Herb paused in shock. The idea had never occurred to him before. Was it true? He didn’t know if he wanted to think about it. He quickly changed his line of thought.
The local scan was complete: all the data were stored within the ship. What he needed now was to access the images without Robert noticing what he was doing. Herb had already planned what he would do.
“Ship, play back the results of the last scan, mapped to a 3-D visual feed in the main viewing area. Random jumps every ten seconds, fifty percent probability space focused around the ship to a radius of ten kilometers.”
Herb flopped onto one of the white sofas just as the space before him filled with a view of the planet below: silver machines in a restless sea of unending motion. After ten seconds the view flicked to a sky view of endless grey. Another ten seconds and flick, another view of the planet, this time from much higher up.
Herb sat back, watching patiently. He couldn’t focus straight in on his ship: that would alert Robert’s suspicions. This way, it would seem just like any, everyday, random survey. Sooner or later, the view must fall on Johnston’s ship. Flick, and a shot across the planet’s surface; flick, and a shot into space, the atmosphere fading just enough to show the faint pinpricks of stars beyond; flick, a picture of Herb’s ship, floating in the distance, too faint really to make out any detail. Flick again and nothing but sky. Flick again, and there was Herb’s ship close up and in detail. A white rectangular box with bevelled edges top and bottom. And standing on the roof of Herb’s ship, in the spot where Robert’s ship should have been, wearing the palest blue suit and white spats with a matching carnation in the buttonhole, stood Robert Johnston. He was waving to the “camera.”
Robert Johnston had beaten him again.
Herb had risen early and gone into the ship’s gym to work out. He turned off the VR feed as he wanted to concentrate on the basic feeling of exercising the frustration from his body rather than visualize a pleasant run through the country. He ran six kilometers on the treadmill, did another two kilometers on the rowing machine and then put himself through thirty minutes of high-impact yoga.
After that he staggered, sweating, through to the lounge and called up a breakfast of orange and banana juice, brioche loaf, yellow butter, and honey. Robert Johnston stepped into the room just as Herb was finishing his third thick slice of brioche.
“Good morning, Herb. Ah, excellent! Breakfast. I hope there’s enough left for me.”
Robert sat down on the chair opposite and inspected Herb’s meal.
“Maybe just a few sausages to go with it. See to it, please, Ship.”
“I thought you were a vegetarian.”
“Not on Thursdays.”
Johnston cut himself a slice of brioche and began to eat.
“Mmm. Good choice. Well, the news is, we’ve received enough reports back on the Enemy Domain to begin your briefing. Once we’ve done that, we should be ready to jump into the fight almost immediately.”
“Oh good,” said Herb, weakly. He felt a sudden stab of cold fear deep inside. The easy passage of the past few days had made him almost forget the threatened danger of the Enemy Domain. Now the realization of his predicament came rushing back upon him. In just a few hours he could be dead. Or worse.
Johnston was helping himself to a sausage. “We’ll just finish breakfast and then we’ll begin.” He took a bite and half-closed his eyes with pleasure. “Mmmm! Excellent! Well. I suppose I’d better explain. A few days ago I took a recording of your personality while you were sleeping. I took the liberty of beaming several thousand copies of it into the Enemy Domain. Those personalities have since been living in the processors of the Domain, collecting information about conditions in there. Those personalities who could do so have beamed themselves back here again. I have made a selection of the best of the memories they picked up. After breakfast, we’ll take a look at them. See what we’re up against.”
He waved his fork in delight.
“These really are excellent sausages! Maybe just a touch of maple syrup…”
Herb stared at him. The sick feeling in his stomach had now driven all thoughts of eating from his mind. Despite that, he forced his voice to remain cool and level. “How come the act has changed? Yesterday you were all 1920s American. Today you’re acting like some sort of effete English gentleman.”
“I like to experiment with personalities. You should try it yourself. That one you’re using at the moment obviously isn’t working.”
Herb sneered at him.
“Oh, touchй,” said Robert.
After breakfast they sat down to share the memories. Robert set a glass of drugged whisky at Herb’s elbow.
“I don’t need that,” said Herb.
“It’s there if you change your mind.”
Robert had opened up a viewing field in the space in front of the white sofa. Once Herb was settled the show began. The scene revealed the ghostly figures of Herb and Robert both rising from Herb’s spaceship and floating up into space. As they rose they began to move faster and faster, the planet beneath them shrinking to a dot. The star around which the planet circled moved into view and began itself to shrink as the two ghostly bodies accelerated through space.
“I added this bit for effect,” Robert said. He was carefully laying out a white handkerchief on his lap. A bowl of walnuts balanced precariously on the arm of the sofa by his right elbow. Herb gave a grunt in reply.
On the screen before them, their two ghostly bodies shimmered as if they were moving out of focus, and then, slowly, a second pair of images peeled away from the first. Now there were two Herbs and two Roberts. They began to shimmer again, splitting into four, and then eight…
“I like this part,” said Robert. “It represents the multiple copies of our personalities that I beamed all the way through the Enemy Domain.” Robert took a walnut from the bowl at his side and placed it in a pair of bright red nutcrackers he produced from his jacket pocket.
“How long does this go on for?” muttered Herb.
“Not too long,” Robert replied, pushing a shelled walnut into his mouth.
The ghostly bodies of Herb and Robert began to separate from each other and suddenly zoom from sight. Bursts of red and green stars accompanied their sudden exit from view.
“Warp jumps,” Robert explained.
The camera picked up on one pair of bodies as they shot through space. They were now approaching a planet.
“This is part of the Enemy Domain,” Robert murmured. “Watch carefully.”
Herb gazed into the viewing area impassively. After a few moments he sat up straighter. Shortly after that his hands stiffened on the soft white leather of the sofa, then he reached for the glass of whisky and took a sip, and then another…
It began simply enough. Robert and Herb’s duplicates were standing on a low hill looking out over a grassy plain punctuated with low mounds. The Robert on the screen turned and pointed out something to the Herb standing next to him, and the camera focused on the horizon. They saw a low, dark shape, rising from the ground like a cancer. Now they could make out something silver in the grass, thin and shimmering in the light like a spiderweb. It was clearly spreading out from the dark growth in the distance, slowly choking the planet. The Robert in the viewing field bent down and pointed it out to Herb.
“Interesting, isn’t it? It’s got a coating of photoelectric cells all around the outside. This planet is going to be covered by that stuff, and it’s all being powered by nothing more than the sun’s energy. Just imagine if they dropped one of these VNMs on Earth.”
“It moves too slowly. We’d destroy it in no time.”
“Maybe.” The virtual Robert shrugged.
The Herb watching the viewing field, the real Herb, silently cheered his alter ego.
The view shifted and this time another Herb and Robert were standing on another planet. In this view a group of cows was huddled on a small island of green remaining in the middle of a sea of silver-grey VNMs. The VNMs were eating up the land, leaving the animals nowhere to stand.
“Are those real cows?” asked the Herb in the viewing tank.
“Oh, yes.”
