inconvenient."
"I feel sick," she said.
ESAIRS XII: 24-2-'17
"You're okay now, huh?" the President said, wrinkling his pug
nose. "No more of that crap about dryin' up our juice?"
"No, sir, no." Lindsay shook his head, shivering. "I'm better
now."
"Good enough. Untie him, Rep Two."
The woman undid Lindsay's ropes, uncoupling him from the
cavern wall.
"I lost it," Lindsay said. "I can see that now, but when those
suppressants hit me, everything just went crystal clear. Seam-
less."
"That's okay for you, but we have marriages," Senator 1 said
sternly. He clutched the hand of Rep 1.
"I'm sorry," Lindsay said, rubbing his arms. "They're all under
slats, waving whip thin antennae as long as a forearm. Fazil
snatched his hand back with a hiss of disgust. Lindsay made a
quick grab at the roach but missed.
"Filthy," Fazil muttered. "Help me with the head."
Lindsay followed him into the workshop. Together, they
heaved and wrestled the massive head out into the corridor. It
was a tight fit in the narrow tunnel. "Maybe we should grease
it," Lindsay said.
"Paolo's face isn't going into eternity with a snotty nose," said
Fazil. He blew out the candle and resealed the workshop. He
pushed the sculpture ahead of him, toward the launch ring.
Lindsay followed, towing the crate.
The route was devious, traversing gnawed-out rock veins where the air was stale. The ring's loading dock was near the surface of the asteroid, set in one wall of ESAIRS' major industrial center.
Here, next to the launch ring, they manufactured the decoys.
The decoy complex was a grapelike cluster of fermentation
bags, connected by flaccid hydraulic tubes, anchored with guy
ropes and ringed by harsh banks of bluish grow-lights. The
cluster hung in midair, its translucent chambers churning sluggishly.
The complex had not been shut down completely; that would
have killed the wetware. But its production was cut almost to
nothing. The blowpipes had been unplugged from their output
duct into the launch ring. Instead of thin decoy film, they were
producing a thick, colorless froth. The air reeked with the sharp
fever stench of hot plastic.
The Family's robot was on duty. It stopped in mid-program as
Fazil floated past it, clutching the head. As Lindsay drifted by,
the robot crouched quietly, a powder bellows gripped in its
forward manipulators. Its huge single eye tilted to follow him in
movement, with a ratchetlike clicking.
The robot was all wires and joints, its six skeletal limbs made
of lightweight foamed metal. It was bigger than Lindsay. Its
brain and motor were shielded in its torso, behind barrel-like
ribs. The forward end held the sensors and two long, jointed
pincer arms. A cross-shaped junction of four swiveling limbs
sprouted from its aft end, set that way for work in free-fall. It
had a rotary spindle tail for drilling.
The robot lacked the smoothness of a Mech unit, but there was an alarming liveliness about it. It was like an animated skeleton,
a vivisected animal stripped down to jumpy knee-jerk reflex.
When Lindsay drifted out of range, the robot clicked back into
motion, kicked off a wall, and plugged its bellows into the wet
duct of a fermentation bag.
Fazil crawled over the head and caught it against the wall.
The launching ring had an airlock of translucent plastic. Fazil
plucked a tightly wrapped green spacesuit from the wall and
shook it out. He zipped himself into it and unzipped the airlock
wall. He stepped inside.
Lindsay passed him the crate.
Fazil zipped the airlock shut and opened the loading chamber.
A curved rectangular section of wall slid up on spring-loaded
exterior hinges. Air gusted out into the vacuum of the launch
ring. The airlock's flimsy walls sucked in, clinging like soap film
to an interior support trellis.
Five huge roaches and a cloud of smaller ones burst from the
crate's interior, kicking in the vacuum. Fazil shrieked silently
behind his transparent faceplate. He batted around his head as
the roaches convulsed, their paper-thin wings beating in crip-
pled angles. Decompression bloated their abdomens. Froth
oozed from their joints and rumps.
A roach clung vomiting to the plastic, near Lindsay's face. It
had been eating something within the crate. Something viscous
and red.
Faint wisps of steam were coming from the crate. Fazil didn't
notice; he was swatting the roaches out into the launch ring.
Fazil stepped through the hatchway into the ring and pulled
the crate after him. He wrestled it into the launch cage.
He emerged, then knocked the last of the dead insects through the chamber hatch and locked it shut. A green ready-light came on as the hatch door sealed the circuit. An LED raced through
numbers as launch power hit the magnets.
Fazil pulled the entrance zipper and air rushed in. The plastic
airlock flapped like a sail. Fazil climbed out, shaking. His
shouts were muffled by the suit. "Did you see that?" He pulled
his own zip down to mid-chest. "What was in there? What were
they eating?"
"I didn't see them pack the crate," Lindsay said. "Could have
been anything."
Fazil examined the smeared sleeve of his suit. "Looks like
blood."
Lindsay leaned closer. "Doesn't smell like blood."
"This is evidence," Fazil said, tapping the suit.
Lindsay was thoughtful. The pirates had lied to him. They had
tried to be clever, as clever as the Shapers. They had tried to make someone disappear. "It might the best, Fazil, if we
launched that suit."
"Have you seen lan today?" Fazil said.
"I wasn't looking for him."
They eyed one another. Lindsay said nothing. Fazil glanced
quickly, warily, over one shoulder at the LED. "It's launched
away," he said.
"If you'll launch the suit," Lindsay said, "I'll scrub the inside
of the airlock."
"I'm not launching this suit with the head," Fazil said.
"You could feed in into one of the chambers," Lindsay said,
pointing. "The fermentation vats." He thought fast. "If you'll do
that, I'll help you set this complex to full capacity. You can
make decoys again." Lindsay pulled another suit from the wall
and shook it out. "We'll launch the head. We'll dump the suit.
We'll do those two things first, and then we'll talk. All right?"
The moment to attack was when Lindsay had his legs half
trapped in the suit. That moment passed, and once again Lind-
say knew he had bought time.
He and Fazil manhandled the head into the airlock. Fazil
zipped the lock shut behind the two of them. Lindsay opened
the rectangular hatch.
Light spilled into the launch ring's glassy interior, gleaming off
its inset copper tracks. The iron bars of the launch cage shone
with a faint rime of condensed steam from the body that had
been within the crate.
Lindsay stepped into the launch ring. He shoved the head
within the cage and set the clamps.
Fazil's shadow passed across the light. He was slamming the
hatch. Lindsay wheeled and jumped.
He got his right arm through. The hatch door bounded off
flesh and bone and Lindsay's suit began at once to fill with
blood.
Lindsay snarled as he jammed his head and shoulders past the
hatch. He snagged Fazil's leg with his left hand. His fingertips
dug deep into the socket of the Shaper's ankle and he smashed
the man's shin against the sharp edge of the hatch. Bone grated
and Fazil, levered backward, lost his grip.