Ubik

“Well, thank god it floated up then,” Wendy Wright said. “Good lord, it’s chilly. The bomb must have put this place’s heating system out of action.” She trembled visibly.

The moving sidewalk carried them forward with shattering slowness; it seemed to Joe that five or more minutes passed before the sidewalk evicted them at the two-stage air-membrane doors. The crawl forward, in some ways, seemed to him the worst part of everything which had happened, as if Hollis had arranged this purposely.

“Wait!” a voice called from behind them; footsteps sounded, and Tito Apostos turned, his gun raised, then lowered.

“The rest of them,” Don De

The co

“De

“And if they are?” De

“Then you come back,” Joe said bitingly, “and tell us and we give up. And then they kill the rest of us.”

Wendy Wright said, “Ask Pat whatever her name is to use her ability.” Her voice was low but insistent. “Please, Joe.”

“Let’s try to get into the ship,” Tito Apostos said. “I don’t like that girl; I don’t trust her talent.”

“You don’t understand her or it,” Joe said. He watched ski

“It’s too late now,” Pat said.

“Why?”

“That’s it. Too much time has passed. I would have had to do it right away.”

“Why didn’t you?” Wendy Wright asked her, with hostility.

Swinging her gaze, Pat eyed her. “Did you think of it? If you did, you didn’t say. Nobody said.”

“You don’t feel any responsibility, then,” Wendy said. “For Runciter’s death. When your talent could have obviated it.”

Pat laughed.

Returning from the ship, Don De

“Okay,” Joe said, motioning to Al Hammond. “Let’s get him into the ship and into cold-pac.” He and Al once more picked up the dense, hard-to-manage body; they continued on into the ship; the inertials scrambled and shoved around him, eager for sanctuary—he experienced the pure physical emanation of their fear, the field surrounding them—and himself too. The possibility that they might actually leave Luna alive made them more rather than less desperate; their stu

“Where’s the key?” Jon Ild shrilled in Joe’s ear as he and Al Hammond stumbled groggily toward the cold-pac chamber. He plucked at Joe’s arm. “The key, Mr. Chip.”

Al Hammond explained, “The ignition key. For the ship. Runciter must have it on him; get it before we drop him into the cold-pac, because after that we won’t be able to touch him.”

Digging in Runciter’s various pockets, Joe found a leather key case; he passed it to Jon Ild. “Now we can put him into cold-pac?” he said with savage anger. “Come on, Hammond; for chrissakes, help me get him into the pac.” But we didn’t move swiftly enough, he said to himself. It’s all over. We failed. Well, he thought wearily, so it goes.

The initial rockets came on with a roar; the ship shuddered as, at the control console, four of the inertials haltingly collaborated in the task of programing the computerized command-receptors.

Why did they let us go? Joe asked himself as he and Al Hammond stood Runciter’s lifeless—or apparently lifeless—body upright in the floor-to-ceiling cold-pac chamber; automatic clamps closed about Runciter’s thighs and shoulders, supporting him, while the cold, glistening with its own simulated life, sparkled and shone, dazzling Joe Chip and Al Hammond. “I don’t understand it,” he said.

“They fouled up,” Hammond said. “They didn’t have any back-up pla

“Before the cold kills us,” Joe said, “let’s get out of this chamber.” He prodded Hammond ahead of him; once outside, the two of them together twisted the locking wheel into place. “God, what a feeling,” he said. “To think that a force like that preserves life. Of a sort.”

Francy Spanish, her long braids scorched, halted him as he started toward the fore section of the ship. “Is there a communication circuit in the cold-pac?” she asked. “Can we consult with Mr. Runciter now?”

“No consultation,” Joe said, shaking his head. “No earphone, no microphone. No protophasons. No half-life. Not until we get back to Earth and transfer him to a moratorium.”

“Then, how can we tell if we froze him soon enough?” Don De

“We can’t,” Joe said.

“His brain may have deteriorated,” Sammy Mundo said, gri

“That’s right,” Joe said. “We may never hear the voice or the thoughts of Glen Runciter again. We may have to run Runciter Associates without him. We may have to depend on what’s left of Ella; we may have to move our offices to the Beloved Brethren Moratorium at Zurich and operate out of there.” He seated himself in an aisle seat where he could watch the four inertials haggling over the correct way to direct the ship. Somnambulantly, engulfed by the dull, dreary ache of shock, he got out a bent cigarette and lit it.

The cigarette, dry and stale, broke apart as he tried to hold it between his fingers. Strange, he thought.

“The bomb blast,” Al Hammond said, noticing. “The heat.”

“Did it age us?” Wendy asked, from behind Hammond; she stepped past him and seated herself beside Joe. “I feel old. I am old; your package of cigarettes is old; we’re all old, as of today, because of what has happened. This was a day for us like no other.”

With dramatic energy the ship rose from the surface of Luna, carrying with it, absurdly, the plastic co