The island city in the middle of the Cylindrical Sea was Rama’s New York. To Richard its skyscrapers had not been too imposing in the views that had been offered by the light from the flares. But under the light of the Raman suns, it was clear that this city held center stage. The eyes were drawn to New York from any point inside Rama — the dense oval island of buildings was the only break in the orderly annulus that formed the Cylindrical Sea.
“Just look at New York!” Dr. Takagishi was gushing excitedly into his commpak. “There must be almost a thousand buildings over two hundred meters tall.” He paused only a second. “That’s where they live. I know it. New York must be our target.”
After the initial outbursts there was a protracted silence while each of the cosmonauts privately integrated the sunlit world of Rama into his own consciousness. Richard could now clearly see Francesca, four hundred meters above him, as his chair crossed the transition between the stairways and the ladders and closed in on the hub.
“Admiral Heilmann and I have just had a quick conversation,” David Brown said, breaking the silence, “with some advice from Dr. Takagishi. There seems to be no obvious reason to change our plans for this sortie, at least not the early part. Unless something else unexpected occurs, we will go forward with Wakefield’s suggestion. We will finish the two chairlifts, carry the rover down for assembly later this evening, and all sleep in the campsite at the foot of the stairway as planned.”
“Don’t forget me,” Janos hollered into his commpak. “I’m the only one who doesn’t have much of a view!”
Richard Wakefield unfastened his seat belt and stepped out onto the ledge. He looked down to where the stairway disappeared from view. “Roger, Cosmonaut Tabori. We have arrived back at Station Alpha. Whenever you give the signal, we will hoist you up to join us.”
23
NIGHTFALL
Considering the regular abuse that he received from his neurotic rather and the emotional scars that must remain from his youthful marriage to British actress Sarah Tydings, Cosmonaut Wakefield is remarkably well adjusted. He underwent two years of professional therapy after his celebrated divorce, concluding a year before he entered the Space Academy in 2192. His scholastic record at the academy is still unequaled to this day; his professors in electrical engineering and computer sciences all insist that by the time of his graduation, Wakefield knew more than any member of the faculty…
“…Except for a wariness where intimacy is concerned (particularly with women — he has apparently had no sustained emotional involvements since the breakup of his marriage), Wakefield exhibits none of the antisocial behavior usually found in abused children. Although his SC was low as a youth, he has grown less arrogant as he has matured and is now less likely to force his brilliance upon others. His honesty and character are unassailable. Knowledge, not power or money, seems to be his goal…”
Nicole finished reading the Psychological Assessment for Richard Wake-field and rubbed her eyes. It was very late. She had been studying the dossiers ever since the crew inside Rama had settled down to sleep. They would be awakening for their second day in that strange world in less than two hours. Her six-hour shift as communications officer would start in another thirty minutes. So out of this entire bunch, Nicole was thinking, there are only three that are beyond question. Those four with their illegal media contract have already compromised themselves. Yamanaka and Turgenyev are unknowns. Wilson is marginally stable and has his own agenda anyway. That leaves O’Toole, Takagishi, and Wakefield.
Nicole washed her face and hands and sat down again at the terminal. She exited from the Wakefield dossier and returned to the main menu of the data cube. She scanned the comparative statistics available and keyed a pair of displays to appear side by side on the screen. On the left-hand side was the ordered set of IE scores for each member of the crew; opposite, for comparison, Nicole had displayed the SC indices for the Newton dozen.
IE
SC
Wakefield
+ 5.58
O’Toole
86
Sabatini
+4.22
Borzov
84
Brown
+4.17
Takagishi
82
Takagishi
+4.02
Wilson
78
Tabori
+3.37
des Jardins
71
Borzov
+ 3.28
Heilmann
68
Des Jardins
+ 3.04
Tabori
64
O’Toole
+2.92
Yamanaka
62
Turgenyev
+ 2.87
Turgenyev
60
Yamanaka
+ 2.66
Wakefield
58
Wilson
+2.48
Sabatini
56
Heilmann
+2.24
Brown
49
Although Nicole had very quickly glanced through most of the information in the dossiers earlier, she had not read all the charts on all the crew members. Some of the indices she now saw for the first time. She was particularly surprised by the very high intelligence rating for Francesca Sabatini. What a waste, Nicole thought immediately. All that potential being used for such ordinary pursuits.
The overall intelligence level of the crew was quite impressive. Every cosmonaut was in the top one percent of the population. Nicole was “one in a thousand” and she was only in the middle of the dozen. Wakefield’s intelligence rating was truly exceptional and placed him in the supergenius category; Nicole had never before personally known someone with such high scores on the standardized tests.
Although her training in psychiatry had taught her to distrust attempts to quantify personality traits, Nicole was intrigued by the SC indices as well. She herself would have intuitively placed O’Toole, Borzov, and Takagishi at the top of the list. All three men seemed confident, balanced, and sensitive to others. But she was astonished by Wilson’s high socialization coefficient. He must have been an altogether different person before he became involved with Francesca. Nicole wondered for a brief moment why her own SC index was no higher than a seventy-one; then she remembered that as a young woman she had been more withdrawn and self-centered.
5o what about Wakefield? she asked herself, realizing that he was the only viable candidate to help her understand what had happened inside the RoSur software during Borzov’s operation. Could she trust him? And could she enlist Richard’s help without revealing some of her farfetched suspicions? Again the thought of abandoning her investigation altogether seemed very appealing. Nicole, she said to herself, if this conspiracy idea of yours turns out to be a waste of time…
But Nicole was convinced that there were enough unanswered questions to warrant continuing her investigation. She resolved to talk to Wakefield. After determining that she could add her own files to the king’s data cube, she created a new file, a nineteenth file, simply called nicole. She called in her word processing subroutine and wrote a brief memorandum:
3-3-00 — Have determined for certain that RoSur malfunction during Borzov procedure due to external manual command after initial load and verification. Enlisting Wakefield for support.
Nicole pulled a blank data cube from the supply drawer adjacent to her computer. She copied onto it both her memorandum and all the information stored on the cube that she had been given by King Henry. When she dressed for her work shift in her flight suit, she put the duplicate cube in her pocket.
General O’Toole was dozing in the CCC (Command and Control Complex) of the military spacecraft when Nicole arrived to give him a break. Although the visual displays in this smaller vehicle were not quite as breathtaking as those in the scientific ship, the layout of the military “C-Cubed” as a communications center was far superior, especially from a human engineering point of view. All the controls could easily be handled by a single cosmonaut.