The commander sat down at the head of the table. “Today’s exercise was nearly a complete disaster. We could easily have lost three valuable members of our team as well as one of the most expensive helicopters ever built. I want to remind you all, one more time, of the priorities of this mission as agreed to by the International Space Agency and the Council of Govern­ments. The top priority is the safety of the crew. Second priority is the analysis and!or determination of any threat, if it exists, to the human popu­lation of the planet Earth.” Borzov was now looking directly down the table at Brown, who returned the commander’s challenging look with a stony stare of his own. “Only after those two priorities are satisfied and the Raman craft is adjudged harmless does the capturing of one or more of the biots have any significance.”

“I would like to remind General Borzov,” David Brown said almost imme­diately in his sonorous voice, “that some of us do not believe the priorities should be blindly applied in a serial fashion. The importance of the biots to the scientific community cannot be overstated. As I have said repeatedly, both in cosmonaut meetings and on my many television news appearances, if this second Rama craft is just like the first — which means that it will ignore our existence completely — and we proceed so slowly that we fail even to capture a single biot before we must abandon the alien ship and return to Earth, then an absolutely unique opportunity for science will have been sacrificed to assuage the collective anxiety of the world’s politicians.”

Borzov started to reply but Brown stood up and gestured emphatically with his hands. “No, no, hear me out. You have essentially accused me of incompetence in my conduct of today’s exercise and I have a right to re­spond.” He held up some computer printout and waved it at Borzov. “Here are the initial conditions for today’s simulation, as posted and defined by your engineers.