The lights on the control desk were all green.
Everything was ready. Linc got up, pushed through the people lined up in the corridor, and took a final look at the bridge’s countdown screen. It was one of the few left alive. Its yellow numerals glowed in the shadowy half-light of the darkened bridge.
“Magda,” he called. “Time to go.”
She let the mike fall from her hand and followed him to the transmitter room. As they stepped into the room itself, she whispered:
“You’ve given us no choice.”
“That’s right,” he said, leading her to the transmitter booth.
Magda hesitated for only an instant. As Linc swung the booth’s transparent plastic door open, she straightened her back and marched right inside. The people at the front of the Linc watched, goggle-eyed.
“Smile at them,” Linc whispered as he shut the door.
She put on a smile. To Linc it seemed obviously artificial.
He went swiftly to the desk, touched the controls, then let his hand hover over the orange ACTIVATE button. What if something’s wrong? What if the receiver landed in an area where we can’t live? What if I kill her?
“It’s freezing out here,” came a voice from the corridor.
Linc punched the orange button. The transmitter booth flared with a brilliant white-hot light for just an instant, then it was empty.
He stared at it for a moment, then turned to the people at the head of the Linc. They were staring, too.
“Did you see that?”
“She’s gone!”
“It’s magic!”
“All right,” Linc called, suddenly unbearably weary. “Come on. One at a time. To the new world.”
They did as they were told. There was no panic. A few of them were reluctant to enter the booth, obviously frightened. But the others in Linc jeered and joked at them; They all went in, with less than a minute between each one.
Linc operated the controls like an automaton, knowing that the real reason they all stepped blindly into the transmitter booth was not their faith in him or even in Magda. It was their fear of the obvious death of the ship. The bridge lights finally went out completely, leaving only the glowing fluorescent panels of the corridor and transmitter room to give a dim, eerie light. The heat ebbed away, and Linc’s fingers began to go numb as he punched the buttons on the transmitter’s keyboard _over and over again. Twenty times. Thirty. Forty-five. He shuffled his feet and stamped them, sending needles of pain up his legs.
Monel! The thought hit him as he worked the controls. Where is he? Why hasn’t he shown up? It’s not like him to be so quiet.
Slav appeared in the Linc, and Linc waved him over. As the next man stepped into the booth and Linc worked the controls, he asked the broad-faced farmer, “Have you seen Monel?”
“Yes. He’s at the end of the Linc. Him and his five guards.”
“Why is he hanging back at the end of the Linc?” Linc asked.
Slav shrugged. “You want me to wait here with you? In case he tries to make trouble?”
Frowning, Linc shook his head. “No. Go ahead. I’ve kept you here too long already. Get into the booth.”
Slav grinned. “I wouldn’t mind waiting. That… thing… it makes me scary. Big flash and poof, you’re gone.”
Linc smiled back at him. “That’s right.” He hit the orange button and a girl disappeared from the booth. “And poof, you’re on the new world. Now get in there, you big potato brain, before somebody else starts admitting that he’s scared.”
Slav patted Linc on the shoulder and stepped around to the booth. Without a hint of fear he got in and waved to Linc as he flashed into nothingness.
Jayna showed up a few minutes later, smiling nervously. Linc nodded to her and sent her into oblivion also.
He realized that his mind was working against him. I’m not sending them into oblivion. I’m not killing them. I’m giving them life, sending them to the new world.
But still, all he saw was the people he had known all his life disappearing, one by one. Stepping into the transmitter booth—calm or frightened, grinning or tight-lipped—each of them stepping in and allowing him to utterly destroy their bodies.
His hands shook as he thought about it.
The timer on the control desk showed less than four minutes remaining when Monel and his guards came into the transmitter room.
“We’re the last,” Monel said. “There’s no one left behind us.”
“All right.” Linc’s breath puffed steamily as he spoke. “You have to get in one at a time.”
“No,” Monel said. “You’ve tricked the others, but you won’t trick me.”
Somehow, Linc had expected if. “Don’t be an idiot. There’s only a few minutes left.”
But Monel wheeled his chair over to the control desk and leaned his thin, narrow-eyed face next to Linc’s. “You think you’ll keep the whole ship for yourself, don’t you?, Everything for yourself. Well, it won’t work.”
“The ship is dead,” Linc said. “There’s no way—”
Monel smiled. On him, it wasn’t a pleasant thing. “Do you think for an instant that I believe Jerlet would let this ship die?”
“Jerlet’s dead—”
“So you told us. But you said he would return to us some day.
How can he do that if the ship dies?”
“He can’t,” Linc admitted. “He’ll plunge into Baryta with the dead ship. There’s nothing I can do about that.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Linc jabbed a thumb at the timer. “Look! We’ve got slightly more than three minutes to get the seven of us through the transmitter. That’s barely enough time—”
Monel cut through with, “I want you to start turning on the machines again. I want the light and heat back, and all the machines to—”
“I can’t!” Linc said, watching the timer click off the seconds. “Nobody can.”
“You will. None of us are going through that machine. You’re not going to get us to leave.”
Linc looked up at the five guards. They seemed to be solidly agreed with Monel.
“All right,” he said. “Then I’m going… you can have the ship if you want it so badly.” He started to get up.
“You’re not going anywhere!” Monel snapped.
Two of the nearest guards pushed Linc back into his chair.
Three minutes… two fifty-nine —
“There’s no way to bring the ship back to life,” Linc shouted. “I had to dump every bit of power aboard into the transmitter. If we don’t get out of here in the next two and a half minutes, we’re all going to die!”
“You’re bluffing,” Monel said.
Linc clutched at his head. “Bluffing? Look around you, you stupid rat-brain! The machines are already dead. Nothing’s working except the transmitter.”
“You can fix the machines.”
“Don’t you realize how long it took me to fix the bridge? Months! We don’t have months, we only have seconds! The air fans aren’t working anymore. It’s a race to see if we’ll freeze before we suffocate!”
Monel started to shake his head, but Linc pushed himself up out of the chair. To the guards he said, “If he wants to kill himself, that’s fine with me. But he’s killing us, too.”
They shifted on their feet, looked at each other.
“There’s hardly more than a minute left! In one more minute we’re all dead men.”
The guard nearest the transmitter booth started to say, “Maybe…:”
“No!” Monel snapped. “He wants to keep the ship for himself.”
Linc pointed to the guard who had started to speak. “He’s crazy. He wants to die, and he wants to kill us with him. Get into the booth, at least I can save one or two of you.”