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. "h.e.l.lo, 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 circ.u.mstances.

"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 nincomp.o.o.p. 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. 1 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 j.a.panese 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 embarra.s.sed. "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 stupidmaybe 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 b.u.t.tocks. "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 fl.u.s.tered. "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 n.o.body 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 j.a.panese scientist takes off from our camp in the middle of the night."

"According to Maxwell's a.s.sistant, that obsequious cipher named Mills, many people on Earth think our good j.a.panese doctor was kidnapped by the Ramans."

"Come on, Francesca. Be serious. Why would Dr. Takagishi decide to strike out on his own?"

"I have an idea," Nicole said slowly, "that he was impatient with the scheduled exploration process. You know how fervently he believes in the importance of New York. After the Wilson incident . . . well, he was fairly certain that an evacuation would be ordered. By the time we come back inside, if we come back, the Cylindrical Sea may have melted and it will be more difficult to reach New York." Nicole's natural honesty was urging her to tell Brown and Sabatini about Takagishi's heart problems. But her intuitive sense told her not to trust her two companions. "He just doesn't seem like the type to go off half-c.o.c.ked," Dr, Brown was saying. "I wonder if he heard or saw something."

"Maybe he had a headache or couldn't sleep for some other reason," Francesca offered. "Reggie Wilson used to prowl around at night when his head was bothering him." David Brown leaned forward, "By the way," he said to Nicole, "Francesca tells me that you think Wilson's instability might have been exacerbated by the headache pills he was using. You certainly seem to know your drugs. I was extremely impressed by how quickly you identified the particular sleeping pill I had taken."

"Speaking of drugs," Francesca added after a short pause.

"Janos Tabori mentioned something about a discussion he had with you concerning Borzov's death. I may not have understood him correctly, but I thought he said that you believe a drug reaction may have been involved." They were driving steadily across the ice. The conversation had been even in tone, apparently casual. There was no obvious reason to be suspicious.

Nevertheless, Nicole said to herself as she framed a response to Francesca's remarks, those last two comments seemed too smooth. Almost practiced. She turned to look at David Brown. She suspected that Francesca could dissemble without effort, but Nicole was certain she would be able to tell from Dr. Brown's facial expression whether or not their questions were rehea.r.s.ed. He squirmed slightly under her unblinking gaze.

"Cosmonaut Tabori and I were having a conversation about General Borzov and we started speculating about what might have caused his pain/' Nicole said blandly. "After all, his appendix was perfectly healthy, so something else must have been responsible for his acute discomfort. In the course of our conversation, I mentioned to Janos that an adverse drug reaction should be considered as one possible cause. It was not a very strong statement."

Dr. Brown seemed relieved and immediately changed the subject. However, Nicole's statement had not satisfied Francesca. Unless I am mistaken, our lady journalist has more questions, Nicole mused. But she isn't going to ask them right now. She watched Francesca and could tell that the Italian woman was not paying attention to Dr. Brown's monologue in the backseat. While he was discussing the reaction on Earth to Wilson's death, Francesca was deep in thought-There was a momentary quiet after Brown finished his commentary. Nicole glanced around her at the miles of ice, the imposing cliffs on the sides of the Cylindrical Sea, and the skysc.r.a.pers of New York in front of her. Rama was a glorious world. She had a momentary pang of guilt about her distrust of Francesca and Dr. Brown. It's a shame that we humans are never able to pull in the same direction, Nicole said to herself. Not even when confronted by infinity.

"I can't imagine how you have managed it," Francesca said, suddenly breaking the silence. She had turned to address Nicole. "Even after all this time, not even the tabloid videos have a legitimate lead. And it doesn't take a genius to figure out when it must have occurred."

Dr. Brown was completely lost. "What in the world are you talking about?" he asked.

"Our famous life science officer," Francesca replied. "Don't you find it fascinating that after all this time, the ident.i.ty of her daughter's father is still unknown to the public?"

"Signora Sabatini," Nicole said immediately, switching to Italian, "as I told you once before, this subject is none of your business. I will not tolerate this kind of intrusion into my private affairs-"

"I just wanted to remind you, Nicole/' Francesca interrupted quickly, also in Italian, "that you have secrets you might not want exposed."

David Brown stared blankly at the two women. He had not understood a word in the last exchange and was confused by the obvious tension. "So, David," Francesca said in a patronizing tone, "you were telling us about the mood on Earth. Do you think we're going to be ordered home? Or are we merely going to abort this particular sortie?"

"The COG Executive Council has been called into special session for later this week," he answered after a puzzled hesitation. "Dr. Maxwell's current guess is that we will be told to abandon the project."

"That would be a typical overreaction from a group of government officials whose primary objective has always been to minimize the downside risk. For the first time in history, adequately prepared human beings are exploring the interior of a vehicle built by another intelligence. Yet on Earth, the politicians continue to act as if nothing unusual has happened. They are incapable of vision. It's amazing." Nicole des Jardins did not listen to the rest of Francesca's conversation with Dr. Brown. Her mind was still focused on their earlier exchange. She must think I have proof about the drugs in Borzov, Nicole said to herself. There's no other possible explanation for the threat When they reached the edge of the ice, Francesca spent ten minutes setting up the robot camera and sound equipment for a sequence showing the three of them preparing to search the alien city for their missing colleague. Nicole's complaints to Dr. Brown about the waste of time went unheeded. She did, however, make the fact that she was annoyed obvious by refusing to partic.i.p.ate in the video sequence. While Francesca was completing her preparations, Nicole climbed the nearby stairway and studied the amazing city of skysc.r.a.pers. Behind and below her, Nicole could hear Francesca invoking the drama of the moment for the millions of viewers back on Earth.

"Here I stand on the outskirts of the mysterious island city of New York. It was near this very spot that Dr. Takagishi, Cosmonaut Wakefield, and I heard some strange sounds earlier this week. We have reason to suspect that New York may have been the professor's destination when he took off from Beta campsite last night to do some solitary and unauthorized exploration. . . .

"What has happened to the professor? Why does he not respond when called on the commpak? Yesterday we witnessed a terrible tragedy when journalist Reggie Wilson, risking his own life to save this reporter, was trapped inside the rover and was unable to escape the powerful claws of the crab biots. Has a similar fate befallen our Rama expert?

Did the extraterrestrials who built this amazing vehicle eons ago perhaps create a sophisticated trap designed to subdue and ultimately destroy any unsuspecting visitors? We don't know for certain. But we . . ."

From her vantage point on top of the wall, Nicole tried to ignore Francesca and imagine in what direction Dr. Takagishi might have gone. She consulted the maps stored in her pocket computer. He would have gone toward the exact geometrical center of the city, she concluded. He was certain there was meaning in the geometry.

35 INTO THE PIT.

They had walked the bewildering maze of streets for only twenty minutes, but they would have already been hopelessly lost without their personal navigators. They had no thorough plan for the search. They simply wandered up and down streets in a quasi-random pattern. Every three or four minutes there would be another transmission from Admiral Heilmann to Dr. Brown and the search party would have to look for a location where the signal strength was satisfactory.

"At this rate," Nicole remarked as once again they faintly heard Otto Heilmann's voice on the communicator, "our search is going to take forever Dr. Brown, why don't you just stay in one spot? Then Francesca and I-"

"Break break," they heard Otto more clearly as David Brown moved into a s.p.a.ce between two tall buildings. "Did you copy that last transmission?"

"Afraid not, Otto," Dr. Brown replied. "Would you please repeat it."

"Yamanaka, Wakefield, and Turgenyev have covered the bottom third of the Northern Hemicylinder. No sign of Takagishi. It's unlikely that he could have gone farther north, unless he went to one of the cities. In that case we should have seen his footprints somewhere, So you're probably on the right track.

"Meanwhile we have big news here, Our captured crab biot started to move about two minutes ago. It is trying to escape, but so far its tools have barely dented the cage. Tabori is working feverishly to build a larger, stronger cage that will go around the entire apparatus. I'm bringing Yamanaka's 'copter back to Beta so he can give Tabori a hand. He should be here in a minute-Wait. . . . There's an urgent coming through from WakeBeld. . . . I'll put him on." Richard Wakefield's British accent was unmistakable, though he could barely be heard by the trio in New York. "Spiders," he shouted in response to a question from Admiral Heilmann. "You remember the spider biot dissected by Laura Ernst? Well, we can see six of them just beyond the southern cliff. They're all over that temporary hut we built. And something has apparently repaired those two dead crab biots, for our prisoner's brothers are trundling toward the south pole-"

"Pictures!" Francesca Sabatini screamed into the radio. "Are you taking pictures?"

"What's that? Sorry, I did not copy."

"Francesca wants to know if you're taking pictures," Admiral Heilmann clarified.

"Of course, love," Richard Wakefield said. "Both the automatic imaging system in the helicopter and the hand camera you gave me this morning have been running without interruption. The spider biots are amazing. I've never seen anything move so fast. ... By the way, any sign of our j.a.panese professor?"

"Not yet," David Brown hollered from New York. "It's slow going in this maze. I feel as if I'm looking for a needle in a haystack."

Admiral Heilmann repeated the status of the missing person search for Wakefield and Turgenyev in the helicopter. Richard then said that they were coming back to Beta to refuel. "What about you, David?" Heilmann asked. "In view of everything, including the need to keep those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds on Earth informed, don't you think you should return to Beta yourself? Cosmonauts Sabatini and des Jardins can continue the search for Dr, Takagishi. If necessary we can send someone to replace you when the helicopter picks you up."

"I don't know, Otto, I haven't-" Francesca turned off the transmit switch on David Brown's radio in the middle of his reply. He shot her an angry glance that quickly softened.

"We need to talk about this," she said firmly. "Tell him you'll call him back in a couple of minutes."

Nicole was flabbergasted by the conversation that ensued between Franceses Sabatini and David Brown. Neither one of them seemed to be even slightly concerned about the fate of Dr. Takagishi. Francesca insisted that she had to return to Beta immediately to cover all the breaking stories. Dr. Brown was anxious because he was away from the "primary" action of the expedition.

Each argued that his reasons for returning were more important. What if they both left New York? No, that would leave cosmonaut des Jardins alone. Maybe she should come with them and they could reinitiate the search for Takagishi when things calmed down in several hours, . . .

Nicole finally exploded. "Never," she shouted suddenly at them, "never in my life have I seen such egotistical . . ." She could not think of a good noun. "One of our colleagues is missing and almost certainly needs our help. He may be injured or dying, yet all you two can do is argue about your own petty prerogatives. It's really disgusting." She paused a second to catch her breath. "Let me tell you one thing," Nicole continued, still fuming. "I am not going back to Beta right now. I don't give a d.a.m.n if you order me. I am staying here and finishing the search. At least I have my priorities straight. I know a man's life is more important than image or status or even a stupid media project," David Brown blinked twice, as if he had been slapped in the face. Francesca smiled. "Well, well," she said, "so our reclusive life science officer knows more than we have given her credit for." She looked over at David and then back at Nicole. "Will you excuse us for a moment, dear? We have a few matters to discuss in private."

Francesca and Dr. Brown moved over beside the base of a skysc.r.a.per about twenty meters away and began an animated conversation. Nicole turned the other way. She was angry with herself for losing her temper. She was especially irritated that she had revealed her knowledge of their contract with Schmidt and Hagenest. They will a.s.sume Janos told me, she thought. After all, we have been close friends.

Francesca walked back to join Nicole while Dr. Brown radioed Admiral Heilmann. "David is calling for the helicopter to meet him next to the icemobile. He a.s.sures me that he can find his way out. I will stay here with you and search for Takagishi. At least that way I can photograph New York."

There was no emotion in Francesca's p.r.o.nouncement. Nicole was unable to read her mood. "One other thing," Francesca added. "I promised David we would conclude our search and be ready to return to camp in four hours or less." The two women hardly talked during the first hour of their search. Francesca was content to let Nicole choose the path. Every fifteen minutes they stopped to radio the Beta camp and obtain an updated fix on their position. "You're now about two kilometers south and four kilometers east of the icemobile," Richard Wakefield told them when they stopped for lunch. He had been delegated the job of keeping track of their progress. "You're just east of the central plaza." They had gone to the central section first, for Nicole had thought that Takagishi would have headed there. They had found the open circular plaza with many low structures, but no sign of their colleague. Since then, Francesca and Nicole had visited the two other plazas and carefully combed the length of two of the central pie portions. They had found nothing. Nicole admitted she was running out of ideas.

"This is quite an astonishing place/' Francesca responded as she began to eat her lunch. They were sitting on a square metal box about a meter high. "My photographs can barely begin to capture it. Everything is so quiet, so tall, so . . alien."

"Some of these buildings could not be described without your pictures. _ The polyhedrons, for example. There's at least one in each slice, with the biggest one always right around the plaza. I wonder what they signify, if anything?

And why are they located where they are?"

The emotional tension just below the surface in the two women remained suppressed. They chatted a little about what they had seen in their trek across New York. Francesca had been especially fascinated by a large trellis arrangement that they had found connecting two tall skysc.r.a.pers in the central unit. "What do you suppose that lattice or net thing was all about?" she asked idly. "It must have had twenty thousand loops and must have been fifty meters tall."

"I guess it's ridiculous for us to try to understand any of this," Nicole said with a wave of her hand. She finished her lunch and glanced at her companion. "Ready to continue?"

"Not quite," Francesca said purposefully. She cleaned up the remains of her lunch and put them in the garbage pouch of her flight suit. "You and I still have some unfinished business."

Nicole looked at her quizzically. "I think it's time we took off the masks and raced each other honestly," Francesca said in what was a deceptively friendly manner. "If you suspect that I gave Valeriy Borzov some medication on the day that he died, why don't you ask me directly?"

Nicole stared at her adversary for several seconds. "Did you?" she asked at length.

"Do you think I did?" Franceses replied coyly. "And if so, why did 1 do it?"

"You're just playing the same game at another level," Nicole said after a pause. "You're not willing to admit anything. You just want to find out how much I know. But I don't need a confession from you. Science and technology are supporting me. Eventually the truth will be obvious."

"I doubt it," Francesca said casually. She jumped down from the box. "The truth always eludes those who search for it." She smiled. "Now let's go find the professor." On the western side of the central plaza the two women encountered another unique structure. From a distance it resembled a huge barn. The peak of its black roof was easily forty meters above the ground and it was more than a hundred meters long. There were two especially fascinating features about the bam. First, the two ends of the building were open. Second, although one could not see into it from the outside, all the walls and the roof were transparent from the inside. Francesca and Nicole took turns proving that it was not an optical illusion, Someone inside the barn could indeed see in all directions except down. In fact, the adjacent reflective skysc.r.a.pers had been precisely aligned so that all the nearby streets were visible from inside the barn.

"Fantastic," said Francesca as she photographed Nicole standing on the other side of the wall.

"Dr. Takagishi told me," Nicole said as she came around the comer, "that it was impossible to believe that New York was purposeless. The rest of Rama? Maybe. But n.o.body could have spent this much time and effort without some reason."

"You almost sound religious," Francesca said. Nicole stared quietly at her Italian colleague. She's needling me now, Nicole said to herself. She doesn't really care what I think. Maybe what anybody thinks.

"Hey. Look at this," Francesca said after a short silence. She had walked a short way into the interior of the bam and was pointing at the ground. Nicole came up beside her. In front of Francesca a narrow rectangular pit was cut in the floor. The pit was about five meters long, a meter and a half wide, and quite deep, maybe as much as eight meters. Most of the bottom was in shadow. The walls of the pit were straight up and down, without any sign of indentation.

"There's another one over here. And another there. . . ." Altogether there were nine pits, each constructed in exactly the same manner, that were scattered over the south half of the bam. In the north half, nine small spheres rested on the surface in a carefully measured array. Nicole found herself wishing for a legend of some kind, an instructional guide that would explain the meaning or purpose of all these objects. She was starting to feel bewildered.

They had crossed almost the entire length of the barn when they heard a faint emergency signal on their communicators. "They must have found Dr. Takagishi," Nicole said out loud as she rushed out one of the open ends of the bam. As soon as she was no longer underneath the roof, the volume of the emergency signal nearly shattered her eardrums. "Okay. Okay," she radioed. "We can hear you. What's up?"

"We've been trying to call you for over two minutes,"' she heard Richard Wakefield say. "Where in the h.e.l.l have you been? I only used the emergency signal because of its higher gain."

"We were inside this amazing barn," Francesca replied from behind Nicole. "It's like a surrealistic world, with one-way mirrors and weird reflections-"

"That's great," Richard interrupted, "but we don't have time to chat. You ladies are to march forthwith to the closest spot on the Cylindrical Sea. A helicopter will pick you up in ten minutes. We'd come into New York itself if there was a place for us to land."

"Why?" Nicole asked. "What's the hurry all of a sudden?"

"Can you see the South Pole from where you are?"

"No. We have too many tall buildings in the way."

"Something weird is happening around the little horns. Huge arcs of lightning are bouncing from spire to spire. It's an impressive display. We all feel something unusual is about to happen." Richard hesitated a second. "You should leave New York immediately."

"Okay," Nicole answered. "We're on our way." She switched off the transmitter and turned to Francesca.

"Did you hear how loud the emergency signal was the moment we came out of the barn?" Nicole thought for several seconds. "The material in the walls and roof of that building must block radio signals." Her face now brightened.

"That explains what happened to Takagishi-he must be inside a barn, or something similar."

Francesca was not following Nicole's line of thought. "So what?" she said, taking one last panoramic image of the barn with her video camera. "It's really not important now. We must hurry out to meet the helicopter."

"Maybe he's even in one of those very pits," Nicole continued excitedly.

"Sure. It could have happened. He was exploring in the dark. He could have fallen . . . Wait here," she said to Francesca. "I'll only be a minute."

Nicole dashed back inside the barn and bent down beside one of the holes. Holding the side of the pit with her hand, she shone the beam from her flashlight down into the bottom. Something was there! She waited a few seconds for her eyes to focus. It was a pile of material of some kind. She moved quickly to the next pit. "Doctor Takagishi," she yelled. "Are you here, Shig?" she shouted in j.a.panese.

"Come on!" Francesca hollered at Nicole from the end of the barn. "Let's go. Richard sounded very serious." At the fourth pit the shadows made it very difficult for Nicole to see the bottom even with the beam from her flashlight. She could make out some objects, but what were they? She laid down on her stomach and eased slightly into the pit at an angle to try to confirm that the shapeless ma.s.s below her was not the body of her friend.