Destination: Void

Timberlake told her.

"Three dead?" she said. She didn't ask how they had died. The other problem, the contingency for which she had been prepared, took precedence over mere curiosity.

"Bickel requested you be brought out of hyb," Flattery said.

"Does he know why?" she asked, ignoring the strange look Timberlake shifted from her to Flattery.

"He rationalized it," Flattery said, and he wished she'd withheld these questions until they were alone.

"Of course he did," she said. "But has -"

"He hasn't posed the problem yet," Flattery said.

"Don't push him," she said, and glanced at Timberlake. "Forget what you just heard here, Tim."

Timberlake scowled, suddenly withdrawn and wary.

Flattery bent over her right arm with a slapshot hypo in his hand.

"Must you?" she asked. Then: "Yes, of course."

"There's nothing for you to do right now except recuperate," he said, and pressed the slapshot against her arm.

She felt the mechanism's kick and, presently, the soft spread of narcosis. Flattery and Timberlake became wavering figures haloed in light.

At least Bickel is still alive, she thought. We do not have to replace him with a backup - take second best.

And just before sinking into the downy cloud of sleep, she wondered: How did Maida die? Lovely Maida who...

Timberlake watched the film of withdrawal wash over her light blue eyes. Her breathing took on soft regularity.

As life-systems specialist, Timberlake had checked the computer-filed tape flag for every person on the Tin Egg. He recalled now that Prudence Lon Weygand was classed superb as a surgeon - "Superior 9 in tool facility." And the scale went only to 10. He reflected now on her strange conversation with Flattery and realized the tape had not told the full story. She obviously had ship functions beyond surgeon-ecologist... and at least one of these functions concerned Bickel.

"Forget what you just heard here, Tim."

Timberlake could still hear that cold-voiced command and he knew it did not square with the emotional index on Prudence Lon Weygand's tapes. There, she was listed as "Place nine-d green" on the compassionate vector. In the close-quarters living of this umbilicus crew, that emotional index posed problems because of its tightly linked sex drive. With a sense of shock, Timberlake took a closer look at her feed-tube spectrum on the hyb chart, saw that she had been fed the sex-suppressant anti-S drugs even under hyb. She had been kept ready.

Ready for what? he asked himself.

Flattery closed and locked her litter cocoon, said: "She'll sleep until she's almost back to normal. We'd better get her a full-vac suit out of stores. She'll need it when she comes out."

Timberlake nodded, made a last check on the few remaining life-systems linkages into her litter. Flattery was acting very odd - mysterious.

"You can ignore all that conversation as she woke up," Flattery said. "Common dehyb confusion. You know how it is."

But she was fed anti-S drugs in hybernation, Timberlake thought.

Flattery nodded toward the hatch into Com-central, said: "John's been almost four hours alone on the board. Time he got some relief."

Timberlake finished his inspection of the litter gauges, turned, led the way through the hatch.

Seeing the wary, thoughtful look on Timberlake's face, Flattery thought: Damn that woman's big mouth. If Tim says the wrong thing to Bickel now it could muddy the whole project.

CHAPTER 4

The legal status of the clone as property ca

BICKEL HEARD Flattery and Timberlake enter Com-central, but was forced to keep his attention on the big board. An odd timed pulse had appeared in the primary loops of the navigational analogue banks of the computer. It appeared and vanished with no apparent cause. Each oddity of computer function forced a review of that basic question: Why had the OMCs failed?

Was this strange pulse a thing for which the brains were unprepared? How could it be when every last OMC circuit tested open-and-operating?

The answer to the OMC failure lay in the psychological area, Bickel felt. The seat of the problem was in that one place where they could not stick their probes - in the gray matter that once had been part of a human.

Well, I know how we have to tackle this mess, Bickel thought. But will the others go along?

Bickel heard Flattery slide onto his own action couch, risked a glance at the man. Flattery might be difficult to handle. Flattery was an M.D. and ship-trained, yes. He could stand a watch, repair the simpler servos and sensors, and obey the ordinary precautions that spelled out life-systems security. There was another Flattery, though: the psychiatrist-chaplain. To Bickel, the psychiatrist half of the man suggested special usefulness, but the enigma of the chaplain offered only mysticism and open-end arguments.

I never know which mask Flattery's wearing, Bickel thought. He wished then there could have been a way to avoid having a chaplain on the Tin Egg. But there had been no way; the world's religious millions paid an enormous amount of taxes. The psychiatrists, in training Flattery and his backups, had approached the job sincerely. They had had little choice. It had been a long time since psychiatrists denied they served a witch-doctor function... and the step from witch doctor to divine was a short one.

Timberlake came up beside Bickel, studied the gauge which showed the timed pulse in the navigational analogue banks.

"That acts like a Doppler reference pulse from the time log," he said. "You been checking our position?"

"No," Bickel said, and as he spoke, the answer to this variant pulse clicked home in his mind. He had set up a telltale warning net in the computer to alert him when ship damage reached a critical point. Damage to the navigational system could be most critical - especially internal damage. But unlike destruction of hardware, that internal damage would only betray itself by position errors. His telltale circuitry had alerted one of the ship computer's master programs. A ru

Bickel shifted to the computer board, ran a series trial on the navigational loops, read the induced resonance off the pulsing gauges. It checked.

He explained what was happening.

"The computer acts... almost... human," Flattery said.

Bickel and Timberlake exchanged a knowing smile. Almost human, indeed! The damn thing merely was doing what it was designed to do.

"We'd better take the computer schematics and the design specs and have a real skull session on what the lack of an OMC may be doing to it," Timberlake said.

Bickel nodded. He was thankful then that Timberlake was, in many respects, as good an electronics man as anyone on the ship - the necessary foundation for his specialty. There was always that almost qualification on his abilities, though. Life-systems work trapped men into a "generalist" corner. They knew plenty of biophysics, but they were not doctors. They were adept in electronics, but fell short of that smooth juggling of variables which marked the creative engineer.

"You ready for a break, John?" Flattery asked.

"Anytime. How's Prue?"

"Doctor Weygand is asleep now," Flattery said. "She needs a few more hours recuperation."

Why is he so formal? Bickel wondered. Raj must know I shared classes with her. She was always Prue then. Why should she suddenly be Doctor Weygand?