Pieter anchored himself firmly, grasped the can, and hurled it down the face of the cliff. He did not aim directly towards Camp Alpha, but almost thirty degrees away from it.
Almost immediately, air resistance robbed the can of its initial speed, but then the pseudo-gravity of Rama took over and it started to move downwards at a constant velocity. It hit once near the base of the ladder, and did a slow motion bounce which took it clear of the first terrace.
“It’s OK now,” said Pieter. “Like to make a bet?”
“No,” was the prompt reply. “You know the odds.”
“You’re no sportsman. But I’ll tell you now—it will stop within three hundred metres of the Camp.”
“That doesn’t sound very close.”
“You might try it some time. I once saw Joe miss by a couple of kilometres.”
The can was no longer bouncing; gravity had become strong enough to glue it to the curving face of the North Dome. By the time it had reached the second terrace it was rolling along at twenty or thirty kilometres an hour, and had reached very nearly the maximum speed that friction would allow.
“Now we’ll have to wait,” said Pieter, seating himself at the telescope, so that he could keep track of the messenger. “It will be there in ten minutes. Ah, here comes the skipper—I’ve got used to recognizing people from this angle—now he’s looking up at us.”
“I believe that telescope gives you a sense of power.”
“Oh, it does. I’m the only person who knows everything that’s happening in Rama. At least, I thought I did,” he added plaintively, giving Kirchoff a reproachful look.
“If it will keep you happy, the skipper found he’d run out of toothpaste.”
After that, conversation languished; but at last Pieter said: “Wish you’d taken that bet… he’s only got to walk fifty metres… now he sees it… mission complete.”
“Thanks, Pieter—a very good job. Now you can go back to sleep.”
“Sleep! I’m on watch until 0400.”
“Sorry—you must have been sleeping. Or how else could you have dreamed all this?”
SPACE SURVEY HQ TO COMMANDER SSV ENDEAVOUR.
PRIORITY AAA.
CLASSIFICATION YOUR EYES ONLY. NO PERMANENT RECORD.
SPACEGUARD REPORTS ULTRA HIGH SPEED VEHICLE APPARENTLY LAUNCHED MERCURY TEN TO TWELVE DAYS AGO ON RAMA INTERCEPT. IF NO ORBIT CHANGE ARRIVAL PREDICTED DATE DAY 322 15 HOURS. MAY BE NECESSARY YOU EVACUATE BEFORE THEN. WILL ADVISE FURTHER.
Norton read the message half a dozen times to memorize the date. It was hard to keep track of time inside Rama; he had to look at his calendar watch to see that it was now Day 315. That might leave them only one week…
The message was chilling, not only for what it said, but for what it implied. The Hermians had made a clandestine launch—that in itself a breach of Space Law. The conclusion was obvious; their “vehicle” could only be a missile.
But why? It was inconceivable—well, almost inconceivable—that they would risk endangering Endeavour, so presumably he would receive ample warning from the Hermians themselves. In an emergency, he could leave at a few hours’ notice, though he would do so only under extreme protest, at the direct orders of the Commander-in-Chief.
Slowly, and very thoughtfully, he walked across to the improvised life-support complex and dropped the message into an electrosan. The brilliant flare of laser light bursting out through the crack beneath the seat cover told him that the demands of security were satisfied. It was too bad, he told himself, that all problems could not be disposed of so swiftly and hygienically.
37. Missile
The missile was still five million kilometres away when the glare of its plasma braking jets became clearly visible in Endeavour’s main telescope. By that time the secret was already out, and Norton had reluctantly ordered the second and perhaps final evacuation of Rama; but he had no intention of leaving until events gave him no alternative.
When it had completed its braking manoeuvre, the unwelcome guest from Mercury was only fifty kilometres from Rama, and apparently carrying out a survey through its TV cameras. These were clearly visible—one fore and one aft—as were several small omni-antennas and one large directional dish, aimed steadily at the distant star of Mercury. Norton wondered what instructions were coming down that beam, and what information was going back.
Yet the Hermians could learn nothing that they did not already know; all that Endeavour had discovered had been broadcast throughout the solar system. This spacecraft—which had broken all speed records to get here—could only be an extension of its makers’ will, an instrument of their purpose. That purpose would soon be known, for in three hours the Hermian Ambassador to the United Planets would be addressing the General Assembly.
Officially, the missile did not yet exist. It bore no identification marks, and was not radiating on any standard beacon frequency. This was a serious breach of law, but even SPACEGUARD had not yet issued a formal protest. Everyone was waiting, with nervous impatience, to see what Mercury would do next.
It had been three days since the missile’s existence—and origin—had been announced; all that time, the Hermians had remained stubbornly silent. They could be very good at that, when it suited them.
Some psychologists had claimed that it was almost impossible to understand fully the mentality of anyone born and bred on Mercury. Forever exiled from Earth by its three-times-more-powerful gravity, Hermians could stand on the Moon and look across the narrow gap to the planet of their ancestors—even of their own parents—but they could never visit it. And so, inevitably, they claimed that they did not want to. They pretended to despise the soft rains, the rolling fields, the lakes and seas, the blue skies—all the things that they could know only through recordings. Because their planet was drenched with such solar energy that the daytime temperature often reached six hundred degrees, they affected a rather swaggering roughness that did not bear a moment’s serious examination. In fact, they tended to be physically weak, since they could only survive if they were totally insulated from their environment. Even if he could have tolerated the gravity, a Hermian would have been quickly incapacitated by a hot day in any equatorial country on Earth.
Yet in matters that really counted, they were tough. The psychological pressures of that ravening star so close at hand, the engineering problems of tearing into a stubborn planet and wrenching from it all the necessities of life—these had produced a spartan and in many ways highly admirable culture. You could rely on the Hermians; if they promised something, they would do it—though the bill might be considerable. It was their own joke that, if the sun ever showed signs of going nova, they would contract to get it under control—once the fee had been settled. It was a non-Hermian joke that any child who showed signs of interest in art, philosophy or abstract mathematics was ploughed straight back into the hydroponic farms. As far as criminals and psychopaths were concerned, this was not a joke at all. Crime was one of the luxuries that Mercury could not afford.
Commander Norton had been to Mercury once, had been enormously impressed—like most visitors—and had acquired many Hermian friends. He had fallen in love with a girl in Port Lucifer, and had even contemplated signing a three-year contract, but parental disapproval of anyone from outside the orbit of Venus had been too strong. It was just as well.
“Triple A message from Earth, Skipper,” said the bridge. “Voice and back-up text from Commander-in-Chief. Ready to accept?”