O’Toole’s face had brightened at the end of the pontiff’s remarks. “I agree with you, Holy Father,” he said excitedly. “And therefore all intelligence is united, everywhere throughout the universe, by a similar spiritual experience. In a very very real sense, assuming that the Ramans have also been saved, we are all brothers. After all, we are made from the same basic chemicals. That means that Heaven will not be limited just to humans but will encompass all beings everywhere who have understood His message.”

“I can see where you might come to that conclusion,” John-Paul replied. “But it is certainly not one that is universally accepted. Even within the church there are those who have an altogether different view of the Ramans.”

“You mean the homocentric group that uses quotations from St. Michael of Siena for support?”

The pope nodded.

“For myself,” General O’Toole said, “I 6nd their narrow interpretation of St. Michael’s sermon on the Ramans much too confining. In saying that the extraterrestrial spacecraft might have been a herald, like Elijah or even Isaiah, foretelling the second coming of Christ, Michael was not restricting the Ramans to having only that particular role in our history and no other function or existence. He was simply explaining one possible view of the event from a human spiritual perspective.”

Again the pontiff was smiling, “I can tell that you have spent considerable time and energy thinking about all this. My advance information about you was only partially correct. Your devotion to God, the church, and your family were all cited in your dossier. But there is little mention of your active intellectual interest in theology.”

“I consider this mission to be by far the most important assignment of my life. I want to make certain that I properly serve both God and mankind. So I am trying to prepare myself in every possible way, including discovering whether or not the Ramans may have a spiritual component. It could affect my actions on the mission.”

O’Toole paused a few seconds before continuing. “By the way, your holi­ness, have your researchers found any evidence of possible Raman spiritual­ity, based on their analysis of the first rendezvous?”

John-Paul V shook his head. “Not really, However, one of my most devout archbishops, a man whose religious zeal sometimes overshadows his logic, insists that the structural order inside the first Raman craft — you know, the symmetries, geometric patterns, even the repetitive redundant designs based on the number three — is suggestive of a temple. He could be right. We just don’t know. We don’t see any evidence either way about the spiritual nature of the beings who created that first spaceship.”

“Amazing!” said General O’Toole. “I had never thought of that before.

Imagine if it really was created as some kind of a temple. That would stagger David Brown.” The general laughed. “Dr. Brown insists,” he said in explana­tion, “that we poor ignorant human beings would not have any chance of ever determining the purpose of such a spaceship, for the technology of its builders is so far advanced beyond our comprehension that it would be impossible for us ever to understand any of it. And, according to him, of course there could be no Raman religion. In his opinion they would have left all the superstitious mumbo jumbo behind eons before they developed the capability to construct such a fabulous interstellar spacecraft.”

“Dr. Brown is an atheist, isn’t he?” the pope asked.

O’Toole nodded. “An outspoken one. He believes that all religious think­ing impairs the proper functioning of the brain. He regards anyone who doesn’t agree with his point of view as an absolute idiot.”

“And the rest of the crew? Are they as strongly opinionated on the subject as Dr. Brown?”

“He is the most vocal atheist, although I suspect Wakefield, Tabori, and Turgenyev all share his basic attitudes. Strangely enough, my intuitive sense tells me that Commander Borzov has a soft spot in his heart for religion. That’s true of most of the survivors of The Chaos. Anyway, Valeriy seems to enjoy asking me questions about my faith.”

General O’Toole stopped for a moment as he mentally completed his survey of the religious beliefs of the Newton crew. “The European women des Jardins and Sabatini are nominally Catholic, although they would not be considered devout by any stretch of the imagination. Admiral Heilmann is a Lutheran on Easter and Christmas, Takagishi meditates and studies Zen. I don’t know about the other two,”

The pontiff stood up and walked to the window. “Somewhere out there a strange and wonderful space vehicle, created by beings from another star, is headed toward us. We are sending a crew of a dozen to rendezvous with it” He turned toward General O’Toole. “This spaceship may be a messenger from God, but probably only you will be able to recognize it as such.”

O’Toole did not reply. The pope stared out the window again and was quiet for almost a minute. “No, my son,” he finally said softly, as much to himself as to General O’Toole. “I do not have the answers to your questions. Only God has them. You must pray that He will provide the answers when you need them.” He faced the general. “I must tell you that I am delighted to find you so concerned with these issues. I am confident that God also has purposely selected you for this mission.”

General O’Toole could tell that the audience was coming to an end.

“Holy Father,” he said, “thank you again for seeing me and sharing this time. I feel deeply honored.”

John-Paul V smiled and walked over to his guest. He embraced him in the European manner and escorted General O’Toole out of his office.

The exit from the subway station was opposite the entrance to the International Peace Park. As the escalator deposited General O’Toole on the upper level and he walked out into the afternoon light, he could see the domed shrine to his right, not more than two hundred meters away. To his left, at the other end of the park, the top of the ancient Roman Colosseum was visible behind a complex of administrative buildings.

The American general walked briskly into the park and turned right on the sidewalk leading to the shrine. He passed a lovely small fountain, part of a monument to the children of the world, and stopped to watch the animated, sculptured figures playing in the cold water. O’Toole was full of anticipation. What an incredible day, he was thinking. First I have an audience with the pope. And now I finally visit the shrine of St Michael. I definitely saved the best day for last.

When Michael of Siena was canonized in 2188, fifty years after his death (and, perhaps more significantly, three years after John-Paul V had been elected as the new pope), there had been an immediate consensus that the perfect place to locate a major shrine in his honor would be in the Interna­tional Peace Park. The great park stretched from the Piazza Venezia to the Colosseum, wandering around and among those few ruins from the old Roman fora that had somehow survived the nuclear holocaust. Choosing the exact spot for the shrine had been a delicate process. The Memorial to the Five Martyrs, honoring those courageous men and women who had dedi­cated themselves to the restoration of order in Rome during the months immediately following the disaster, had been the feature attraction of the park for years. There was considerable feeling that the new shrine to St. Michael of Siena must not be allowed to overshadow the dignified, open, marble pentagon that had occupied the southeast corner of the park since 2155.

After much debate it was decided that St. Michael’s shrine should be located in the opposite, northwest comer of the park, its foundation symboli­cally centered on the actual epicenter of the blast, only ten yards from the place where Trajan’s Column had stood until it was instantaneously vaporized by the intense heat at the core of the fireball. The first floor of the round shrine was entirely for meditation and worship. There were twelve alcoves or chapels attached to the central nave, six with sculpture and art­work following classical Roman Catholic motifs and the other six each hon­oring one of the world’s major religions. This eclectic partition of the ground floor was purposely designed to provide comfort for the many non-Catholics who made pilgrimages to the shrine to pay their respects to the memory of the beloved St. Michael.