Rendezvous with Rama

35. Special Delivery

Commander Norton was sleeping soundly when his personal communicator dragged him away from happy dreams. He had been holidaying with his family on Mars, flying past the awesome, snow-capped peak of Nix Olympica—mightiest volcano in the solar system. Little Billie had started to say something to him; now he would never know what it was.

The dream faded; the reality was his executive officer, up on the ship.

“Sorry to wake you, Skipper,” said Lieutenant-Commander Kirchoff. “Triple A priority from Headquarters.”

“Let me have it,” Norton answered sleepily.

“I can’t. It’s in code—Commander’s Eyes Only.”

Norton was instantly awake. He had received such a message only three times in his whole career, and on each occasion it had meant trouble.

“Damn!” he said. “What do we do now?”

His Exec did not bother to answer. Each understood the problem perfectly; it was one that Ship’s Orders had never anticipated. Normally, a commander was never more than a few minutes away from his office and the codebook in his personal safe. If he started now, Norton might get back to the ship—exhausted—in four or five hours. That was not the way to handle a Class AAA Priority.

“Jerry,” he said at length. “Who’s on the switchboard?”

“No one; I’m making the call myself.”

“Recorder off?”

“By an odd breach of regulations, yes.”

Norton smiled. Jerry was the best Exec he had ever worked with. He thought of everything.

“OK. You know where my key is. Call me back.”

He waited as patiently as he could for the next ten minutes, trying—without much success—to think of other problems. He hated wasting mental effort; it was very unlikely that he could outguess the message that was coming, and he would know its contents soon enough. Then he would start worrying effectively.

When the Exec called back, he was obviously speaking under considerable strain.

“It’s not really urgent Skipper—an hour won’t make any difference. But I prefer to avoid radio. I’ll send it down by messenger.”

“But why—oh, very well—I trust your judgement. Who will carry it through the airlocks?”

“I’m going myself; I’ll call you when I reach the Hub.”

“Which leaves Laura in charge.”

“For one hour, at the most. I’ll get right back to the ship.”

A medical officer did not have the specialized training to be acting commander, any more than a commander could be expected to do an operation. In emergencies, both jobs had sometimes been successfully switched; but it was not recommended. Well, one order had already been broken tonight…

“For the record, you never leave the ship. Have you woken Laura?”

“Yes. She’s delighted with the opportunity.”

“Lucky that doctors are used to keeping secrets. Oh—have you sent the acknowledgement?”

“Of course, in your name.”

“Then I’ll be waiting.”

Now it was quite impossible to avoid anxious anticipations. “Not really urgent but I prefer to avoid radio…”

One thing was certain. The Commander was not going to get much more sleep this night.