thee if we continue to live and, if it be Thy will, we ask Thee to spare us a painful and horrible death. If we are to die, we pray that we may be accepted into Thy heavenly kingdom. Amen.”
General O’Toole stopped for just a moment and then began to recite the Lord’s prayer. After he had said, “Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name—” the lights in the great spaceship were abruptly extinguished. Another Raman day was over. Richard and Nicole waited respectfully until their friend had finished the prayer before pulling out their flashlights.