Silverman pressed a button on the transmitter, and the lights and air conditioning didn’t goout. Crying with rage, he stuck up his silly gun and fired.
Ian Fleming to the contrary, the small Beretta is a miserable weapon, best suited to use across a desk. But the Law of Chaos worked with Silverman: The slug he aimed at Bill neatly nicked open Colonel Song’s jugular, ricocheted off the wall behind her—the wall opposite Silverman—and smacked into Bill from behind, tumbling him and adding acceleration.
Silverman was not a complete idiot—he had expected greater recoil in free fall and braced for it. But he wasn’t expecting his own slug to bring Bill to him quicker—before he could reaim, Bill smacked into him. Still he retained his grip on the pistol, and everyone in the room jumped for cover.
But by that time I was across the room. I slapped switches, and the lights and air conditioning did go out.
It was simple, then. We had only to wait.
Silverman began to scream first, followed by Dmirov and DeLaTorre. Most humans go a little crazy in total darkness, and free fall makes it much worse. Without a local vertical, as Chen Ten Li had learned when his bedroom lights failed, you are lost. The distress is primeval and quite hard to override.
Silverman hadn’t learned enough about free fall—or else he hadn’t heard the air conditioning quit. He was the only one in the room still velcro’d to a wall, and he was too terrified to move. After a time his screams diminished, became gasps, then one last scream and silence. I waited just a moment to be sure—Song was certainly dead already, but Bill’s condition was unknown—then jaunted back to the switches and cut in lights and air again. Silverman was stuck like a fly to the wall, dying of oxygen lack in a room full of air, an invisible bubble of his own exhalations around his head. The gun drifted a half meter from his outstretched hand.
I pointed, and Harry collected it. “Secure him before he wakes up,” I said, and jaunted to Bill. Linda and Raoul were already with him, examining the wound. Across the room Susan Pha Song drifted limply, and her throat had stopped pumping blood. I had lived with that lady for over a year, and I did not know her at all; and while that had been at least half her idea, I was ashamed. As I watched, eight or ten red softballs met at the air grille and vanished with a wet sucking sound.
“How is he?”
“I don’t think it’s critical,” Linda reported. “Grazed a rib and exited. Cracked it, maybe.”
“I have medical training,” Dmirov, of all people, said. “I have never practiced in free fall—but I have treated bullet wounds before.”
Linda took him to the first aid compartment over by the duckpins and Frisbees. Bill trailed a string of red beads that drifted in a lazy arc toward the grille. Dmirov followed Linda, shaking with rage or reaction or both.
Harry and Tom had efficiently trussed Silverman with weighted jump ropes. It appeared superfluous—a man his age takes anoxia hard; he was sleeping soundly. Chen was hovering near the computer terminal, programming something, and Norrey and DeLaTorre were preparing to tow Song’s body to the dispensary, where grim forethought had placed supplies of embalming fluid.
But when they reached the door, it would not open for them. Norrey checked the indicator, which showed pressure on the other side, frowned, hit the manual override and frowned again when it failed to work.
“I am deeply sorry, Ms. Armstead,” Chen said with sincere regret. “I have instructed the computer to seal off this room. No one may leave.” From behind the terminal he produced a portable laser. “This is a recoilless weapon, and can kill you all in a single sweep. If anyone threatens me, I will use it at once.”
“Why should anyone threaten you, Li?” I asked softly.
“I have come all this way to negotiate a treaty with aliens. I have not yet done so.” He looked me right in the eye.
DeLaTorre looked startled. “Madre de Dios, the aliens—what are they doing while we fight among ourselves?”
“That is not what I mean, Ezequiel,” Chen said. “I believe that Mr. Armstcad lied when Commander Cox asked him if he was still human. We have yet to negotiate terms of mutual coexistence between his new species and our own. Both lay claim to the same territory.”
“How?” Raoul asked. “We have no interests in common.”
“We both propose to eventually populate what is known as human space.”
“But you’re welcome to any of it that’s of any conceivable human value,” Tom insisted. “Planets are no use to us, the asteroids are no use to us—all we need is cubic and sunshine. You’re not begrudging us cubic, are you? Even our scale isn’t that big.”
“If ever Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal lived in peace in the same valley, it took an extraordinary social contract to enforce it,” he insisted. “Precisely because you will need nothing that we need, you will be difficult to live with. As I speak I realize that you will be impossible to live with. Looking down godlike on our frantic scurrying, amused by our terrible urgency—how I hate you already! Your very existence makes nearly every living human a failure; and only those with a peculiar acrobat’s knack for functioning spherically—and the resources to get to Titan!—can hope to strive for success. If you are not an evolutionary dead end, then most of the human race is. No, Stardancers: I do not believe we could ever share the same volume of space with you.”
He had been programming the computer as he spoke, by touch, never taking his full attention from us.
“The world we left behind us was poised on a knife edge. It has been a truism for a long time that if we did not blow ourselves up by the year 2010, the world would be past the crisis point, and an age of plenty would follow. But at the time that we left Earth, the chances of surviving that long were slim, I think you will all agree.
“Our planet is wound to the bursting point with need,” he said sadly. “Nothing could push it more certainly over the edge than the erosion of planetary morale which your existence would precipitate—than the knowledge that there are gods, who have no more heed for Man than Man has for the billions and trillions of sperm and eggs that failed to become gametes. That salvation and eternal life are only for a few.”
Ezequiel was glowering thoughtfully, and so was Dmirov, who had just finished bandaging Bill. I began to reply, but Chen cut me off.
“Please, Charles. I recognize that you must act to preserve your species. Surely you can understand that I must protect my own?”
In that moment he was the most dangerous man I had ever known, and the most noble. With love and deep respect I inclined my head. “Li,” I said, “I concede and admire your logic. But you are in error.”
“Perhaps,” he agreed. “But I am certain.”
“Your intentions?” I knew already; I wanted to hear him state them.
He gestured to the computer terminal. “This vessel was equipped with the finest computer made. Made in Peking. I have set up a program prepared for me before we left, by its designers. A tapeworm program. When I touch the “Execute” key, it will begin to disembowel the computer’s memory banks, requiring only fifteen minutes to complete a total core dump.”
“You would kill us all, like Silverman?” DeLaTorre demanded.
“Not like Silverman!” Chen blazed, reddening with anger. At once he recovered, and half-smiled. “More efficiently, at the very least. And for different reasons. He wished this news communicated only to his own country. I wish it communicated to no one. I propose to disable this ship’s deep-space communications lasers, empty its memory banks, and leave it derelict. Then I shall kill you all, quickly and mercifully. The bomb you call the Planet Cracker has its own guidance system; I can open the bomb-bay doors manually. I do not believe I will bring my pressure suit.” His voice was terrifying calm. “Perhaps the next Earth ship will find the aliens still here, four or five years hence. But Saturn will have eight moons and two Rings.”