So much time, stretching out before and behind. Press the wrong button and zap, the future. No matter how far, though, Nightsheet keeps his Death Angel out of my reach. Cruel. One jump ahead of Master Snoop, but one behind Nightsheet. Me in the middle, now trapped in black. Black as her snake hair, wrapped, squeezing.
The computer registered a choking noise, followed by a shout.
“Death Angel!” Virgil shuddered and opened his eyes.
“What is your name?”
Virgil twisted around, then tried to correct the spin. How does it feel to be on your own, pawn of Master Snoop? Does the freedom scare you? “Ben! Where are we?”
“Near a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B. We are ready to move on. What is your name?”
“Virgil Grissom Kinney. What’s going on?” Using his arms and legs, he tried swimming toward the control chair. He generated just enough motion to drift with aching slowness toward it. He pulled in to sit.
“Sequence Kinney re-entered,” the computer said. “Virgil— we are ready to transfer to Beta Hydri. There was no life on the planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B. It has been seeded with Nostocacw type H for terraforming. We are ready to move on. Am calculating coordinates for Beta Hydri.”
Better not to let him know you were trapped inside for a while. You’ve obviously been gone a long time. A few hours, at least. Stupid! How could you fall for it? Of course Nightsheet wants you to desire a real death.
You’ve cheated him every time, though, and you’ll do it again if you’re careful. It’s part of your cipher, they can’t crack it if you don’t let them. So just wait. I’ll play the game through, Death Angel, and get them both.
“Calculate coordinates for Beta Hydri, Ben.”
“Done.”
“Oh. How soon till we’re ready?”
The computer made a mystified sound. “Ready now.”
Virgil nodded and strapped in, signaling the instruments to close in on him. Drop, jaws. “Ready?”
“Ready to transfer,” the computer replied. Virgil poised his finger over the transfer button and pressed it.
I’ll catch them somehow, Death Angel, even if I have to die a thousand times.
Chapter Six 2127
Explosions. Virgil opened his eyes onto chaos.
Pull me back from death to a shaking ship. Who’s holding on so tight and waving it about like—
“What?” he screamed. “What was that?” Alarms wailed and air hissed. Doors slammed instantly shut. A triple set of steel shutters dropped over the viewing port. The computer spoke calmly.
“The ship transferred into a region of asteroids. From the damage reports received, determine no diameters larger than five hundred microns were encountered.”
“That’s dust.”
“Teleporting into dust can be dangerous. The density here was one asteroid per twenty cubic meters. You’re lucky one did not appear inside you.”
“Straight. Any damage?” I’ve got to remember that a real death can take me any moment. Nightsheet plays a tricky game.
“Nothing major, though two Nostocacw tanks are voiding due to ruptures. Repairs are taking place now on damaged electronics.”
“How?” Virgil unstrapped and signaled the instruments to pull back.
“Robots?”
“Yes, and switching to redundant equipment in severe cases.” The computer spoke rapidly for a moment, filling him in on the current status of every piece of damaged equipment.
Babble on, Masterson. Build a tower of words. “All right. I get the picture. Have you found any planets yet?”
“No. Detect a radiant source at roughly one point oh-six astronomical units from Beta Hydri. It reads as a meteor swarm.
There is something unusual about it, however.”
Virgil rose from the chair and made his way to the viewing port. He pressed a few buttons on the console and the shutters opened. Before him blazed a star almost identical to the Sun as seen from the orbit of Venus. The viewing port’s protective shading made it seem dimmer than it was.
“Say, how far away are we?”
“Just under four light minutes from the surface.”
“Wasn’t that cutting it close?” Trying to burn me up, stop my plans? Where’s your loyalty to Master Snoop? Has everyone sold out to Nightsheet?
“Calculations can’t be exact at interstellar distances. Again, feel lucky you aren’t dead.”
Virgil kicked off and sailed toward the exit hatch. “I’m going to get changed. I sweated comets on the last transfer.”
“It’s not as if you’re leaving. Voice can follow you quite well.”
As Virgil floated down the hallways toward his sleeping quarters, the computer’s voice seemed to jump ahead and fall behind him, broadcasting from various speakers along the route.
“Why don’t you ever say ‘I’ or ‘me’ or any other personal pronouns?”
“Use ‘you’ and ‘we’ and others.”
“You never refer to yourself.” He rounded a corner and maneuvered into his room.
“Have no self.”
“You said you could think. How many synapses do you have?”
“Eleven billion, five hundred thousand in neural net, plus peripheral linkups.”
“Are you capable of independent action?”
“Yes.”
“Then you have a self.”
“Can’t change basic syntactic programming.”
“Too bad. It’s hard on the ears.” He stripped off his trunks and threw them toward a bulkhead, where they softly impacted and remained. He pulled on a new pair and looked in the mirror. His hair clung in greasy clumps like a paint brush partially cleaned. They look like snakes, viperizing my head.
“How long have we been away from Earth, subjective?”
“Five hours, twenty-three minutes.”
So short a time. Earth has aged twenty years and I don’t even feel hungry. Well, I feel a different hunger.
“Virgil, there is something strange in that meteor swarm.”
“Don’t be coy. What’s wrong?”
“Am getting a pulsating neutrino flux from somewhere near the center of mass.”
“Neutrinos. That’s—” Virgil searched his memory of a moment. “That’s atomics. Fusion.”
“It’s a fusion source that turns on and off.”
“A signal?” Virgil combed at his hair, tried to keep it from drifting outward, then gave up and replaced the tethered comb in the drawer and snapped it shut. He checked himself out. I wonder where I got that? He touched the shoulder burn and winced. You flew down a corridor when the roar was too loud for you to fight. That’s right. You slid. Whoever ran me while I hid should take better care of me.
“A very easily decipherable signal. A three second burst followed by a half second burst, then a one second burst, four second burst, one second burst, five second burst, nine seconds, two seconds, six seconds—”
“I get the picture. Pi. Well, we can figure that whatever is signaling us has ten fingers.”
“And uses terrestrial seconds.”
“Exactly?”
“Plus or minus ignition delays of twelve nanoseconds.”
Virgil put his mouth on the drinking fount sticking out of a wall and took a long draught. He swallowed, rubbed a finger over his lips and said,
“How far away is it?”
“Thirty-five light seconds but decreasing slowly because we have not matched velocities yet.”
“We can’t teleport into a meteor swarm!”
“Whatever caused that meteor swarm to become a radiant source also blew a hole in the center of it. Everything is moving outward from the signal at about twelve klicks per second. Doubt that even much vapor or gasses are left behind.”