'Brother, you're not alone,' said Lucas.
'Either way, we're not going to solve anything by sitting around here,' Steiger said.
'Lucas, you sure you don't want to-'
'No, I don't think so,' Lucas said. 'It would only cause one hell of a commotion if I went back with you now and I'd never get away from them. They'd want to debrief me, put me in for observation..' He shook his head. 'No, I could do more good here. '
'Right,' said Delaney. They got up from the table. 'We'll clock back and pick up a couple of floater paks. And while we're at it, “ he said to Luc as, 'we'll report your miraculous survival. Or rather, your non death. Or rebirth or whatever. Hell, we'll just report you as being alive and let them work it out.'
'Uh… on second thought, Finn, maybe you shouldn't mention me just yet, 'said Lucas.
Delaney frowned. 'Why not?'
“Partly because it would cause one hell of a commotion,' Lucas said, 'and I still don't fully understand what's happened to me. Nor can I predict how Dr. Darkness will react when he finds out that the one working prototype of his greatest invention has walked out on him. And I can think of one more reason. With this Network situation that you've described to me, it couldn't hurt to have an ace up your sleeve that no One knows about. '
'Good point, 'said Steiger, nodding. 'All right, then, we'll leave you officially dead for the time being. But we should let the old man know.'
'I agree,' Delaney said.
'All right,' said Lucas. 'You can tell Forrester, but no one else. Oh, and one more thing. Don't mention anything to him about Nikolai Drakov. At least not until we know for sure.'
'I'll go along with that,' said Steiger. 'We'll leave directly from base to check out Gulliver's co-ordinates. If there's an island out there, we'll come right back here and pick up the rest of you. Meanwhile, sit tight.' He checked his disc. 'We'll be clocking back here in about two minutes, your time.' He glanced at Gulliver. 'That means don't move around the room much till we get back, Lem. I'd hate to materialise in the same spot where you were standing.'
'Goodness. What would happen if you did?' asked
Gulliver.
'Believe me, you wouldn't want to know,' said Steiger.
The two men went over to the far side of the room, locked in the transition co ordinates on their warp discs and clocked out. Gulliver stared at the spot where they had stood a second ago and shook his head with amazement.
'It truly is astonishing what one can become accustomed to,' he said. 'I've just seen two people vanish into thin air and here I sit, calm as you please, eating bread and cheese and drinking wine.'
'You've certainly had your share of interesting experiences,' Andre said. 'All things considered, you're bearing up extremely well.'
'What else is one to do?' Gulliver replied… A man can't go jumping out of his skin every time something-Great merciful Heavens!'
He leaped out of his chair, sending it crashing to the floor and spilling wine all over the table as Dr. Darkness suddenly appeared sitting in the chair next to him, one leg casually crossed over the other.
'The Japanese have an old saying,' Darkness said, playing with — his walking stick.
'When one saves another's life, that person becomes responsible for the life he saved.' He grunted. 'The Japanese can be a very irritating people.' He glanced at Gulliver, standing back away from the table and staring at him open mouthed.
'What are you goggling at?'
'I… that is, I… I… ai-yi-yi,' said Gulliver, holding his head with both hands.
'Articulate chap, isn't he?' said Darkness.
'Now listen, Doc,' Lucas began, but Darkness interrupted him.
'No, you listen,' he said. 'Did you think that I went to all that trouble simply so that you could comeback here and continue playing soldier, perhaps get yourself killed again? Is that what comes of all my efforts on your behalf?'
''Doc, I didn't ask you to make any efforts on my behalf! I never asked you to do anything!'
'Indeed? And where would you be right now if I hadn't done anything?'
'Well, dead, presumably, but-'
'Presumably?' said Darkness, arching his eyebrows.
“Nothing presumable about it. You would have been stiff as a carp.' He grunted. “I saved your blasted life for you and what do I get in return? You simply walk out on me, without so much as a by your leave. Would it have been too much trouble to leave a note, at least? 'Dear Dr. Darkness, thank you for saving my life. I am off to make an asshole of myself and perhaps get killed again. Yours in perpetual confusion, Lucas Priest.' It would have taken less than a minute to dash that off.
You couldn't be bothered?'
'Doc, you're starting to sound like my mother,' Lucas said.
'I am your mother, for God's sake! I am both your mother and your father.
I gave you life! Life and an opportunity such as no man has ever had before-'
''Doc, I didn't want it!'
'Well, who asked you?'
''Nobody did, that's just the point!'
'Wait a minute,' Andre said. She turned to Lucas. ''What do you mean, you didn't want it? You'd rather be dead?'
'You stay out of this!'
'I'd listen to her if I were you,' said Darkness.
'Well, you're not me!' Lucas shouted. 'What am I supposed to do, spend the rest of my life like some kind of laboratory animal on that cockamamie desert planet of yours, waiting around for you to perfect your telempathic terminal or whatever the hell it is before you discorporate?'
'I should think that most people would have found it a small enough price to pay for being brought back from the dead,' said Darkness.
'And what happens if you don't perfect it?'
'Don't be absurd. It's already been perfected. It simply requires some fine tuning, a certain amount of training and adaptation on the part of the subject.
Granted, it isn't exactly user friendly, but-'
'User friendly? Are you out of your tree? This damn thing is a time bomb ticking away inside me and I'm stuck with it for rest of my unnatural life, thanks to you!
Did it ever occur to you that I might actually resent being your guinea pig?' He threw his hands up and rolled his eyes. 'God, why am I even bothering trying to explain anything to you? You act as if I had to ask your permission to come back to Earth!'
'You certainly should have,' Darkness said. 'You're a fool, Priest. An astonishingly lucky fool, but a fool nevertheless. It's one thing. to lose your concentration and accidentally translocate to Earth during an idle lapse or while you're dreaming, because in that event, the chronocircuitry computes the co-ordinates from your subconscious and its own inherent database, but to consciously attempt to program a translocation of such magnitude when you're not even certain of the distance was foolhardy in the extreme! Suppose you had mentally tried to program specific transit co-ordinates and overridden the telempathic database function?'
'Well, actually I thought of that, but you said that the telempathic chronocircuitry had a built-in, automatic trip computer or whatever and-'
'My God!' said Darkness. 'And so you blithely flung yourself across two million light years when the furthest you'd ever consciously translocated before was across the room?'
Lucas merely gaped at him.
'Two million light years?' Andre said, in a voice barely above a whisper.
'What… what, pray tell, is a light year?' Gulliver asked, hesitantly.
'A unit of distance, determined by the velocity of the speed of light in a vacuum, which is approximately 186,000 miles per second, measured in miles per hour and multiplied by the number of hours in a year, which yields
