Rogue Moon

“And you have to have that? Total control?”

“I have to have that.”

“So Latourette’s got to go. Just like that. Six months ago, he had to stay. Just like that.”

“He’s the best man for the job. I know him better than I know Gersten. That’s why I want Gersten now — he hasn’t been my friend for ten years, the way Sam has.”

Cobey caught his lower lip between his teeth and slowly pulled it free without relaxing the pressure. He leaned forward and tapped a memorandum pad with the end of his pen. “You know, Hawks,” he said, “this can’t go on. This began as a simple Navy research contract. All we were was the hardware supplier, even if you did initiate the deal. Then the government found that thing on the Moon, and then there was all that trouble, and suddenly we’re not just working with a way to transmit people, we’re operating as an actual installation, we’re fooling around with telepathy, we’ve got men dead and men psychotic, and you are in it up to your ears.

“I came in here one morning, and found a letter on my desk informing me you’re all at once a Navy commander and in charge of operating and maintaining the installation. Meaning you’re in a position to demand from us, as a Naval officer, any equipment you, as one of our engineers, decide the installation needs. The Board of Directors won’t tell me the basis for the funds they’ve allocated. The Navy tells me nothing. You’re supposed to be a ConEl employee, and I don’t even know where your authority stops — all I know is ConEl money is being spent against the day when the Navy might pay us back, if Congress doesn’t cut the armed services budget so that they can’t, under the terms of the research contract — which, for all I know, has been superseded under the terms of some obscure paragraph in the National Defense Acts. All I do know is that if I run Continental into the red so deep it can’t get out, I’ll be out on my ear for the stockholders to be happy over.”

Hawks said nothing.

“You didn’t make the system I’ve got to work with,” Cobey said. “But you’ve sure as hell exploited it. I don’t dare give you a direct order. I’m dead sure I couldn’t fire you outright if I wanted to. But my job is ru

Hawks stood up and turned away. He walked slowly toward Cobey’s door. “Can I, or can I not release Sam to Waxted and promote Gersten?”

Cobey scrawled a note on his memo pad with jabbing strokes of his pen. “Yes!”

Hawks’ shoulders slumped. “All right, then,” he said, and closed the door behind him.

4

When he returned to the laboratory, Barker had been fitted with the first of his undersuits and was sitting on the edge of the dressing table, smoothing the porous silk over his skin, with talcum powder showing white at his wristlets and around the turtle neck. The undersuit was bright orange, and as Hawks came up to him Barker said, “I look like a circus acrobat.”

Hawks looked at his wrist watch. “We’ll be ready for the scan in about twenty minutes. I want to be with the transmitter test crew in five. Pay attention to what I’m going to tell you.”

“Lunch disagree with you, Doctor?”

“Let’s concentrate on our work. I want to tell you what’s going to be done to you. I’ll be back later to ask you if you want to go through with this, just before we start.”

“That’s very kind.”

“It’s necessary. Now, listen: the matter transmitter analyzes the structure of whatever is presented to its sca

“The process is painless and, as far as your consciousness is concerned, instantaneous. It takes place at the speed of light, and neither the electrochemical impulses which transmit messages along your nerves and between your brain cells, nor the individual particles constituting your atoms, nor the atoms in their individual movements, travel at quite that rate.

“Before you could possibly be conscious of pain or dissolution, and before your atomic structure could have time to drift out of alignment, it will seem to you as if you’ve stood still and the universe has moved. You’ll suddenly be in the receiver, as though something omnipotent had moved its hand, and the electrical impulse that was a thought racing between your brain cells will complete its journey so smoothly that you will have real difficulty, for a moment, in realizing that you have moved at all. I’m not exaggerating, and I want you to remember it. It’ll be important to you.

“Another thing to remember is that you won’t actually have made the journey. The Barker who appears in the receiver has not one atom in his body that is an atom in your body now. A split second ago, those atoms were part of a mass of inorganic material lying near the receiver. The Barker who appears was created by manipulating those atoms — stripping particles out of some, adding particles to others, like someone robbing Peter to pay Paul.

“It makes no functional difference — this is in theory, remember — that the Barker who appears is only an exact duplicate of the original. It’s Barker’s body, complete with brain cells duplicating the arrangement and electrical capacities of the originals. This new Barker has your memories, complete, and even the memory of the half-completed thought that he finishes as he stands there. But the original Barker is gone, forever, and his atoms have been converted into the energy that drove the transmitter.”

“In other words,” Barker said, “I’m dead.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, that’s what you promised me.”

“No,” Hawks said. “No,” he repeated slowly, “that’s not the thing I promised you. Theoretically, the Barker who appears in the receiver could not be distinguished from the original in any way. As I said in the begi

“You’ll have a clear memory of being put into the suit, of being wheeled into the transmitter, of feeling the chamber magnetic field suspending your suit with you inside it, of the lights being turned out, and of drifting down to the chamber floor and realizing you must be in the receiver. No, Barker,” Hawks finished, nodding to the dressing team, which came forward with the cotton underwear and the rubberized pressure suit Barker would wear next to his armor. “When I kill you, it’ll be in other ways. And you’ll be able to feel it.” He walked away.

He came up to where Sam Latourette was checking over the transmitter, and raised his arm, but stopped himself before putting it around the man’s shoulders. “How’s it going, Sam?” he asked.

Latourette looked around. “Well,” he said slowly, “it’s transmitting the test objects perfectly.” He nodded toward the attendant cradling an anesthetized spider monkey in his arms. “And Jocko’s been through the transmitter and out the receiver here five times. The scan checks perfectly with the tape we made on the first shot today, and within the statistical expectation of drift from yesterday’s tape. It’s the same old Jocko every time.”