was a good deal lighter than the Earth-normal conditions maintained while the ship was in space. I moved carefully and used the slide step I’d learned on Mars.
The wood paneling had disappeared. Steel bulkheads, liberally sprinkled with safety slogans, morale boosters, and other corporate propaganda passed to either side. I noticed that androids and crew people alike had the ability to look right through me. I found the lock, joined a load of palletized cargo, and cycled through.
The corpies grabbed me as I stepped off the ship. There were four of them, all heavily armed and clearly expecting me. I considered giving them a tussle but it seemed pointless. They located my weapon within a matter of seconds. Joy bailed out of my pocket and was halfway to the deck when a man grabbed her. She struggled, but it was useless. Their leader, a skinny woman with a pink crewcut, glanced at her hand term and nodded. “Yup, he’s the one. And right on time too. Put the zappers on him and get a move on. The doc’s extra pissy today.”
Even I could figure out who “the doc” was. I should have been afraid but was ashamed instead. The fact that they had taken me so easily was worse than whatever lay ahead. It struck at the little bit of pride I had left.
The zappers were shaped like fat bracelets and felt slimy as they wrapped themselves around my wrists. The woman with the crewcut held a control unit in front of my face. I nodded my understanding. The yellow button would “zap” my nervous system, the amber button would induce temporary paralysis, and the red button would stop my heart. I wondered if the woman had orders to stop short of that. I figured she did. Casad would have a hard time getting any information out of a refried brain. That gave me an edge, but a damned thin one.
Crewcut gestured for me to move, and I obeyed. My escorts walked two ahead and two behind. I didn’t see much of the habitat at first. Just a bunch of maintenance ways, freight tubes, and high-gloss corridors. After all, why march a prisoner through the station’s public areas if they didn’t have to? Still, they were forced to lead me across an enormous observation deck about halfway through the trip. It was packed with people just off the Queen. Most stared open-mouthed at the enormous Jupiter that hung overhead. It was beautiful, and there were lots of “oohs” and “aahs” as people struggled to look up through the triple-thick duraplast.
I scanned the crowd for people I knew, came eyeball to eyeball with Bey, and was about to say something when crewcut jammed something hard into the middle of my back. Bey looked surprised, alarmed, and agitated all at once. He pushed an elderly woman out of the way and burrowed into the crowd. A pair of doors marked “AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY” swung open to admit us, and the open area disappeared behind.
The first hint of our destination was a passing glimpse of a laboratory packed with esoteric equipment and staffed by a crew of lab-coated techies. That signaled me that we had moved from the outer world into Doctor Casad’s private domain, a place populated by facts and figures.
We passed a room filled with light so intense that some of it leaked through the plastifiber walls, heard a rhythmic thumping sound, and smelled something so foul it made crewcut swear out loud. Then we passed through an emergency lock and entered an area that screamed “executive offices” with every inch of its deeply carpeted floor, art-covered walls, and wood-accented, fiber-formed furniture. The reception area was large and rectangular. Everything was spotless and arranged with the same precision that a staff sergeant admires in a footlocker. The reception desk was circular, stood about chest-high, and had been designed to accommodate the four-armed android mounted at the center of it. He, she, or it had paisley-covered skin, four arms, and a no-nonsense attitude. “Dr. Casad is waiting. Take him in.”
I felt my heart beat faster as I was led through double doors and into the presence of the person who had stolen my life. Marsha Casad was smaller that I had expected, and the similarities between her appearance and Sasha’s were made all the more obvious by the fact that they were standing next to each other. I should have been surprised, but wasn’t. Nothing else had gone properly…why would this?
The elder Casad was prettier than the woman who haunted my dreams and had the same brown eyes, pretty face, and shapely body that her daughter did. A fact that the primitive male part of me noticed and reacted to in spite of the fact that to do so was stupid-proof positive that I’m at least three rounds short of a full magazine. But the mother was harder than the daughter, her flesh closer to the bone, her eyes like lasers. Power surrounded her like a cloak and was so much a part of her that it was taken for granted.
Both women stood with their backs to a steel-framed Jupiter. Its storm-lashed surface moved with dreamlike slowness. Sasha spoke first. She was apologetic. “I’m sorry, Max, I really am, but you forgot to disable the com set.”
I swore softly. Of course! The com set had been voice-activated. It had been a simple matter to call a steward, have herself released, and contact her mother. Damn. All that energy, all that effort, only to have it end like this. I shrugged. “Don’t worry, kid. You did what you had to do.”
Sasha nodded, but her chin trembled, and I saw a tear trickle down her cheek. Not so her mother. She was brisk and rather cheerful. Her eyes glittered like those of the robo-snake outside Wamba’s quarters. There was no understanding or mercy in them, just her unrelenting will. The voice was cold and distant. “You are no longer equipped to appreciate the importance of this, Maxon, but thanks to the information stored in your head, a new era is about to begin.”
I saw the ego in her eyes, the pride in what she had accomplished, and took advantage of it. “A new era? What does that mean?”
The elder Casad smiled. “It means freedom! Freedom to travel beyond the limits of our solar system!”
Sasha got it first, confirming that she hadn’t known the reason behind her mission, and cementing my affection for her. “Beyond our solar system? A star drive?”
Her mother nodded. “Yes. It will be known as the Casad Drive, and it will carry millions, even billions of human beings to distant stars. “Imagine,” she said, momentarily caught up in a glory of her own making, “a new beginning! A breakthrough so important, so liberating, that it will change the course of history. And I made it happen!”
The way Dr. Casad said it called for applause, and judging from her expression, I think she actually heard it thunder across a thousand years of immortality.
But the rest of us were silent. Shasha looked uncomfortable. The guards shuffled their feet. Metal pinged in response to a temperature fluctuation. Finally, after what seemed like minutes, but was actually seconds, the scientist’s eyes rolled into focus and she returned from fantasy land. Her words were precise and to the point. “Take him to Lab 16. Tell Sanchez to wire him up. I’ll be along in fifteen minutes or so.”
Sasha tried to move in my direction, but her mother grabbed an arm. Crewcut nudged me towards the door, and there seemed to be little point in resisting. What with zappers on my wrists and four able-bodied guards, there was no chance of escape.
That being the case, I tried to come up with a suitably nonchalant response and failed. The four-armed android didn’t even bother to look up as they marched me down the hall. I heard the same thumping I’d heard before, saw light leak through plastifiber walls, and was ordered down a side corridor. The air smelled of ozone. An equipment- laden autocart whirred by. I assumed these were among the last sounds, sights, and smells that I would experience. Everything seemed hyper-real, the way it always does when adrenaline pours into the bloodstream and death looms near.
A door marked “Lab 16” appeared in front of me, sensed my presence, and slid open. A worried-looking lab tech hurried forward. She wore a severe pageboy, no jewelry, and an immaculate lab coat. An I.D. badge hung from her breast pocket and identified her as Carla Sanchez. She gave me the same sort of look a butcher gives a side of beef and pointed over her shoulder. “Place him on the table and strap him down.”
The table looked like the kind you find in well-equipped operating rooms. It was backed by a wall full of vid screens and banks of computer equipment. The autosurgeon stood crouched over the table. Its arms whirred as servos were tested and found to be in working order.
I remembered the dreams that weren’t dreams and tried to escape. The zappers clamped down on my wrists and pain lanced through my nervous system. I screamed and kept on screaming as the guards lifted me onto the table, applied the straps, and removed the zappers. The pain disappeared and left me sobbing for breath.
Sanchez appeared between me and the ceiling, waved a scanner in front of my eyes, and squinted at the reading. She smelled of soap, and the fragrance remained even after she had disappeared. I liked the smell, even though I knew it was stupid, and marveled at how the male part of me never quit. I whimpered pitifully and nobody came.
Things got complicated after that. More people entered the room. Needles entered my veins, wires were hooked to various parts of my anatomy, and people talked as though I wasn’t there. Their voices seemed to float on an ocean of drug-induced happiness.
“Is this the one?”
