“Counterattack! Fire all-What? What?” Jord Baker twisted around in the command chair. He stared at the room, then at his pressure suit.
“How did I get here?”
“What is your name?”
“Baker.”
“Sequence Baker. We escaped from Beta Hydri and are currently sixty-nine degrees above the plane of the ecliptic from Jupiter’s orbit.”
“The solar system?” Baker looked out the viewport and saw only stars. “Calculate a course back to Earth on fusion engine power. I’m not going through a transfer again.”
“It would be inadvisable.”
“God damn you,” he said, reaching for the engine switches and input board. “I’ll do it myself.” The lights under the keyboard winked out.
“Hey! Who’s in command of this ship?”
“I have often wondered myself.”
Baker slammed his left fist against the enclosure button. The controls pulled away from him and he grasped his wrist where a sudden pain burnt. Unstrapping, he drifted to the viewport and hung on to the railing.
“Look-” he turned around to face the speaker grill. “I’m sick of the way I’m being used like some sort of robot you can turn off when you don’t need me. I wanted to die and you stuck me in someone’s body and now I wake up in different places where things have changed from the last time I was around and I don’t remember sleeping or what happened in between. Now”-he swallowed the saliva that had accumulated around the breathpiece-“Why can’t we go to Earth?”
The computer considered the situation.
“On our entry into the solar system, we received warning that a state of war existed-”
“Replay it!”
“I can paraphrase.”
“Replay it.”
The computer further considered the situation. It made a sound like a bug hitting glass, then replayed Brennen’s messages. Baker listened, running a finger over someone’s cheek-bone and feeling the rough Späflex layer covering it.
“Who is Virgil?”
“Sequence Baker contains no information concerning the subject.”
Baker shot across the room to land backside-first in the command chair. “We’re going to Earth. Under four gravity acceleration. Maintain a constant scan for other ships and summarily blast anything that comes within range.”
“Jord-they have the Valliardi transfer now. The ship was surrounded three hours after we arrived. They could even transfer an asteroid right in our path.”
“Connect the vernier rockets to your random number generator and have it make minor course changes at close but random intervals. Override it whenever we stray too far from course. We have enough fuel to last us, don’t we?”
“Yes. This was built for interstellar fusion travel.”
Baker tried to scratch his nose, but the headpiece resisted. “Then let’s do it. How long will it take?”
“Seventy-one hours not counting time taken to correct the minor course changes.”
“Very minor. Just enough to avoid rocks they might transfer into our path.”
“All right.” A light flashed on underneath the main engine array firing switch. “Ready.”
Baker lifted the cover from the switch and held his finger over it. “Can this body take three days of acceleration and deceleration?”
“Possibly. Might I point out that at one gravity the trip would only take twice as long. The squaring of time would make it-”
“Six days instead of three. That will leave us more vulnerable to attack.” Baker took a deep breath and noticed the stale quality of the recycled suit air for the first time. He did not know whether this other body could withstand three days at four gravities.
“How about two gravities?”
“One hundred hours for the full trip.”
“Go with that, then.”
“Working. Why do you want to go to Earth?”
“When did you start delving into motivation?”
The computer emitted a scratch of static. “Ever since you gave me judgment.”
Baker snorted. “Have you worked out the course yet?”
“Ready.” The light under the switch went out and did not go on again. “Why do you want to go to Earth?”
“Damn you! I’m tired! I’ve been through so much in the past God knows how many days that I just want to get off this circus of the damned and stand on some ground for a while. I may even want to die for good this time.”
The computer said nothing. The light glowed under the engine array ignition switch. Baker pressed it. Vernier rockets fired for a few instants, realigning the ship. Then the main array cut into full power, its thrust crushing Baker into the cushions. Breathing shallowly, he wondered whether this strange new body would survive even the one hundred hours. The roar through the ship was more felt than heard, a low quaking in the pit of his stomach.
“I would not advise leaving the chair for the duration of the trip. You’ll be fed through the injection port in your wrist. Your body has been in zero-gee for over six and a half months. You’ll survive the trip, but you must be careful.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before I almost had us go at four gees?”
“I wouldn’t have let you do it. I know more about your new body than you do.”
“Will I have to listen to you for the whole trip?” When the computer did not answer, he said, “Have you found out what year this is?”
“Twenty-One Sixty-Three.”
“Any signals from Earth or the habitats?”
“None. That would not be unusual, considering the use of laser and maser tight beam communication.”
What am I getting myself into? he wondered. Before him, he saw the small yellow disk of the sun amid the sea stars. A dim white point glowed a few degrees away from it. He loosened the pressure suit headpiece.
“I’m taking this off.” His arms felt like sacks of gravel. He unsealed the suit and removed his headgear. “What, no smartassed suggestions?”
The computer did not answer.
Baker lay back in the chair and closed his eyes. I feel heavy as lead even though I know I’ve taken far greater acceleration. This new body’s worthless.
Baker ached through the two days before turnover point. After making three attempts at rising from the chair to remove the rest of his pressure suit, he gave up and groaned.
“Flameout in four minutes,” the computer said.
“Don’t give me a countdown. Just do it and let me have those few seconds of bliss. Just give me long enough to get out of this suit. Is it time yet?”
“Three more minutes and a few seconds.”
“You said four minutes over an hour ago.”
“Relax.”
Baker could not relax-he was too exhausted. The computer had given him a dozen alerts in the past fifty hours, all of them false alarms. They had not detected any ships, just sundry large rocks and chunks of comet. Now he waited for the short relief he would get from flameout, when the engines shut down and the ship rotated into position for deceleration. After an eternity, the computer spoke.
“Flameout in ten seconds.”
Baker wondered whether he would get space sick from the sudden return to weightlessness. He did not have time to finish the thought.
“Flameout,” the computer said, then followed it immediately with, “Firing lasers.” Baker’s flesh prickled in the presence of the powerful electric fields the weapons generated. Something kilometers ahead of the ship flared white and began to cool. The lasers fired again.
“What’s going on?” Baker shouted, trying to find some clue on the displays before him.
“At the moment of flameout, six ships again surrounded us by Valliardi transfer. Their velocities were already matched to ours and they were ready to attack. I expected something along those lines with a probability of about sixty-five percent. I fired the lasers at flameout in a spiral pattern and destroyed five of the six ships. I disabled the sixth. Shall we bring it onboard?”
“Hell no! Begin deceleration.” Baker stripped off the Späflex pressure suit and nestled back into his seat.
“I don’t expect another attack,” the computer said, “until we are in Earth orbit. Ready to decelerate.”
The ship pitched easily on the vernier rockets until it had made a one hundred eighty degree rotation. Another burst of rocket fire stopped the motion.