“I don’t have three months, I don’t care about my hand. I want—want—” Death Angel must be old and dead, taken by Nightsheet for services rendered. Time. Press a button and it’s gone, eaten up. I don’t have time. Time on my hands. Hand.
He touched his lower lip with his right hand and bent it inward so that it rubbed against his teeth. He slid the fold of skin back and forth several times, thinking, then let go of it to speak.
“You’re saying there’s no limit on my individual transfers now?”
“None.”
“Can the cloning unit be disconnected from the medical bay and the computer?”
“It has emergency modular functioning; it can be.”
“Can it be fitted into a lifeboat and set adrift?”
“Yes.”
He sat up in the bed, fighting the forces that doubled his vision. “Then let’s put it in, transfer out a distance of six light weeks and transfer back.”
Silent for a moment, the computer replied, “Acceptable. When you have recovered.”
“I’m recovered.” He stripped the sheets from the bed to stand. “And uncovered. Let’s go.” Rising so quickly in the half-gravity acceleration was enough to pull him to the deck in a faint. He bounced lightly once and lay still. If the computer could have cursed, it would have.
He awoke, rested and refreshed.
“My name is Virgil Grissom Kinney. Wake up, Ben!” He tried to slap his chest, but only one hand hit. The stump of the other thumped as on a watermelon. “I’m ready to go.”
“You should be. You’ve slept for over fourteen hours. The lifeship has been powered to full capacity, the cloning tank and peripherals have been fitted out for independent functioning, and your trunks have been washed.”
Virgil slid out of the bed in one motion, then slowed and lowered his feet to the deck, standing up with easy care. He reached for his trunks and realized he still had no left hand.
Picking them up in his right hand, he turned to the speaker and asked, “Can you cut the acceleration for a moment?” He listened for the sudden silence that accompanied the cessation of gravity. Like a mild roar, I get used to the engines. He found it easier to slip into the trunks when not having to worry about falling.
“How’s the rest of the ship?”
“I have put power on in the passages to the medical bay and the lifeship—temperature and pressure normal. All other sections are losing heat at a rate of three degrees temperature per hour.”
Virgil headed toward the exit. “Meet you in the bay.” He kicked down one level to examine the cloning unit. As big as two coffins. Are you inside, Death Angel? Or are you cold and gone? Do you want me back in the reaches of Nightsheet?
Robots had disconnected the cloning unit from the bulkhead. Virgil pushed it slowly toward the hatchway, weightlessness making it easier for him to jockey the parcel about. In the curving corridor, he gave the unit a strong shove, then walked along the deckplates with the mass of aluminum and electronics over his head, pushing it away from the walls, bending its trajectory until he reached the other side of Ring One.
The steel cylinders fit easily into the hold of the lifeship, so he fastened the unit to one wall, flipped on the ship’s power switches, flitted out, and sealed it up.
“How’s she check?” he asked, floating out of the airlock and into the observation booth.
“Ready to cast off.”
“Do it,” The air cycled out of the lock and the doors slid open. Huge steel hand cradles the silvery wedge and shoves it
out into the stars. Good move. I press a button and time passes. Press a button and Death Angel is gone forever. Pretty Death Angel wraps herself up in her wings and flies away.
The command chair in the superstructure was as he had left it. He strapped in.
“I want the ship to be on full alert and at battle readiness both times we transfer. The instant we return here, we locate the lifeship, bring it onboard, and transfer to one of the habitable planet’s vicinities. Got it?”
The computer answered, “I’d thought of all that already. Stand by to transfer.”
“Do you really need me to press the button? You can transfer without my help, can’t you?”
“Yes. However, the construction plans include it as a check on the pilot. To let me know you’re still there.”
“Transfer,” Virgil said, folding his arms. One fewer tab for Master Snoop to keep on me. One fewer thing to do each time before I die and die and die and die...
Death Angel, why do you curse me? I never thought I’d die a thousand times for anyone, but here I float in blackness, just dead and ready to die again and again and—
“Stand by—transferring.”
Delia, I can’t take it any more. I can only die so many times.
PROGRESS REPORT: DAY 17 AREA: MEDICAL
SUBJECT IN SECOND WEEK OF COMA.
LEFT HAND GRAFT SUCCESSFUL, NO COMPLICATIONS, NOT TO BE CONSIDERED CAUSE OF COMATOSE STATE.
PULSE: 48/MIN—STEADY BLOOD PRESSURE: 87/55/53 MMHG—STEADY
CORE BODY TEMP: 36.1°C—STEADY
MASS: 63.5 KG—DROPPING
EEG: RANDOM ACTIVITY
CONTINUE GLUCOSE I-V
PROGRESS REPORT: DAY 17 AREA: PLANET STUDY—EPSILON INDI-3, CURRENTLY IN ORBIT.
ATMOSPHERE: N2—55.3% O2—41% CO2—3.1% + TRACES: XE,
KR, HE, HJSO4, CO, CH4.
MASS: 6.32 x 1027GM
AVERAGE SURFACE TEMP: 28O°K
SURFACE: LAND—44.2% WATER + ICE—55.8%.
SANGER PROBE OF HIGH I-R AREAS INDICATE LIFE. PROBE INTERCEPTED AND DESTROYED BY CHEMICAL EXPLOSIVE MISSILE. SUGGEST EXTREME CAUTION IN FUTURE CONTACT. FURTHER ACTION PENDING CONDITION OF PILOT. CONTINUING ATTEMPT TO DETECT RADIO EMISSIONS.
Memories wash like gentle waves on a great lake. I see Jenine leaving me, wasting away for no reason I could fathom. Three years and suddenly nothing. As though in an instant, as though I had jumped in time a hundred years. She leaves, and I climb into my powersuit, fly all night. Wind stings my face, the engine warms my back through the insulation. I play chicken with unsuspecting fliers. The thrill of near death tingles. I feel alive. Sunrise and I hit El Capitan at the same time. Dawn makes a much bigger splash. The granite eats into my face, buries itself under my shoulder and back. I slide. I hear bones snap and pierce through skin and suit like sticks breaking inside a sausage. Sunshine warms the blood soaking me. A shadow blocks the light and I am lifted, the feeling of release dragged from me. Lifted high and rebuilt, to try again.
They save me every time. Strangers, all tied into Master Snoop’s network. They’re keeping me alive for something, I think. For what?
This. What this? Mad Wizard. Circus Galacticus. Valliardi. You’re a pawn of Master Snoop, who’s using you against himself. You are Nightsheet’s agent, returning to take vengeance on Mad Wizard for burning you from his burnall spear.
Returning? To what?
Earth.
For what? She’ll be lost, dead, old and gone before I can reach her.
She had something to tell you.
But I didn’t hear it! Mad Wizard left before I could. I could. I could.
“Delia!”
“I just feel hungry as hell, is all,” Virgil said, finishing the last bit of chicken on his plate and throwing the bones into the recycling chute.
“As long as you don’t give yourself colic.”
Virgil belched. “I’m sure you have an injection for it, if you can scare up one of those robots I never see to administer it.” Hidden robots that move only when I don’t look. Sneakiest of Snoop’s agents, they hide in the walls, watching. “Have you finished calculating a transfer back to Earth?”
“Yes, but there is a prior program restriction on return to the Solar System.”
“I thought all your restrictions were eliminated.” He caught a bone that had drifted backward out of the chute and threw it back in. With his left hand, still in bandages, he held a piece of cloth that had been knotted up into a wad the size of a handball. He worked his fingers across it with gentle pressure, exercising constantly.