“Yourself-maybe.” Healey sounded as if he didn’t want to unbend even that much. More grudgingly still, he explained, “Cold sleep. If you’re not going to be too old by the time the ship finally flies, you’d better go under now. It’s still a new technique-nobody’s quite sure you’ll wake up by the time you get to where you’re needed.” He spoke with a certain somber relish.
“Why me, sir?” Johnson asked. “Why not Flynn or Stone? They’re both senior to me.” Nobody had intended the Lewis and Clark to have three pilots. If he hadn’t involuntarily joined the crew, the ship wouldn’t have.
“This would be in addition to them, not instead of,” Healey said. “Two reasons for having you along at all. First one is, you’re the best at fine maneuvering we’ve got. All that time in orbital missions and trundling back and forth on the scooter means you have to be. Do you say otherwise?” He scowled a challenge.
“No, sir.” Johnson didn’t point out that piloting a starship was different from anything he’d done before. Piloting a starship was different from anything anybody had done before.
Healey went on, “Second reason is, you’ll be on ice and out of everybody’s hair from the time you go under till you wake up again-if you wake up again. And then you’ll be a good many light-years from home-too many for even you to get yourself into much trouble.” The scowl got deeper. “I hope.”
“Sir, the only place I’ve ever made trouble is inside your mind.” Johnson had been insisting on that ever since he came aboard the Lewis and Clark. While it wasn’t strictly true, it was his ticket to keep on breathing.
By the way Lieutenant General Healey eyed him, he wondered how much that ticket was worth. “You are a lying son of a bitch,” Healey said crisply. “Do you think I believe your capsule had a genuine electrical failure? Do you think I don’t know you were talking with Sam Yeager before you poked your snoot into our business here?”
Ice that had nothing to do with cold sleep walked up Johnson’s back. “Why shouldn’t I have talked with him?” he asked, since denying it was plainly pointless. “He’s only the best expert on the Lizards we’ve got. When I was doing orbital patrol, I needed that kind of information.”
“He was such an expert on the goddamn Lizards, he turned Judas for them,” Healey said savagely. “For all I know, you would have done the same. Indianapolis’ blood is on his hands.”
How much of the Lizards’ blood is on our hands? Johnson wondered to himself. We pulled a Jap on them, attacked without warning-and we attacked colonists in cold sleep, not a naval base. He started to point that out to Healey, then saved his breath. What point? The commandant wouldn’t listen to him. Healey never listened to anybody.
After a deep, angry breath, the three-star general went on, “And I’ll tell you something else, Johnson. Your precious Yeager is on ice these days, too.”
“On ice? As in cold sleep?” Glen Johnson knew the question was foolish as soon as the words were out of his mouth.
“Yes, as in cold sleep.” Healey nodded. “If he hadn’t decided to do that, he might have ended up on ice some other way.” His eyes were cold as ice themselves-or maybe a little colder.
He didn’t say anything more than that. He just waited. What’s he waiting for? Johnson wondered. He didn’t have to wonder long. He’s waiting to make sure I know exactly what he’s talking about. Figuring that out didn’t take long, either. Slowly, Johnson asked, “Sir, are you saying I’m liable to end up on ice some other way if I don’t go into cold sleep?”
“I didn’t say that,” Healey answered. “I wouldn’t say that. You said that. But now that you have said it, you’d better think about it. You’d better not think about it very long, either.”
Lots of ways to have an unfortunate accident back on Earth. Even more ways to have one out here in space. Would people on the crew be willing to help me have an unfortunate accident? Johnson didn’t even need to wonder about that. Lieutenant General Healey had plenty of people aboard who would obey orders just because they were orders. Johnson was damn good at what he did and he had some friends, but he couldn’t stay awake twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. He couldn’t keep an eye on all the equipment he might have to use all the time. If Healey wanted him dead, dead he would be, and in short order.
Which meant… “You talked me into it,” he said. “You’re persuasive as hell, sir, you know that?”
“So glad you’re pleased,” Healey said with a nasty grin. “And just think of all the interesting things you’ll see eleven light-years from here.”
“I’m thinking of all the things I’ll never see again,” Johnson answered. Healey smirked, an expression particularly revolting on his hard, suspicious face. Johnson went on, “The one I’ll be gladdest never to see again, I think, is you. Sir.” He pushed off and glided out of the commandant’s office. If they were going to hang him tomorrow anyway, what difference did what he said today make?
It turned out not to be tomorrow. A doctor came out from Earth to do the dirty work. Calculating the cost of that, Johnson realized just how badly they wanted him on ice and on his way to Tau Ceti. All that sprang to mind was, If it weren’t for the honor of the thing, I’d rather walk.
“Are you ready?” asked the doctor, an attractive woman named Blanchard.
“If I say no, will you turn around and go back?” Johnson asked.
She shook her head. “Not me. I’ll just hold you down and give you the treatment anyhow.” She could do it, too. All the work in the ship’s gymnasium and on the exercise bike couldn’t make up for Johnson’s being out of a gravity field the past twenty years. Dr. Blanchard was undoubtedly stronger than he was.
He rolled up a sleeve and bared his arm. “Do your worst.”
She did. He felt hot first, then nauseated, then dizzy. His heart slowed in his chest; his thoughts slowed in his head. This must be what dying is like, he realized. Had something gone wrong-or right? He stopped thinking altogether before he could finish shaping the question.
Jonathan Yeager had started shaving his head when he was a teenager. It made him look more like a Lizard, and he’d wanted nothing so much as to be as much like a male of the Race as he could. He still shaved his head here in 1994, though he wasn’t a teenager any more; he’d had his fiftieth birthday the December before. The Race still fascinated him, too. He’d built a good career out of that fascination.
His father had gone into cold sleep seventeen years earlier. Most people thought Sam Yeager was dead. Even now, cold sleep wasn’t much talked about. Back in 1977, it had been one notch higher than top secret. Of the few aware of it nowadays, fewer still knew it had existed that long.
As Jonathan checked the incoming electronic messages on his computer, he muttered under his breath. The mutter wasn’t particularly happy. To this day, people seldom thought of him as Jonathan Yeager, expert on the Race. They thought of him as Sam Yeager’s kid. Even to males and females of the Race, for whom family was much more tenuous than it was for humans, he was Sam Yeager’s hatchling as often as not.
“Not fair,” he said quietly. He was as good with Lizards as anybody breathing. No one had ever complained about his ability. The trouble was, his father had had something more than ability. His father had had precisely the right instincts to think like a male of the Race, instincts that amounted to genius of a highly specialized sort. Even the Lizards admitted as much.
For whatever reasons of background and character and temperament, Jonathan didn’t quite have those same instincts. He was an expert. He was damned good at what he did. It wasn’t the same. It left him stuck being Sam Yeager’s kid. He’d be Sam Yeager’s kid till the day he died.