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I’m an ass. I’ll probably be shot at or Vallied the minute I come out the chute, or I won’t be able to hottail it sideways.
He pushed the cryonic unit to the end of the magneplane guideway and left it hovering. He tried not to hyperventilate.
C’mon, there’s got to be a crane or something around here. The engine housing’s big enough to hold the blasted thing, but how do I get the engine out of the way and the-
A vernier rocket stared him in the face. His gaze darted to the low rail on which the escape rocket rested.
Don’t stop to think about it.
He jumped into the cockpit and charged the engines.
Do it now!
The vernier rocket on the starboard side fired, sliding the boat sideways off the track. He laughed and hit the braking rocket. A short impulse shoved the fuselage a few meters backward. He looked behind him and fired the vernier very lightly a couple more times.
Close enough.
The empty port engine pod hung over the cryonic unit. Pieces of the guide rail lay scattered across the floor. He ran back to the unit, powered up the magneplane, and eased the load into the engine housing. With it levitating inside, he closed the pod hatches and locked them.
Finally.
The lifeboat checklist took a minute to run through. The air in his mouthpiece again started to taste stale. The launch ramp doors parted, a star-filled sky appearing ahead of him. He alerted the onboard computer to compensate for the single engine and the different mass of the cryonic unit.
The kick of the starboard engine slammed him back in his seat. He cleared the exit hatch and hottailed across the plain, the rim of the crater nearly a kilometer behind him. When the last liter of oxygen whispered into his lungs, he fought the urge to suck in as much air as he could and held his breath with grim force.
With one free finger he started cycling the air inside the cabin. The pressure rose. With every bit of his concentration centered on holding the boat safely on attitude, he had no chance to unfasten his helmet.
“Circus,” he said with his last exhalation, “this is Baker. Stand by to receive payload.”
Circus’s touchdown area appeared over the short horizon. He stared at the smooth circle of molten rock.
Overhead, in synchronous orbit, hung a score of psychfighters. Baker watched six of the tiny blips vanish from his radar scrim and reappear directly around him. No battleship, though. The anti-matter pod worked. Where is Circus?
He hit the braking rocket and slowed the lifeboat to a gentle landing on the dusty crater floor. The psychfighters landed around him in a threatening circle. Something exploded aft of him and in the control panels.
Vallis!
He reached up to wrestle with his breather. Numb fingers, unable to grasp, fell to his sides.
Swimming in air. And I can’t get to it.
One of the psychfighters hovered over the escape ship, descending. The black of space blurred over Baker’s entire field of vision, his last impressions those of the fighter still a dozen meters overhead and of a clanking sound shaking the boat. He took a last, useless breath.
Going can be so soft. Gentle tugging into black, like an insistent lover urging, drawing, pulling me to that dark bed…
Chapter Eleven
2175
Virgil dreamily traced patterns on his chest. As through a thick haze, he watched the gray and blue form sputter away from him.
So soft. To awaken without screaming because the death was so good. The dead man inside me botched it. I could have changed things, but I stayed to watch. He died so softly, now I float so softly. A tender airflow cools me. This is the quest’s end. No cocoon of gauze to keep me from flying. Naked and adrift.
“Virgil?”
It’s the brave that die a thousand times. They know the quest is worth it. To lie unfettered, free.
“Virgil.”
All yearning past, no shield to seek, I drift uncaring. Gentle white and scent of steel.
“Virgil.”
Sent of steel. Cent stealing. Centuries stolen from me.
“Where am I?” He twisted about. Something blue-gray and tubular vanished through a hatchway. His arm hit a padded handhold and he grabbed tight.
“You are safe, Virgil, but you must get to the medical bay. Delia Trine is in the final stages of resuscitation-”
Delia?
Virgil ran a hand over his bristly scalp. “I saw the vultures close in. I saw what the dead man inside me did. I died with him.”
“Please proceed to the medical bay. You are currently in the recovery room.”
Virgil looked around him. The soft white walls, thickly padded, seemed totally enclosed. A door hissed and opened inward. Virgil kicked off to fly into the next room, the computer bringing him up to date.
“As I transferred an anti-matter pod into the warship to destroy it, the fighters attacked, so I had to transfer out. I left behind a lifeboat with orders to grab any small ship that was not a psychfighter.”
Virgil entered the clean room of the medical bay, where a spray of disinfectant clung to his flesh. Toweling off, he waited for the sensor check. “The psychefighter dropped down on me,” he said. “It would’ve thrown a field around me and transferred out. Back to beyond Pluto.”
“I transferred the lifeboat in between the two of you, grappled the escape ship and transferred out here. I matched velocities and brought you onboard. You were nearing brain death.”
Yanked back again. And I thought it had ended. What do you want from me, Master Snoop? Why not let Nightsheet have his way? Why keep me alive? What code must I break?
The i
Death Angel!
Step forward. No! Get away. No. He leaned back against the doors, his arms hanging weightlessly away from him. The hands twitched, as though trying to explain something to the still body before him.
She doesn’t move. The lights shine off a head balder than mine and wires grow from her chest and temples. Tubes worm in and out of her nose and groin. She is as I was once: a prisoner of Master Snoop. He moved forward one handhold.
Naked and trapped she floats in her glass coffin nestled in funereal foil. Skin so white and pure-soap smooth-
“She’s in a state of coma vigil. When the psychfighters downed your escape boat, they transferred a Valli into either engine pod. The one in the port side demolished the control circuitry and she began to thaw. I sent a robot to her as soon as I determined the situation and initiated normal resuscitation procedures. I do not know if she can be brought out of the coma. I took the liberty of injecting picotechs into her carotid artery in an effort to preserve her mental matrix against degeneration.”
“Coma vigil?”
“Random brain activity. Spontaneous breathing. Periods of semiconsciousness. Delirium. It may be due to the transfer out here.”
“Out where?”
“Tau Ceti.”
“Were we followed?” He moved closer to the capsule.
“They had no idea where we were going. And even if one could have tagged along, there is a practical limit to psychfighter distances. I suspect that a twelve year wait to re-establish contact when the fighter appears is stretching anyone’s patience.”
We’re alone, then. Death Angel and I.
“Wake up!” he whispered to her. No movement disturbed her perfect stillness. Virgil bent over the capsule, locked his feet under the table, and gazed at her closely. An uncontrollable anger welled up inside him.
Death Angel’s mask doesn’t fool me. Like a helmet, she hides behind it, as aware as I am when the dead man inside me takes control.
The layers of metalized Mylar insulation, bent back, crackled like fire under his waist. He leaned closer and raised his hand.