Richard’s failure to return was not considered serious until several hours after the following Raman dawn. The cosmonauts remaining on the Newton had convinced themselves the night before that Wakefield had become ab­sorbed in some task (“Probably fixing the Beta comm station,” Janos had offered), had lost track of the time, and had decided not to take a solitary ride out in the dark. But when he didn’t return in the morning, a feeling of gloom began to pervade the conversation of the crew.

“I don’t know why we won’t admit it,” Irina Turgenyev said suddenly during a period of quiet at dinnertime. “Wakefield is not coming back either. Whatever got Takagishi and des Jardins got him as well.”

“That’s ridiculous, Irina,” Janos replied heatedly.

“Da,” she remarked. “That’s what you’ve always said. Ever since the beginning when General Borzov was cut to pieces. Then it was an accident that the crab biot attacked Wilson. Cosmonaut des Jardins disappears down an alley—”

“Coincidence,” Janos shouted, “all coincidence!”

“You’re stupid, Janos,” Irina shouted back. “You trust everybody and ev­erything. We should blow the damn thing to pieces before it does any more—”

“Stop, stop, you two!” David Brown said loudly as the two Soviet col­leagues continued to argue.

“All right, now,” added General O’Toole. “We’re all a little tense. There’s no need for us to quarrel.”

“Will anyone be going in to look for Richard?” the emotional Janos asked no one in particular.

“Who would be crazy enough—” Irina began to respond.

“No,” interrupted Admiral Heilmann firmly. “I told him that his visit was unauthorized and that we would not come after him under any circum­stances. Besides, Dr. Brown and the two pilots tell me that we can barely fly the two Newton ships home with the manpower remaining — and their anal­ysis assumed Wake6eld was with us. We cannot take any more risks.”

There was a long and somber silence at the dinner table. “I had planned to tell everyone when the meal was over,” David Brown then said, standing up beside his chair, “but it looks to me as if this group could use some good news now. An hour ago we received our orders. We’re to depart for Earth at 1-14 days, a little over a week from now. Between now and then we will cross train the personnel, rest for the voyage home, and make certain that all the Newton engineering systems are working properly.”

Cosmonauts Turgenyev, Yamanaka, and Sabatini all shouted their ap­proval. “If we’re going to leave without returning to Rama,” Janos inquired, “why are we waiting so long? Surely we can be well enough prepared in three or four days.”

“As I understand it,” Dr. Brown replied, “our two military colleagues have a special task that will occupy most of their time — and some of ours — for much of the next three days.” He glanced over at Otto Heilmann. “Do you want to tell them?”

Admiral Heilmann stood up at his place. “I need to discuss the details first with General O’Toole,” he said in a ringing voice. “We’ll explain it to everyone else in the morning.”

O’Toole didn’t need Otto Heilmann to show him the message that had been received only twenty minutes before. He knew what it said. In compli­ance with the procedure, there were only three words: proceed with trin­ity.

54

ONCE A HERO

Michael O’Toole could not sleep.

He tossed and turned, switched on his favorite music, and repeated both the “Hail Mary” and “Our Father” litanies over and over. Nothing worked. He longed for a distraction, some­thing that would make him forget his responsibilities and allow his soul some repose.

Proceed with Trinity, he thought to himself at last, focusing on the true cause of his disquiet. What exactly did that mean? Use the teleoperator forklifts, open up the containers, pick up the weapons (they were about the size of refrigerators), check out the subsystems, put the bombs in a pod, carry them over to the Rama seal, ferry them to the heavy load elevator…

And what else? he thought. One more thing. It wouldn’t take much more than a minute at each weapon, but it was by far the most important. Each bomb had a redundant pair of tiny numerical keyboards on its side. He and Admiral Heilmann each had to use the keyboards to input a special sequence of digits, an RQ code it was called, before the weapons could be activated. Without those codes the bombs would remain absolutely dormant, forever. The original debates over whether or not to include nuclear weapons in the limited Newton supply manifest had echoed through the corridors of COG military headquarters in Amsterdam for several weeks. The ensuing vote had been close. It was decided that the Newton would carry the nuclear weapons, but to alky widespread concerns it was also decided to implement rigorous safety measures that would guard against their unwarranted use.

During these same meetings, the COG military leadership avoided public outcry by placing a top secret classification on the fact that the Newton was transporting nuclear bombs to its rendezvous with Rama. Not even the civilian members of the Newton crew had been told about the existence of the weapons.

The secret working group on Trinity safety procedures had met seven times at four different locations around the world prior to the Newton launch. To make the deployment process immune to untoward electronic inputs, manual action had been chosen as the method of activation for the nuclear weapons. Thus neither a lunatic on the Earth nor a frightened cos­monaut on the Newton could trigger the process with a simple electronic command. The current COG chief of staff, a brilliant but passionless disci­plinarian named Kazuo Norimoto, had expressed concern that without elec­tronic command capability the military was unduly dependent upon the humans selected for the mission. He had been persuaded, however, that it was far better to depend on the Newton military officers than to worry about a terrorist or fanatic somehow gaining possession of the activation code.

But what if one of the Newton military officers were seized by panic? How could the system be protected against a unilateral act of nuclear warfare by a crew member? When all the discussions were completed, the resultant safety system was relatively simple. There would be three military officers in the crew. Each of them would have an RQ code known only to himself. Manual input of any two of the long numerical sequences would arm the nuclear devices. The system was thus protected against either a recalcitrant officer or a frightened one. It sounded like a foolproof system.

But our current situation was never considered in the contingency analyses, O’Toole thought as he lay in his bed. In the event of any dangerous action, either military or civilian, each of us was supposed to designate an alternate to leant our code. But who would have thought that an appendectomy was dan­gerous? Valeriy’s RQ died with him. Which means the system now requires two for two.

O’Toole rolled over on his stomach and pressed his face against the pillow. He now clearly understood why he was still awake. If I don’t input my code those bombs cannot be used. He remembered a luncheon on the military ship with Valeriy Borzov and Otto Heilmann during the leisurely cruise toward Rama. “It’s a perfect set of checks and balances,” the Soviet general had joked, “and probably played a role in our individual selections. Otto would pull the trigger at the slightest provocation and you, Michael, would agonize over its morality even if your life were threatened. I’m the tie­breaker.”

But you are dead, General O’Toole said to himself, and we have been ordered to activate the bombs. He rose from the bed and walked over to his desk. As he had done all his life when facing a tough decision, O’Toole pulled a small electronic notebook from his pocket and made two short lists, one summarizing the reasons for following his orders to destroy Rama and the other presenting arguments against it. He had no strictly logical reasons to oppose the destruction command — the giant vehicle was probably a life­less machine, his three colleagues were almost certainly dead, and there was a nontrivial implied threat to the Earth. But still O’Toole hesitated. There was something about committing such a flagrantly hostile act that offended his sensibilities.