this ship preoccupied.
Commander Trace returned presently, looking very pleased. Velmeran could well imagine that everything must be going very well in his world.
“I thought that we might take a little trip up to sick bay,” he announced.
“Sick bay?” Velmeran asked innocently. “Am I going to be sick?”
Trace laughed as he indicated with his rifle for the Kelvessa to precede his three mechanical guards out of the chamber. “No, but it seems about the best place to try to keep you. Even our security cells are made of ordinary floor and panel plating, which would not hold out very long against your strength. No, the surest way to keep you is set you down somewhere and surround you with more sentries than you can handle.”
Commander Trace led the odd procession out of the power core and back into the main corridors of the ship, the unfortunate Starwolf packed between two sentries ahead and three behind. They soon came to the lift and Trace went on ahead with two of the sentries, sending the car back for Velmeran and the other three. The ride was not long, the lift going up four levels and ahead only a short distance. Velmeran thought that they could not be more than three hundred meters from the auxiliary bridge, a little more than twice that far from the main bridge.
The sick bay was clearly meant to serve a much larger crew; for the present needs of the Challenger, one physician and three automated assistants were more than enough for the single patient who waited for a plastifiber cast to cure out. Velmeran was led into a very large general diagnostic ward just off the main lobby. There he was set on a stool-like chair near the back wall, surrounded at a discreet distance by two of his dutiful guards.
The other two remained to either side of the door that was the only exit.
There he sat, looking dejected but not particularly frightened. Trace watched him with an expression of puzzlement as he conferred for a minute with the physician. Dr. Wriestler seemed to Velmeran to be a fairly typical military doctor, radiating an air of faint ineptitude. They spoke quietly for some time before the physician hurried off on some errand. Trace, looking as if he had just settled some major problem, walked slowly over to where the Starwolf waited.
“I am about to take a terrible liberty, so I want to explain,” he began, pulling up a chair of his own. “As you might have guessed, I have gone into the ultimate weapon business. I already have a ship that has proven its ability against Starwolves. I intend to build more like it, certainly. But I also hope to build a smaller carrier version, a great deal faster but just as invulnerable. Naturally, I want my own Starwolves to go with it.”
Velmeran looked startled. “Me?”
Trace nodded slowly. “As much as I would prefer, we cannot begin to design and create our own. But as long as we start with living genetic material, we can clone our own. By fishing out your recessive traits, and introducing genetic variables of our own, we can create an entire race out of you alone.”
Wriestler returned at that moment, pushing a small cart that bore a collection of medical supplies. Two Velmeran recognized instantly. One, a curious boxlike device, was a suspension chamber, designed to keep organs alive in stasis indefinitely until needed for transplant. The other was a large laser cutting tool.
“You see, I do take you at your word,” Trace explained. “I do consider it very likely that you will either escape or die in the attempt. This way, if you do part from our company, you will leave what I need behind. What do you think, Doc? A hand?”
“Yes, that is one item he has in redundant quantities,” Wriestler agreed, regarding his subject appraisingly. Although far shorter than Donalt Trace, his thin, lanky frame made him appear taller than he actually was. “Yes, a hand would be quite sufficient. Which one do you favor?”
“I am quadrilateral ambidextrous,” Velmeran explained, trying to look more nervous about the prospect than he actually was. “There is, however, an iarbitrary order of importance. I should miss the lower left the least of any.”
“So be it,” Wriestler agreed. He took the hand in question, twisting the cuff to remove the glove. “Will you require any medical attention?”
“None at all. There will be no bleeding, since veins and arteries seal automatically, and healing will be complete in a few hours.”
“If you will allow me, I have my suspicions about Starwolf reflexes,” Trace interrupted. He had Velmeran to sit down on the floor, his wrist extended, then instructed one of the sentries by the door to brace both of its forelegs atop the armored sleeve. Wriestler regarded this procedure questioningly, but wasted no time as he adjusted the setting on the laser scalpel to maximum intensity.
There was a loud electric snap and the sentry somersaulted to land heavily on its back. Velmeran drew back his arm, swearing in his own language, but the pain faded almost immediately; Kelvessan nervous systems included a feedback mechanism that blocked unnecessary pain. By the time he looked up, Wriestler had already transferred the hand to the suspension box and was setting the controls. Trace was watching the uncertain movements of the sentry, undamaged but unable to raise itself without help.
“Are you all right, little fellow?” Wriestler inquired professionally, taking the injured wrist to look inside the open sleeve. He looked surprised and approving. “My, it really is healing up in a hurry. You people are remarkable.”
“Take care of that,” Trace said as the physician quickly packed up his supplies. “That hand means more to the final defeat of the Starwolves than this entire ship.”
Wriestler made some impatient gesture of assurance as he pushed the cart out the door. Trace frowned, obviously displeased with the physician’s indifference at what was to him a very important occasion. A threatening gesture from the sentries alerted him to the fact that Velmeran had risen and was returning to his stool. His almost festive mood returned instantly.
“I’m glad that you could give me a hand,” he remarked glibly as he took his own seat, as if he expected Velmeran to appreciate his attempt at humor. He shrugged. “I do hate to see you so dejected, although I can hardly blame you for that. I guess that I was expecting to find the friend I last saw in that cafe in Vannkarn.”
Velmeran glanced up at him. “What did you expect? This is business, remember?”
“As you say, this is business,” Trace agreed. “Oh, hating you and plotting dire revenge enlivened those endless weeks while they made and installed new pieces of my back, and those endless months of pain while I learned to use those new parts. But, when it was all over, I realized that I hurt you worse than you had hurt me. Now it seems that I’ve hurt you again, and I honestly regret that.”
“Why did you not die?” Velmeran muttered.
Trace laughed ironically. “Pure perversity, I assure you. Listen to me, Starwolf. We both have our duty. You have to destroy my fine, big ship, and I mean to destroy yours. I think that only one of us will succeed, and I do seem to be winning. I thought it was a purely human failing to imagine your enemies as cruel monsters devoted to the service of evil. I assure you that I am an honest man.”
Velmeran glanced at him sharply. “The honest man who dropped a bomb on a city just to get my attention. It seems to me that you are the very monster you describe.”
Trace shrugged indifferently. “It is of small consequence. You see, young Richart is a more practical man than Jon ever was. He’s impatient with sending invasion forces to take planets, only to have them freed by Starwolves. He’s instituted a new policy, one that even I find a bit severe. Just now, there are six conversion devices in orbit over Tryalna, four equally spaced in equatorial orbit and two in polar. The explosion would blast away the air, seas, and rip off at least a few kilometers of the surface itself, caught in the center of a concussion like that. The way I see it, the entire population of that world lives on my sufferance now. I simply called a small portion of that debt due.”
“You are a monster,” the Starwolf said, shaking his head slowly.
Commander Trace’s calm indifference broke suddenly, turning with frightening speed to self-righteous fury. “Damn it, you four-armed freak, I’m trying to save my race and my civilization. Can’t you see that our only hope is in the firm hand of a strong government to enforce selective sterilization on large segments of a dying population?”
“No, because that is not your only hope,” Velmeran insisted. “There is a much easier way. In our worlds, the human population has already begun a program of voluntary screening of genetic defects at the time of artificial insemination. No genetic tampering is allowed, just a deletion of the faulty genetic variables so that the sound genetic variables have a better chance. That protects the complete freedom and individuality of the offspring. And it allows the positive aspects of evolution to remain in effect so that the race does not stagnate. In fact, five hundred years should completely eliminate the overload of genetic defects that have accumulated. And potential parents are
