Nicole watched Dr. Takagishi carefully. He was handling himself much better today. “I have brought a printout of the official sortie strategy, Dr. Brown,” he was saying, waving a four-inch-thick set of papers in his hand, “to remind us of the fundamental tenets of sortie design that resulted from over a year of unhurried mission planning. May I read from the summary?”

“I don’t think you need to do that,” David Brown responded. “We’re all familiar with—”

“I’m not,” interrupted General O’Toole. “I would like to hear it. Admiral Heilmann asked me to pay close attention and brief him on the issues.”

Dr. Brown waved for Takagishi to continue. The diminutive Japanese scientist was borrowing a page from Brown’s own portfolio. Even though he knew that David Brown personally favored going after the crab biots on the second sortie, Takagishi still was attempting to convince the other cosmo­nauts that the top-priority activity should be a scientific foray into the city of New York.

Reggie Wilson had excused himself an hour earlier and had gone to his room for a nap. The remaining five crew members onboard the Newton had spent most of the afternoon struggling, without success, to reach an agree­ment on the activities for the second sortie. Since the two scientists Brown and Takagishi had radically different opinions on what should be done, no consensus was possible. Meanwhile, behind them on the large monitor, there had been intermittent views of the space cadets and Admiral Heilmann working inside Rama. The current picture showed Tabori and Turgenyev at the campsite adjoining the Cylindrical Sea. They had just finished assem­bling the second motorboat and were checking its electrical subsystems.

“…The sequence of sorties has been carefully designed,” Takagishi was reading, “to be consistent with the mission policies and priorities document, ISA-NT-0014. The primary goals of the first sortie are to establish the engineering infrastructure and to examine the interior on at least a superfi­cial level. Of particular importance will be the identification of any charac­teristics of this second Rama spacecraft that are in any way different from the first.

“Sortie number two is designed to complete the mapping of the inside of Rama, focusing particularly on regions unexplored seventy years ago, as well as the collections of buildings called cities and any interior differences identi­fied on the first sortie. Encounters with biots will be avoided on the second sortie, although the presence and location of the various kinds of biots will be part of the mapping process.

“Interaction with the biots will be delayed until the third sortie. Only after careful and prolonged observation will any attempt be made—”

“That’s enough, Dr. Takagishi,” David Brown interrupted. “We all have the gist of it. Unfortunately that sterile document was prepared months before launch. The situation we face now was never contemplated. We have the lights going on and off. And we have located and are tracking a herd of six crab biots just beyond the southern edge of the Cylindrical Sea.”

“I disagree,” said the Japanese scientist respectfully. “You said yourself that the unpredicted lighting profile did not represent a fundamental differ­ence between the two spacecraft. We are not facing an unknown Rama. I submit that we should implement the sorties in accordance with the original mission plan.”

“So you favor dedicating this entire second sortie to mapping, including or perhaps even featuring a detailed exploration of New York?” asked O’Toole.

“Exactly, General O’Toole. Even if one takes the position that the strange sound heard by cosmonauts Wakefield, Sabatini, and myself does not consti­tute an official difference, the careful mapping of New York is clearly one of the highest priority activities. And it is vital that we accomplish it on this sortie. The temperature in the Central Plain has already risen to minus five degrees. Rama is carrying us closer and closer to the Sun. The spacecraft is heating from the outside in. I predict the Cylindrical Sea will begin to melt from the bottom in three or four more days—”

“I have never said that New York was not a legitimate target for explora­tion,” David Brown interrupted again, 4< but I have maintained from the very beginning that the biots are the true scientific treasure of this voyage. Look at these amazing creatures!” he said, filling the center screen with a film of the six crab biots moving slowly across a bland region in the Southern Hemi-cylinder. “We may never have another opportunity to capture one. The drones have almost finished reconnoitering the entire interior and no other biots have been spotted.”

The rest of the crew members, including Takagishi, looked at the monitor with rapt attention. The bizarre assemblage of aliens, arranged in a triangu­lar formation with a slightly larger specimen in the lead, approached a jum­bled mound of loose metal. The lead crab moved directly into the obstacle, paused a few seconds, and then used its claws to chop the elements of the mound into still smaller pieces. The two crabs in the second row transferred the metal fragments onto the backs of the remaining three members of the troop. This new material increased the size of the small piles already on the tops of the shells of the three crab biots in the back row.

“They must be the Raman garbage crew,” Francesca said. Everyone laughed.

“But you can see why I want to move quickly,” David Brown continued. “Right now the short film we just saw is on its way to all the television networks on Earth. Over a billion of our fellow men and women will watch it today with the same mixture of fear and fascination that all of you just felt. Imagine what kind of laboratories we will be able to build to study such a creature. Imagine what we will learn—”

“What makes you think you can capture one?” General O’Toole asked. “They look as if they could be quite formidable.”

“We are certain that these creatures, although they appear to be biologi­cal, are actually robots. Hence the name “biots,” which became popular during and after the first Rama expedition. Based on all the reports from Norton and the other Rama I cosmonauts, each of these biots is designed to perform a singular function. They have no intelligence as we know it. We should be able to outsmart them… and capture them.”

A camera close-up of the scissorlike claws appeared on the giant screen. They were obviously very sharp. “I don’t know,” said General O’Toole. “I’d be inclined to follow Dr. Takagishi’s suggestion and observe them for quite a while before trying to catch one.”

“I disagree,” said Francesca. “Speaking as a journalist, no story could be bigger than the attempted capture of one of those things. Everyone on Earth will watch. We may never have another chance like this.” She paused for a moment. “The ISA has been pushing us for some upbeat news. The Borzov incident didn’t exactly convince the taxpayers of the world that their space money is being wisely spent.”

“Why can’t we do both tasks on the same sortie?” General O’Toole asked.

“One subteam could explore New York and the other would go after a crab.”

“No way,” replied Nicole. “If the goal of this sortie is to seize a biot, then all of our resources should be applied in that direction. Remember, we are limited in both manpower and time.”

“Unfortunately,” David Brown now said with a wan smile, “we can’t make this decision by committee. Since we don’t have complete agreement, I must make the choice… Therefore, the purpose of the next sortie will be to capture a crab biot. I presume that Admiral Heilmann will agree with me. If he doesn’t, we will submit the issue to a vote of the crew.”

The meeting broke up slowly. Dr. Takagishi wanted to offer one more argument, to point out that the majority of the biot species seen by the first Rama explorers did not materialize until after the thawing of the Cylindrical Sea. But nobody wanted to listen anymore. Everyone was tired.