Again Rama was instantaneously flooded with light. As always, it was a feast for the eyes. Janos turned around slowly, looking in all directions and studying both bowls of the immense structure. With the light now brightly shining, he resolved to talk to Franceses at the first opportunity.
It was Irina Turgenyev, strangely enough, who asked the question. The cosmonauts were almost finished with their breakfast. Dr. Brown and Admiral Heilmann, in fact, had already left the table to conduct another of their interminable conference calls with ISA management. “Where’s Dr. Takagi-shi?” she said innocently. “He’s the last member of the crew that I would expect to be late for anything.”
“He must have slept through his alarm,” Janos Tabori answered, pushing his folding chair away from the table. “Ill go check on him.”
When Janos returned a minute later he was perplexed. “He wasn’t there,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “I guess he went out for a walk.”
Nicole des Jardins had an immediate sinking feeling in her stomach. She rose abruptly without finishing her breakfast. “We should go look for him,” she said, her concern undisguised, “or he won’t be ready when we leave.”
The other cosmonauts all noticed Nicole’s agitation. “What’s going on here?” Richard Wakefield said good-naturedly. “One of our scientists takes a little morning walk on his own and the company doctor goes into panic?” He switched on his radio. “Hello, Dr. Takagishi, wherever you are. This is Wakefield. Will you please let us know that you’re all right so that we can finish our breakfast.”
There was a long silence. Every member of the crew knew that it was an absolutely mandatory requirement to carry a communicator at all times. You could choose to turn off the transmission capability, but you had to listen under any and all circumstances.
“Takagishi-san,” Nicole said next with an urgent edge in her voice. “Are you all right? Please respond.” During the extended silence, Nicole’s sinking feeling in her stomach turned into a large knot. Something terrible had happened to her friend.
“I’ve explained that to you twice, Dr. Maxwell,” David Brown said in exasperation. “It makes no sense to evacuate part of the crew. The most efficient way to search for Dr. Takagishi is to use the entire staff. Once we find him we will clear out of Rama with great haste. And to answer your last question, no, this is not a ploy on the part of the crew to avoid compliance with the evacuation order.”
He turned to Admiral Heilmann and handed him the microphone. “Dammit, Otto,” he muttered, “you talk to that bureaucratic nincompoop. He thinks he can command this mission better than we can, even though he’s a hundred million kilometers away.”
“Dr. Maxwell, this is Admiral Heilmann. I am in complete agreement with Dr. Brown. Anyway, we really can’t afford to argue with such long delay times. We are going to proceed with our plan. Cosmonaut Tabori will stay here with me at Beta and pack all the heavy equipment, including the biot. I will coordinate the search. Brown, Sabatini, and des Jardins will cross the ice to New York, the most likely destination if the professor went under his own power. Wakefield, Turgenyev, and Yamanaka will look for him in the helicopters.”
He paused for a moment. “There’s no need for you to respond to this transmission in a hurry. The search will already have begun before your next message will arrive.”
Back in her hut, Nicole very carefully packed her medical supplies. She criticized herself for not foreseeing that Takagishi might try one last time to visit New York. You made another mistake, Nicole said to herself. The least you can do is make certain you “re prepared when you find him.
She knew the personal packing procedure by heart. Nevertheless, she skimped on her own supplies of food and water to ensure that she had whatever an injured or sick Takagishi might need. Nicole had mixed emotions about her two companions on the quest to find the Japanese scientist, but it never occurred to her that the grouping might have been purposely planned. Everyone knew Takagishi’s fascination with New York. Given the circumstances, it was not surprising that Brown and Sabatini were accompanying her to the primary search area.
Just before Nicole left the hut, she saw Richard Wakefield at her door. “May I come in?” he asked.
“Certainly,” she replied.
He walked in with an uncharacteristic uncertainty, as if he were confused or embarrassed. “What is it?” Nicole asked after an awkward silence.
He smiled. “Well,” he said sheepishly, “it seemed like a good idea a few minutes ago. Now it strikes me as a little stupid — maybe even childish.” Nicole noticed he was holding something in his right hand. “I brought you something,” he continued. “A good luck charm, I guess. I thought you might take it with you to New York.”
Cosmonaut Wakefield opened his hand. Nicole recognized the figurine of Prince Hal. “You can say what you will about valor and discretion and all that, but sometimes a little luck is more important.”
Nicole was surprisingly touched. She took the little figurine from Wake-field and studied its intricate detail with admiration. “Does the prince have any special qualities I need to know about?” she asked with a smile.
“Oh yes.” Richard brightened. “He loves to spend witty evenings in pubs with fat knights and other unsavory characters. Or battle renegade dukes and earls. Or court beautiful French princesses.”
Nicole blushed slightly. “If I’m lonely and want the prince to amuse me, what do I do?” she asked.
Richard came over beside Nicole and showed her a tiny keyboard just above Prince Hal’s buttocks. “He’ll respond to many commands!” Richard said, handing her a very small baton the size of a pin. “This will fit perfectly into any of the key slots. Try t for talk or a for action if you want him to show you his stuff.”
Nicole put the little prince and the baton in the pocket of her flight suit. “Thank you, Richard,” she said. “This is very sweet.”
Wakefield was flustered. “Well, you know, it’s no big deal. It’s just that we’ve had a spate of bad luck and I thought, I mean, maybe—”
“Thanks again, Richard,” Nicole interrupted, “I appreciate your concern.” They walked out of her hut together.
34
STRANGE COMPANIONS
Dr. David Brown was the kind of abstract scientist who neither liked nor trusted machines. Most of his published papers were written about theoretical subjects because he abhorred the formality and detail of empirical science. Empiricists had to contend with instrumentation and, even worse, engineers. Dr. Brown considered all engineers to be nothing more than glorified carpenters and plumbers. He tolerated their existence only because some of them were necessary if his theories were ever to be proved by actual data.
When Nicole innocently asked Dr. Brown some simple questions about the workings of the icemobile, Francesca could not restrain a cackle. “He has absolutely no idea,” the Italian journalist responded, “and he couldn’t care less. Would you believe that the man doesn’t even know how to drive an electric cart? I’ve seen him stare at a simple food processing robot for over thirty minutes, trying without success to figure out how to use it. He would starve to death if nobody helped him.”
“Come on, Francesca,” Nicole replied as the two women climbed into the front seat of the icemobile, “he can’t be that bad. After ail, he has to use all the crew computers and communication devices, as well as the image processing system onboard the Newton. So you must be exaggerating.”
The tenor of the conversation was light and harmless. Dr. David Brown slumped in the backseat and heaved a sigh. “Surely you two exceptional women have something more important to discuss. If not, perhaps you could explain to me why a lunatic Japanese scientist takes off from our camp in the middle of the night.”