“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 nobody 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 hell 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 Japanese.

“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 mass below her was not the body of her friend.

The lights in Rama began flashing on and off. Inside the bam, the optical effect was startling. And disorienting. Nicole glanced up to see what was happening and lost her balance. Most of her body slid into the pit. “Fran­cesca,” she yelled, pressing her hands against the opposite wall of the pit for support. “Francesca, I need some help,” Nicole shouted again.

Nicole waited almost a minute before she concluded that Cosmonaut Sabatini must have already left the barn area. Her arms were tiring rapidly. Only her feet and the very bottoms of her legs were safely resting on the barn floor. Her head was next to one of the pit walls about eighty centime­ters below floor level. The remainder of her body was suspended in midair, prevented from falling only by her intense arm pressure against the wall.

The lights continued to flash off and on at short intervals. Nicole lifted her head to see if she could possibly reach the top of the pit with one of her arms, while holding her position secure with the other, It was hopeless. Her head was too deep in the hole. She waited several more seconds, her despera­tion growing as the fatigue in her arms increased. Finally Nicole made an attempt both to throw her body upward and to grab onto the lip of the pit in one connected motion. She was almost successful. Her arms could not stop her downward momentum when she fell. Her feet followed her body into the hole and she smacked her head against the wall. She tumbled uncon­scious to the bottom of the pit.

Francesca had also been startled when the lights of Rama had sud­denly begun to flash. Her initial impulse had been to run inside, just under the roof of the barn. Once there, she felt slightly more protected. What’s going on now? she thought as the reflected lights from the adjacent buildings forced her to close her eyes to keep from becoming dizzy.

When she heard Nicole’s cry for help, Francesca started to rush over to help her fellow cosmonaut. However, she tripped on one of the spheres and banged her knee as she fell. When she rose, Francesca could see in the strobing light that Nicole’s position was very precarious. Only the backs of Nicole’s shoes were visible. Francesca stood quite still and waited. Her mind had already raced ahead. She had a nearly perfect image of the pits in her memory, including a fairly accurate assessment of the depth. Ifshe falls she’ll be injured, she thought, maybe even killed. Francesca remembered the smooth walk. She won’t be able to climb out.

The flashing lights gave an eerie overtone to the scene. As Francesca watched, she saw Nicole’s body rise barely out of the pit and her hands scramble for a hold on the lip. In the next flashes of light the shoes changed angle with respect to the pit and then abruptly disappeared. Francesca heard no scream.

If she had not controlled herself, Francesca would have hurried over to the pit and looked into it. TVb, she said to herself, still standing amid the small spheres, ! must not look. If by chance she is still conscious, she might see me. Then I will have no options.

Already Francesca was thinking about the possibilities offered by Nicole’s fall. She was certain, based on their earlier exchange, that Nicole intended to do her utmost to prove that Borzov had ingested a pain-inducing drug on the last day of his life. It might be possible for Nicole even to identify the particular compound and then eventually, since it was not common, to trace its purchase back to Francesca. The scenario was unlikely, even implausible. But it could happen.