In Nicole’s mind there was little or no probability that RoSur’s fault protection algorithms had a design flaw; they wouldn’t have passed all the rigorous prelaunch testing if they contained errors. So somewhere there must have been a human error, either negligence (had she and Janos, in their haste, forgotten to initialize some key fault protection parameter?) or an accident during those chaotic seconds following the unexpected torque. Her fruitless searching for an explanation and her almost total fatigue made her extremely depressed when she finally fell asleep. To her, one part of the equation was very clear. A man had died and she had been responsible.
18
POSTMORTEM
As expected, the day after General Borzov’s death was full of turmoil. The ISA investigation into the incident expanded and most of the cosmonauts were subjected to another long cross-examination. Nicole was interrogated about her sobriety at the time of the operation. Some of the questions were ugly and Nicole, who was trying to husband her energy for her own investigation of the events surrounding the tragedy, lost her patience twice with the interrogators.
“Look,” she exclaimed at one point, “I have now explained four times that I had two glasses of wine and one glass of vodka three hours before the operation. I have admitted that I would not have drunk any alcohol prior to surgery, !! I had known that I was going to operate. I have even acknowledged, in retrospect, that perhaps one of the two life science officers should have remained completely sober, But that’s all hindsight. I repeat what I said earlier. Neither my judgment nor my physical abilities was in any way impaired by alcohol at the time of the operation,”
Back in her room, Nicole focused her attention on the issue of why the robot surgeon proceeded with the operation when its own internal fault protection should have aborted all activities. Based on the RoSur User’s Guide, it was evident that at least two separate sensor systems should have sent error messages to the central processor in the robot surgeon. The acoel-erometer package should have informed the processor that tbe environmental conditions were outside acceptable limits because of the untoward lateral force. And the stereo cameras should have transmitted a message indicating that the observed images were at variance with the predicted images. But for some reason neither sensor set was successful in interrupting the ongoing operation. What had happened?
It took Nicole almost 6ve hours to rule out the possibility of a major error, either software or hardware, in the RoSur system itself. She verified that the loaded software and data base had been correct by doing a code comparison with tbe benchmark standard version of the software tested extensively during prelaunch. She also isolated the stereo imaging and accelerometer telemetry from tbe few seconds right after the spacecraft lurched. These data were properly transmitted to the central processor and should have resulted in an aborted sequence. But they didn’t. Why not? The only possible explanation was that the software had been changed by manual command between the time of loading and the performance of the appendectomy.
Nicole was now out of her league. Her software and system engineering knowledge had been stretched to the limit in satisfying herself that there had been no error in the loaded software. To determine whether and when commands might have changed the code or parameters after they were installed in RoSur required someone who could read machine language and carefully interrogate tbe billions of bits of data that had been stored during the entire procedure. Nicole’s investigation was stalled until she could find someone to help her. Maybe I should give this up? a voice inside her said. How could you, another voice replied, until you know for certain the cause of General Borzov’s death? At the root of Nicole’s desire to know the answer was a desperate yearning to prove for certain that his death had not been her fault.
She turned away from her terminal and collapsed on her bed. As she was lying there, she remembered her surprise during the thirty-second inspection period when Borzov’s appendix had been in plain view, He definitely wasn “t having an appendicitis, she thought. Without having any particular motive, Nicole returned to her terminal and accessed the second set of data that she had had evaluated by the electronic diagnostician, just prior to her decision to operate. She glanced only briefly at the 92% likely appendicitis on tbe first screen, moving instead to the backup diagnoses. This time drug reaction was listed as the second most likely cause, with a 4 percent probability. Nicole now called for the data to be displayed in another way. She asked a statistical routine to compute the likely cause of the symptoms, given the fact that it could not be an appendicitis.
The results flashed up on the monitor in seconds. Nicole was astonished. According to the data, if the biometry information input from Borzov’s probe set was analyzed under the assumption that the cause for the abnormalities could not be an appendicitis, then there was a 62 percent chance that it was due to a drug reaction. Before Nicole was able to complete any more analysis, there was a knock on her door.
“Come in,” she said, continuing to work at her terminal. Nicole turned and saw Irina Turgenyev standing in the doorway. The Soviet pilot said nothing for a moment.
“They asked me to come for you,” Irina said haltingly. She was very shy around everyone except her countrymen Tabori and Borzov. “We’re having a meeting of the crew down in the lobby.”
Nicole saved her temporary data files and joined Irina in the corridor. “What sort of meeting is it?” she asked.
“An organizational meeting,” Irina answered. She said nothing more.
There was a heated exchange in process between Reggie Wilson and David Brown when the two women reached the lobby. “Am I to understand, then,” Dr. Brown was saying sarcastically, “that you believe the Rama spacecraft purposely decided to maneuver at precisely that moment? Would you like to explain to all of us how this asteroid of dumb metal happened to know that General Borzov was having an appendectomy at that very minute? And while you’re at it, will you explain why this supposedly malevolent spaceship has allowed us to attach ourselves and has done nothing to dissuade us from continuing our mission?”
Reggie Wilson glanced around the room for support. “You’re logic-chopping again, Brown,” he said, his frustration obvious. “What you say always sounds logical on the surface. But I’m not the only member of this crew that found the coincidence unnerving. Look, here’s Irina Turgenyev. She’s the one who suggested the connection to me in the first place.”
Dr. Brown acknowledged the arrival of the two women. There was an authority in the way he was asking the questions that suggested he was in control of the gathering. “Is that right, Irina?” David Brown asked. “Do you feel, like Wilson, that Rama was trying to send us some specific message by performing its maneuver during the general’s operation?”
Irina and Hiro Yamanaka were the two cosmonauts who spoke the least during crew meetings. With all eyes turned toward her, Irina mumbled “No” very meekly.
“But when we were discussing it last night—” Wilson insisted to the Soviet pilot.
“That’s enough on that subject,” David Brown interrupted imperiously. “I think we have a consensus, shared by our mission control officers on Earth, that the Raman maneuver was coincidence and not conspiracy.” He looked at the fuming Reggie Wilson. “Now we have other more important issues to discuss. I would like to ask Admiral Heilmann to tell us what he has learned about the leadership problem.”