... If our departure is delayed because of some crisis, we can always overwrite the detonation time by electronic command."

"That's rea.s.suring" Janos remarked.

"Any more questions?" Heilmann asked.

"Just one," Janos said. "As long as we're inside Rama putting these things in their proper locations, I a.s.sume that it's all right if we look around for our lost friends. In case they may be wandering-"

"The timeline is very tight, Cosmonaut Tabori," the admiral replied, "and the deployment itself, inside the structure, only takes a few hours. Unfortunately, due to our delays in starting the procedure, we will place the weapons in their designated positions during the time that Rama is dark." Great, O'Toole thought in his room, that's something else that can be blamed on me. All in all, though, he felt that Admiral Heilmann had handled the meeting very well, ft was nice of Otto not to say anything about the code, O'Toole told himself. He probably figures I'll come around. And he's probably right.

When O'Toole woke up from a short nap it was past lunchtime and he had a ravenous appet.i.te. There was n.o.body in the dining room except Francesca Sabatini; she was finishing her coffee and studying some kind of engineering data on a nearby computer monitor.

"Feeling better, Michael?" she said when she saw him. He nodded. "What are you reading?" O'Toole asked.

"I'm looking at the executive software manual," Francesca replied. "David is very concerned that without Wakefield we won't even know if the Newton software is working properly or not. I'm learning how to read the self-test diagnostic output."

"Whew," O'Toole whistled. "That's pretty heavy for a journalist."

"It's really not that complicated/' Francesca said with a laugh. "And it's extremely logical. Maybe in my next career I'll be an engineer."

O'Toole made himself a sandwich, picked up a package of milk, and joined Francesca at the table. She put a hand on his forearm. "Speaking of next careers, Michael, have you given any thought to yours?"

He looked at her quizzically, "What are you talking about?"

"I'm trapped in the usual professional dilemma, my dear friend. My duties as a journalist are in direct conflict with my feelings."

O'Toole stopped chewing. "Heilmann told you?" She nodded. "I'm not stupid, Michael. I would have found out sooner or later. And this is a big, big story. Maybe one of the biggest of the mission. Can't you see the trailer on the nightly news? 'American general refuses to follow order to destroy Rama. Tune in at five.'"

The general became defensive. "I haven't refused. The Trinity procedure does not call for me to input my code until after the weapons are out of the containers-"

"-and ready for placement in the pods," Francesca finished.

"Which is about eighteen hours from now. Tomorrow morning, as near as I can figure. ... I plan to be on hand to record the historic event." She rose from the table, "And Michael, in case you're wondering, I haven't mentioned your call to Norimoto in any of my reports. I may refer to your conversation with him in my memoirs, but I won't publish them for at least five years "

Francesca turned and looked directly in O'Toole's eyes.

"You're about to c.r.a.p in your mess kit, my friend. You will go from being an international hero to a b.u.m overnight. I hope you've considered your decision very very carefully." 55 THE VOICE OF MICHAEL General O'Toole spent the afternoon in his room, watching on the video monitor as Tabori and Yamanaka checked out the nuclear weapons. He was excused, on the basis of his presumed stomach upset, from his a.s.signed task of checking out the weapon subsystems. The procedure was surprisingly straightforward; no one would have suspected that the cosmonauts were initiating an activity designed to destroy the most impressive work of engineering ever seen by humans.

Before dinner O'Toole placed a call to his wife. The Newton was rapidly approaching the Earth now and the delay time between transmission and reception was under three minutes. Old-fashioned two-way conversations were even possible. His talk with Kathleen was cordial and mundane. General O'Toole thought briefly about sharing his moral dilemma with his wife, but he realized that the videophone was not secure and decided against it, They both expressed excitement about being reunited again in the very near future.

The general ate dinner with the crew. Janos was in one of his boisterous moods, entertaining the others with stories about his afternoon with "the bullets," as he insisted on calling the nuclear bombs. "At one point," Janos said to Francesca, who had been laughing nonstop since his narrative began, "we had all the bullets lightly anch.o.r.ed to the floor and lined up in a row, like dominoes. I scared the s.h.i.t out of Yamanaka. I pushed the front one over and they all fell, clang, bang, in every direction. Hiro was certain they were going to explode."

"Weren't you worried that you might injure some critical components?" David Brown asked.

"Nope," Janos replied. "The manuals that Otto gave me said that you couldn't hurt those things if you dropped them from the top of the Trump Tower. Besides," he added, "they aren't even armed yet. Right, Herr Admiral?"

Heilmann nodded and Janos launched into another story. General O'Toole drifted away, into his own mind, struggling impossibly with the relationship between those metal objects in the military ship and the mushroom-shaped cloud in the Pacific. . . .

Francesca interrupted his reverie. "You have an urgent call on your private line, Michael," she said. "President Bothwell will be on in five minutes."

The conversation at the table stopped. "Well," said Janos with a grin, "you must be some special person. It's not just everybody that receives a call from Slugger Bothwell." General O'Toole excused himself politely from the table and went to his room. He must know, he was thinking as he waited impatiently for the call to connect. But of course. He's the president of the United States.

O'Toole had always been a baseball fan and his favorite team, naturally enough, was the Boston Red Sox. Baseball had gone into receivership at the height of The Great Chaos, in 2141, but a new group of owners had put the leagues back in business four years later. When Michael was six, in 2148, his father had taken him to Fenway Dome to watch a game between the Red Sox and the Havana Hurricanes. It was the beginning of a lifelong love affair for O'Toole. Sherman Bothwell had been a left-handed, power-hitting first baseman for the Red Sox between 2172 and 2187. He had been immensely popular. A Missouri boy by birth, his genuine modesty and old-fashioned dedication to hard work were as exceptional as the 527 home runs he had hit during his sixteen years in the major leagues. During the last year of his baseball career, Bothwell's wife had died in a terrible boating accident. Sherman's uncomplaining courage in facing the responsibility of raising his children as a single parent was applauded in every American home.

Three years later, when he married Linda Black, the darling daughter of the governor of Texas, it was obvious to many people that old Sherman had a political career in mind. He advanced through the ranks with great speed. First lieutenant governor, then governor and presidential hopeful. He was elected to the White House by a landslide in 2196; it was antic.i.p.ated that he would soundly defeat the Christian Conservative candidate in the forthcoming general election of 2200.

"h.e.l.lo, General O'Toole," the man in the blue suit with the friendly smile said when the screen was no longer blank.

"This is Sherman Bothwell, your president." The president was using no notes. He was leaning forward in a simple chair, his elbows resting on his thighs and his hands folded in front of him. He was talking as if he were sitting beside General O'Toole in someone's cozy living room.

"I have been following your Newton mission with great interest-as has everybody in my family, including Linda and the four kids-ever since you launched. But I have been especially attentive these last several weeks, as the tragedies have rained down upon you and your courageous colleagues. My, my. Who would have ever thought that such a thing as that Rama ship could exist? It is truly staggering .

"Anyway, I understand from our COG representatives that the order has been given to destroy Rama. Now, I know that decisions like that are not made lightly, and that it places quite a large responsibility on folks like yourself. Nevertheless, I'm certain it's the right action.

"Yessirree, I know it's correct. Why, you know, my daughter Courtney-that's the eight-year-old-she wakes up with nightmares almost every night. We were watching when you all were trying to capture that biot, the one that looked like a crab, and my, it was positively awful. Now, Courtney knows-it's been all over the television-that Rama is heading directly for the Earth and she is really scared. Terrified. She thinks the whole country will be overrun by those crab things and that she and all her friends will be chopped up just like journalist Wilson.

"I'm telling you all this, General, because I know you're facing a big decision. And I've heard on the grapevine that you may be hesitant to destroy that humongous s.p.a.cecraft and all its wonders. But General, I've told Courtney about you. I've told her that you and your crew are going to blow Rama to smithereens long before it reaches the Earth, "That's why 1 called. To tell you that I'm counting on you. And so is Courtney."

General O'Toole had thought, before listening to the president, that he might take advantage of the call and lay his dilemma in front of the leader of the American people. He had imagined that he might even question Slugger Bothwell about the nature of a species that destroys to protect against an unlikely downside risk. But after the practically perfect short speech from the ex-6rst baseman, O'Toole had nothing to say. After all, how could he refuse to respond to such a plea? All the Courtney Bothwells on the entire planet were counting on him.

After sleeping for five hours O'Toole awakened at three o'clock. He was aware that the most important action of his life was facing him. It seemed to him that everything he had done-his career, his religious studies, even his family activities-had been preparing him for this moment. G.o.d had trusted him with a monumental decision. But what did G.o.d want him to do? His forehead broke out in a sweat as O'Toole knelt before the image of Jesus on the cross that was behind his desk.

Dear Lord, he said, clasping his hands earnestly, my hour approaches and I still do not see Thy will clearly. It would be so easy for me just to follow my orders and do what everyone wants. Is that Thy desire? How can I know for certain?

Michael O'Toole closed his eyes and prayed for guidance with a fervor surpa.s.sing any he had ever felt previously. As he prayed, he recalled another time, years before, when he had been a young pilot working as part of a temporary peacekeeping force in Guatemala. O'Toole and his men had awakened one morning to find their small air base in the jungle completely surrounded by the right-wing terrorists that were trying to bring the fledgling democratic government to its knees. The subversives wanted the planes. In exchange they would guarantee safe pa.s.sage to O'Toole and his men.

Major O'Toole had taken fifteen minutes to deliberate and pray before deciding to fight it out. In the ensuing battle the planes were destroyed and almost half his men were killed, but his symbolic stand against terrorism emboldened the young government and many others throughout Central America at a time when the poor countries were struggling desperately to overcome the ravages of two decades of depression. O'Toole had been awarded the Order of Merit, the highest COG military accolade, for his exploits in Guatemala.

Onboard the Newton years later, General O'Toole's decision process was much less straightforward. In Guatemala the young major had not had any questions about the morality of his actions His order to destroy Rama, however, was altogether different. In O'Toole's opinion, the alien ship had not taken any overtly bellicose actions. In addition, he knew that the order was based primarily on two factors: fear of what Rama might do and the uproar of xenophobic public opinion. Historically, both fear and public opinion were notoriously unconcerned about morality. If somehow he could learn what Rama's true purpose was, then he could . , .

Below the painting of Jesus on the desk in his room was a small statue of a young man with curly hair and wide eyes. This figure of St. Michael of Siena had accompanied O'Toole on every journey he had made since his marriage to Kathleen. Seeing the statue gave him an idea. General O'Toole reached into one of the desk drawers and pulled out an electronic template. He switched on the power, checked the template menu, and accessed a concordance indexing the sermons of St. Michael.

Under the word "Rama," the general found a host of different references in the concordance. The one that he was looking for was the only one marked in a bold font. That specific reference was the saint's famous "Rama sermon," delivered in camp to a group of five thousand of Michael's neophytes three weeks before the holocaust in Rome. O'Toole began to read.

"As the topic for my talk to you today, I am going to address an issue raised by Sister Judy in our council, namely what is the basis for my statement that the extraterrestrial s.p.a.cecraft called Rama might well have been the first announcement of the second coming of Christ. Understand that at this point I have had no clear revelation one way or the other; G.o.d has, however, suggested to me that the heralds of Christ's next coming will have to be extraordinary or the people on Earth will not notice. A simple angel or two blowing trumpets in the heavens won't suffice. The heralds must do things that are truly spectacular to engage attention, "There is a precedent, established in the old testament prophecies foretelling the coming of Jesus, of prophetic announcements originating in the heavens. Elijah's chariot was the Rama of its time. It was, technologically speaking, as much beyond the understanding of its observers as Rama is today. In that sense there is a certain conforming pattern, a symmetry that is not inconsistent with G.o.d's order.

"But what I think is most hopeful about the arrival of the first Rama s.p.a.cecraft eight years ago-and I say first because I am certain there will be others-is that it forces humanity to think of itself in an extraterrestrial perspective. Too often we limit our concept of G.o.d and, by implication, our own spirituality. We belong to the universe. We are its children. It's just pure chance that our atoms have risen to consciousness here on this particular planet.

"Rama forces us to think of ourselves, and G.o.d, as beings of the universe. It is a tribute to His intelligence that He has sent such a herald at this moment. For as I have told you many times, we are overdue for our final evolution, our recognition that the entire human race is but a single organism. The appearance of Rama is another signal that it is time for us to change our ways and begin that final evolution."

General O'Toole put down the template and rubbed his eyes. He had read the sermon before-right before his meeting with the pope in Rome, in fact -but somehow it had not seemed as significant then as it did now. So which are you, Rama? he thought. A threat to Courtney Bothwell or a herald of Christ's second coming?

During the hour before breakfast General O'Toole was still vacillating. He genuinely did not know what his decision would be. Weighing heavily upon him was the fact that he had been given an explicit order by his commanding officer. O'Toole was well aware that he had sworn, when he had received his commission, not only to follow orders, but also to protect the Courtney Bothwells of the planet. Did he have any evidence that this particular order was so immoral that he should abrogate his oath?

As long as he thought of Rama as only a machine, it was not too difficult for General O'Toole to countenance its destruction. His action would not, after all, kill any Ramans. But what was it that Wakefield had said? That the Raman s.p.a.ceship was probably more intelligent than any living creatures on Earth, including human beings? And shouldn't superior machine intelligence have a special place among G.o.d's creations, perhaps even above lower life forms?

Eventually General O'Toole succ.u.mbed to fatigue. He simply had no energy left to deal with the unending stream of questions without answers. He reluctantly decided to cease his internal debate and prepared to implement his orders. His first action was to rememorize his RQ code, the specific string of fifty integers between zero and nine that was known only by him and the processors inside the nuclear weapons. O'Toole had personally entered his code and checked that it had been properly stored in each of the weapons before the Newton mission had been launched from Earth. The string of digits was long to minimize the probability of its being duplicated by a repet.i.tive, electronic search routine. Each of the Newton military officers had been counseled to derive a sequence that met two criteria: The code should be almost impossible to forget and should not be something straightforward, like all the phone numbers in the family, that an outside party might figure out easily from the personnel files.

For sentimental reasons, O'Toole had wanted nine of the numbers in his code to be his birthdate, 3-29-42, and the birthdate of his wife, 2-7-46. He knew that any decryption specialist would immediately look for such obvious selections, so the general resolved to hide the birthdates in the fifty digits. But what about the other forty-one digits?

That particular number, forty-one, had intrigued O'Toole ever since a beer and pizza party during his soph.o.m.ore year at MIT. One of his a.s.sociates then, a brilliant young number theorist whose name he had long forgotten, had told O'Toole in the middle of a drunken discussion that forty-one was a "very special number, the initial integer in the longest continuous string of quadratic primes."

O'Toole never fully comprehended what exactly was meant by the expression "quadratic prime." However, he did understand, and was fascinated by, the fact that the string 41, 43,47, 53, 61, 71, 83,97, where each successive number was computed by increasing the difference from the previous number by two, resulted in exactly forty consecutive prime numbers. The sequence of primes ended only when the forty-first number in the string turned out to be a nonprime, namely 41 X 41 = 1681. This little known piece of information O'Toole had shared only one time in his life, with his wife Kathleen on her forty-first birthday, and he had received such a lackl.u.s.ter response that he had never told anybody about it again, But it was perfect for his secret code, particularly if he disguised it properly. To build his fifty-digit number, General O'Toole first constructed a sequence of forty-one digits, each coming from the sum of the first two digits in the corresponding term in the special quadratic prime sequence beginning with 41. Thus "5" was the initial digit, representing 41, followed by "7" for 43, "1" for 47 (4 + 7 = 11 and then truncate), "8" for 53, etc. O'Toole next scattered the numbers of the two birthdates using an inverse Fibonacci sequence (34, 21,13,8, 5, 3, 2,1,1) to define the locations of the nine new integers in the original forty-one-digit string.

It was not easy to commit the sequence to memory, but the general did not want to write it down and carry it with him to the activation process. If his code were written down, then anyone could use it, with or without his permission, and his option to change his mind again would be precluded. Once he had rememorized the sequence, O'Toole destroyed all his computations and went to the dining room to have breakfast with the rest of the cosmonauts.

"Here's a copy of my code for you, Franceses, and one for you, Irina, and the final one goes to Hiro Yamanaka. Sorry, Janos," Admiral Heilmann said with a big smile, "but I'm all out of bullets. Maybe General O'Toole will let you enter his code into one of the bombs."

"It's all right, Herr Admiral," Janos said wryly. "Some privileges in life I can do without."

Heilmann was making a big production out of activating the nuclear weapons, He had had his fifty-digit number printed out multiple times and had enjoyed explaining to the other cosmonauts how clever he had been in the conception of his code. Now, with uncharacteristic flair, he was allowing the rest of the crew to partic.i.p.ate in the process.

Franceses loved it. It was definitely good television. It occurred to O'Toole that Francesca had probably suggested such a staging to Heilmann, but the general didn't spend much time thinking about it. O'Toole was too busy being astonished by how calm he himself had become. After his long and agonizing soul-searching, he was apparently going to perform his duty without qualms.

Admiral Heilmann became confused during the entering of his code (he admitted that he was nervous) and temporarily lost track of where he was in his sequence. The system designers had foreseen this possibility and had installed two lights, one green and one red, right above the numerical keyboards on the side of the bomb. After every tenth digit one of the two lights would illuminate, indicating whether or not the previous decade of code was a successful match. The safety committee had expressed concern that this "extra" feature compromised the system (it would be easier to decrypt five ten-digit strings than one fifty-digit string), but repeated human engineering tests prior to launch had shown that the lights were necessary.

At the end of his second decade of digits, Heilmann was greeted by the flashing red light. 'I've done something wrong," he said, his embarra.s.sment obvious.

"Louder," shouted Francesca from where she was filming. She had neatly framed the ceremony so that both the weapons and the pods appeared in the picture.

"I've made a mistake," Admiral Heilmann proclaimed. "All this noise has distracted me. I must wait thirty seconds before I can start again."

After Heilmann had successfully completed his code, Dr. Brown entered the activation code on the second weapon. He seemed almost bored; certainly he didn't push the keyboard with anything approaching enthusiasm. Irina Turgenyev activated the third bomb. She made a short but pa.s.sionate comment underscoring her belief that the destruction of Rama was absolutely essential Neither Hiro Yamanaka nor Francesca said anything at all. Francesca, however, did impress the rest of the crew by doing her first thirty digits from memory. Considering that she had supposedly never seen Hermann's code until an hour earlier, and had not been alone for more than two minutes since then, her feat was quite remarkable. Next it was General O'Toole's turn. Smiling comfortably, he walked easily up to the first weapon. The other cosmonauts applauded, both showing their respect for the general and acknowledging his struggle. He asked everyone please to be quiet, explaining that he had committed his whole sequence to memory. Then O'Toole entered the first decade of digits. He stopped for a second as the green light flashed. In that instant an image flashed into his mind of one of the frescoes on the second floor of the shrine of St. Michael in Rome. A young man in a blue robe, his eyes uplifted to the heavens, was standing on the steps of the Victor Emmanuel Monument, preaching to an appreciative mult.i.tude. General O'Toole beard a voice, loudly and distinctly. The voice said "No."

The general spun around quickly. "Did anybody say anything?" he said, staring at the other cosmonauts. They shook their heads. Befuddled, O'Toole turned back to the bomb. He tried to remember the second decade of digits. But it was no good. His heart was racing at breakneck speed. His mind kept saying, over and over again, What was that voice? His resolve to perform his duty had vanished. Michael O'Toole took a deep breath, turned around again, and walked across the huge bay. When he pa.s.sed his stunned colleagues he heard Admiral Heilmann yell, "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to my room/' O'Toole said without breaking stride.

"Aren't you going to activate the bombs?" Dr. Brown said behind him.

"No," replied General O'Toole. "At least not yet" 56 AN ANSWERED PRAYER General O'Toole stayed in his room the rest of the day. Admiral Heilmann dropped by about an hour after O'Toole's failure to enter his code. After some meaningless small talk (Heilmann was terrible at that sort of thing), the admiral asked the all-important question.

"Are you ready to proceed with the activation?" O'Toole shook his head. "I thought I was this morning, Otto, but . . ." There was no need for him to say anything more. Heilmann rose from his chair. "I've given orders for Yamanaka to take the first two bullets to the pa.s.sageway inside Rama. They'll be there by dinner if you change your mind. The other three will be left in the bay for the time being." He stared at his colleague for several seconds. "1 hope you come to your senses before too much longer, Michael. We're already in deep trouble at headquarters." When Francesca came in with her camera two hours later, it was clear from her choice of words that the att.i.tude toward the general, at least among the remaining cosmonauts, was that O'Toole was suffering from acute nervous tension. He wasn't being defiant. He wasn't making a statement. None of the rest of the crew could have tolerated those alternatives, because they would all look bad by a.s.sociation. No, it was obvious that there was something wrong with his nerves.

"I've told everyone not to bother you with calls," Francesca said compa.s.sionately as she glanced around the room, her television mind already framing the images of the coming interview. "The phones have been ringing like crazy, especially since 1 sent down the tape from this morning." She walked over to his desk, checking the objects on its top.

"Is this Michael of Siena?" Francesca asked, picking up the small statue.

O'Toole managed a wan smile. "Yes," he said. "And I think you know the man on the cross in the picture."

"Very well," Francesca replied. "Very well indeed. . . . Look, Michael, you know what's coming. I would like for this interview to paint you in the best possible light. Not that I'm going to treat you with kid gloves, you understand, but I want to make certain that those wolves down there hear your side of the story-"

"They're already screaming for my hide?" O'Toole interrupted.

"Oh, yes," she answered. "And it will get much worse. The longer you delay activating the bombs, the more wrath will be aimed at you."

"But why?" O'Toole protested. "I haven't committed a crime. I've simply delayed activating a weapon whose destructive power exceeds-"

"That's irrelevant," Francesca retorted, "In their eyes you haven't done your job, namely to protect the people on the planet Earth. They're frightened. They don't understand all this extraterrestrial c.r.a.p. They've been told that Rama will be destroyed and now you've refused to remove their nightmares."

"Nightmares," mumbled O'Toole, "that's what Bothwell-"

"What about President Bothwell?" inquired Francesca.

"Oh, nothing," he said. He looked away from her probing eyes. "What else?" O'Toole asked impatiently.

"As I was saying, I want you to look as good as possible. Comb your hair again and put on a fresh uniform, not a flight suit. I'll daub a little makeup on your face so you don't look washed out." She returned to the desk. "We'll place your family photos in full view next to Jesus and Michael. Think carefully about what you're going to say. Of course I'll ask why you failed to activate the weapons this morning." Francesca walked over and put her hand on O'Toole's shoulder. "In my introduction I will have suggested that you've been under a strain. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but admitting a little weakness will probably play well. Particularly in your country."

General O'Toole squirmed while Francesca finished the preparations for the interview. "Do I have to do this?" he asked, becoming more and more uncomfortable as the journalist essentially rearranged his room.

"Only if you want anybody to think you're not Benedict Arnold," was her curt reply.

Janos came in to visit just before dinner. "Your interview with Francesca was very good," he lied. "At least you raised some moral issues that all of us should consider."

"It was dumb of me to bring up all that philosophical c.r.a.p," O'Toole fretted. "I should have followed Francesca's advice and blamed everything on my fatigue."

"Well, Michael," said Janos, "what's done is done. I didn't come in here to review the events of the day. I'm certain you've done that plenty of times already. I came in here to see if I could be any help."

"I don't think so, Janos," he replied. "But I do appreciate the thought."

There was a long hiatus in the conversation. At length Janos stood up and shuffled toward the door. "What do you do now?" he asked quietly.

"I wish I knew," O'Toole answered. "I don't seem to be able to come up with a plan."

The combined Rama-Newton s.p.a.cecraft continued to hurtle toward the Earth. With each pa.s.sing day the Rama threat loomed greater, a huge cylinder moving at hyperbolic speed toward what would be a calamitous impact if no new midcourse corrections were made. The estimated crash point was in the state of Tamil Nadu, in south India, not far from the city of Madurai. Physicists were on the network news every night, explaining what could be expected.

"Shock waves" and "ejecta" became terms bandied about at dinner parties.

Michael O'Toole was vilified by the global press. Francesca had been right. The American general became the focus of a world's fury. There were even suggestions that he should be court-martialed and executed, onboard the Newton, for his failure to follow orders. A lifetime of important accomplishments and selfless contributions was forgotten. Kathleen O'Toole was forced to leave the family apartment in Boston and take refuge with a friend in Maine.

The general was tortured by his indecision. He knew that he was doing irreparable damage to his family and his career by his failure to activate the weapons. But each time he convinced himself he was ready to execute the order, that loud and resounding "No" echoed again in his ears. O'Toole was only marginally coherent in his final interview with Francesca, the day before the scientific ship left to return to the Earth. She asked some very tough questions. When Francesca asked him why, if Rama were going to orbit the Earth, it had not yet made a deflection maneuver, the general perked up momentarily and reminded her that aerobraking-dissipating energy in the atmosphere as heatwas the most efficient method of achieving orbit around a planetary body with an atmosphere. But when she gave him a chance to amplify his statement, to discuss how Rama might reconfigure itself to have aerodynamic surfaces, O'Toole did not answer. He just stared at her distractedly. O'Toole came out of his room for the final dinner the night before Brown, Sabatini, Tabori, and Turgenyev departed for home. His presence spoiled the last supper. Irina was extremely nasty to him, upbraiding the general venomously, and refusing to sit at the same table. David Brown ignored him altogether, choosing instead to discuss in excruciating detail the laboratory being designed in Texas to accommodate the captured crab biot. Only Francesca and Janos were friendly, so General O'Toole returned to his room right after dinner without formally saying good-bye to anyone.

The next morning, less than an hour after the scientific ship had left, O'Toole buzzed Admiral Heilmann and asked for a meeting. "So you have finally changed your mind?" the German said excitedly when the general entered his office.

"Good. It's not too late yet It's only 1-12 days. If we hurry we can still detonate the bombs at 1-9."

"I'm getting closer, Otto," O'Toole replied, "but I'm not there yet. I've been thinking about all this very carefully. There are two things I would still like to do. I'd like to talk to Pope John-Paul and I want to go inside to see Rama for myself." O'Toole's response left Heilmann deflated. "s.h.i.t," he said.

"Here we go again. We'll probably-"

"You don't understand, Otto," the American said. He stared fixedly at his colleague. "This is good news. Unless something totally unexpected occurs, either during my call to the pope or while I'm exploring Rama, I'll be ready to enter my code the minute I come out."

"Are you certain?" Heilmann asked.

"I give you my word," O'Toole replied.

General O'Toole held nothing back in his long, emotional transmission to the pope. He was aware that his call was being monitored, but it no longer mattered. A single thing was uppermost in his mind: making the decision to activate the nuclear weapons with a clear conscience.