Rendezvous With Rama - Arthur C. Clarke [87]
He would have to wait it out; there was still plenty of time—a full fifty minutes. Meanwhile, he had decided on the most effective answer to Mercury.
He would ignore the message completely, and see what the Hermians did next. Rodrigo's first sensation, when the bomb started to move, was not one of physical fear; it was something much more devastating. He believed that the universe operated according to strict laws, which not even God Himself could disobey—much less the Hermians. No message could travel faster than light; he was five minutes ahead of anything that Mercury could do.
This could only be a coincidence—fantastic, and perhaps deadly, but no more than that. By chance, a control signal must have been sent to the bomb at about the time he was leaving Endeavour; while he was travelling fifty kilometres, it had covered eighty million.
Or perhaps this was only an automatic change of attitude, to counter overheating somewhere in the vehicle. There were places where the skin temperature approached fifteen hundred degrees, and Rodrigo had been very careful to keep in the shadows as far as possible.
A second thruster started to fire, checking the spin given by the first. No, this was not a mere thermal adjustment. The bomb was re-orientating itself, to point towards . . . .
Useless to wonder why this was happening at this precise moment in time. There was one thing in his favour; the missile was a low-acceleration device. A tenth of a gee was the most that it could manage. He could hang on.
He checked the grapples attaching the scooter to the bomb framework, and re-checked the safety line on his own suit. A cold anger was growing in his mind, adding to his determination. Did this manoeuvre mean that the Hermians were going to explode the bomb without warning, giving Endeavour no chance to escape? That seemed incredible—an act not only of brutality but of folly, calculated to turn the rest of the solar system against them. And what would have made them ignore the solemn promise of their own Ambassador?
Whatever their plan, they would not get away with it.
The second message from Mercury was identical with the first, and arrived ten minutes later. So they had extended the deadline—Norton still had one hour. And they had obviously waited until a reply from Endeavour could have reached them before calling him again.
Now there was another factor; by this time they must have seen Rodrigo, and would have had several minutes in which to take action. Their instructions could already be on the way. They could arrive at any second.
He should be preparing to leave. At any moment, the sky-filling bulk of Rama might become incandescent along the edges, blazing with a transient glory that would far outshine the sun.
When the main thrust came on, Rodrigo was securely anchored. Only twenty seconds later, it cut off again. He did a quick mental calculation; the delta vee could not have been more than fifteen kilometres an hour. The bomb would take over an hour to reach Rama; perhaps it was only moving in close to get a quicker reaction. If so, that was a wise precaution; but the Hermians had left it too late.
Rodrigo glanced at his watch, though by now he was almost aware of the time without having to check. On Mercury, they would now be seeing him heading purposefully towards the bomb, and less than two kilometres away from it. They could have no doubt of his intentions, and would be wondering if he had already carried them out.
The second set of cables went as easily as the first; like any good workman, Rodrigo had chosen his tools well. The bomb was disarmed; or, to be more accurate, it could no longer be detonated by remote command.
Yet there was one other possibility, and he could not afford to ignore it. There were no external contact fuses, but there might be internal ones, armed by the shock of impact.