A voice breaks through the darkness of the pit. She claws at me, but falls back in the light which appears from everywhere at once. A new cipher babbles away through the roar. Why won’t they leave me alone?
“Wake up.”“What?”“What is your name?”Virgil screamed a primal howl. How long? How long will
you drag me back from death? How many times must I die before it’s the real death? Why can’t I cross the gate? Why-
“Wake up. What is your name?”
“Virgil!”
“Virgil-you’re trapped inside the neuron chamber in Ring One-Level Two-Three O’Clock.”
There was the roar, and I watched someone rip out the guts of Master Snoop and rebuild him using my hands then we shook when Nightsheet grabbed us and the titans battled and-and- and-and-and-
“Are you in need of medical assistance? If so, I can’t provide it.”
Virgil stopped drawing uncontrolled breaths and lay still. He felt light, but not weightless.
“Is that you, Ben?”
“I am not Ben. I am the main computer of Circus Galacticus. Now listen, Virgil. We’re twelve light days from Epsilon Indi. I have powered down as much as possible. The ship that attacked us around Beta Hydri returned while we were conducting repairs outside the system. I held it at bay with the lasers long enough to calculate a transfer here, but it fired on us in the interim, causing extensive damage to rings One and Two. Most of the Nostocacæ cylinders were destroyed, but the anti-matter units are safe and their electrostatic fields intact. Nothing vital was hit in Ring One, though the colonist area is open to space, along with the recreation hall and the seed inventory.”
Virgil scanned vidscrim images of the damage.
“How can I get out of here?” They’ll pay, they’ll pay.
“The neuron chamber has only one exit, and it was ruptured by a blast. You will have to cross a gap of ten meters that is open to space.”
You keep trying to kill me but you never do. Stupid game. “All right. Let’s not delay.” Did Ben just sigh?
“Good. Get oriented. The pressure door will open. Look past your left foot. The passage you must jump to has a light on in it. The pressure seal is two meters inward, so you’ll have to maneuver through some twisted metal in the corridor. Be careful.”
Virgil pulled slowly toward the pressure door with slow, hesitant motions.
“I can only let the atmosphere out, Virgil. I have no way to pump it back in, so make this your one try. Take ten deep breaths.” Virgil did so. “Now, open your mouth and trachea. Depressurizing.” The seal parted slightly.
Virgil’s ears ached. Tightening his jaws, he released the pressure on his Eustachian tubes. Air rushed from his lungs without exhalation. The hatch opened wide.
Stars whirl about to my left and right. Something inside my skin tries to push its way out. Across and down lies the gateway. I must pass this corridor of blackness and go beyond the gate. Maybe this is the final trip through. I feel all cold and bursting. Fly. Fly.
Virgil kicked off into the void below him. Empty lungs struggled for breath. Sweat boiled from his skin, chilling blood that threatened to boil in his veins.
Drowning. Lights flashing before my eyes. Death Angel, must you put me through all this to make you smile beside Nightsheet? Reach, reach.
His left hand seized a jagged piece of metal sticking out from the side of the passage. Fingers refused to tighten and his wrist slid along the serrated steel. Blood squirted outward in a stream of spheres that instantly exploded, sizzling like water thrown into hot grease. He slid until the wrist wedged between the twisted strut and the bulkhead, pinioning him in the airless pit. Blackness swam before him. Blood evaporated and crystallized across his face in bright crimson, freeze-dried flecks. The pressure seal stood open less than a meter away.
No! It won’t end this way. With a powerful tug, he wrenched his hand from its trap-tearing the flesh and muscle down to tendon and bone-and pulled toward the door. He contorted into the illuminated chamber.
Consciousness faded from him in a growingly familiar manner. So cold. Nightsheet has sucked me dry. I am an empty shell of nothingness. The walls twist and bend toward me. Death Angel, I wanted your wings to wrap me for too long. Now I look for you, but you’re not here.
He saw a figure he had never seen before.
Who are you? I can break your cipher, but I can’t see your face. Get out of my death! What? Not through with me? Who are you to want me to die again and again and again?
“No!” He screamed and struggled, but something pricked his arm and he collapsed slowly to the sheets.
The next time he wakened, it was as if from a slumber. Reaching up to brush the hair from his eyes, he hit his forehead with a bandaged stump. He tried again with the same result. Focusing on the amputation, he looked at it from all sides.
I flex my fingers but don’t see them move. I don’t see them at all. I rotate my hand but it’s not there to turn. Once I saw my hand. Hand saw. Master Snoop needed a hand repairing Ben. Death Angel became a handmaiden. He lowered his arm to the sheets.
“I need a hand job!” he shouted.
“What is your name?”
“I’m VirgilVirgilVirgilVirgilVirgilVirg-”
“Virgil-you cut your hand severely when you crossed the gap. By the time I could get a robot to you, you had lost two liters of blood, your core body temperature had dropped to fifteen, your blood pressure to zero, your heart had stopped beating-”
“All right!” Virgil lay back and stared at the bulkhead above him.
“You were dead for almost eight minutes.”
“That’s nothing new.”
“I’m glad you recovered. I am currently giving one-half gravity thrust for you during your recovery. We are still twelve light days from Epsilon Indi. The system comprises five planets, two suitable for life, seventeen moons, and a number of comets and asteroids.
“You may be interested that we received a message from the other ship during its last attack. Would you like to see it?”
“Yes.” He touched the stump of his left hand with his fingers. A spot of blood encircled the bandage near the injection port.
An image appeared on one of the wallscrims. At first, the picture displayed a mere jumble of light and computer coded indices. Once the information had been correlated, the scene snapped into view.
Virgil stared at a tortured face. Hell looks at me, hate in his
eyes. A wild mane of ashen hair explodes out from his head, wrapping under and merging into his matted beard. His cipher breaks easily.
“I have come!” he cried, like some howling wolf. “I have come to destroy the destroyer!” Virgil heard the sound of laser fire. The man on the screen wiped spit from his beard with a grime crusted sleeve and continued to speak.
“Dirty death, Wanderer. Dirty death for straying!”
“You’re not translating this, are you Ben?”
“No. He is speaking twenty-second century Americ. I am not Ben.”
The man played with battle controls, his eyes darting around in a fevered glaze. The control room he sat in held a dozen other chairs. In most of them were strapped corpses, mummified and dry. Their hollow eyes watched blinking lights without seeing. Their fingers rested on chair arms discolored by their death.
“I am the avenging angel of death come to take you for all you’ve done!”
No. You’re not Death Angel. You’re a trick. Sent by Master Snoop to confuse me, to make me hate Death Angel. Virgil gazed more intently at the image.
“Can you give him a shave and haircut?” he asked.
“Explain.”
Virgil leaned forward, his gold-hued eyebrows narrowing under a meditative frown. “Edit the image. Interpolate his face.”
“Not accurately. His hair is too thick for its surface to give any clue to what lies beneath.”
Virgil raised his left hand to stroke his chin. The bandaged stump rubbed against his jawline. “All right then,” he said. “Can you compare his eyes with those of faces in your memory?”
“Yes.”
Virgil’s voice was steady, but hesitant. “Is it Brennen?”
“It is Dante Houdini Brennen.”
The other madman continued his rant. “Wanderer, we tried to follow. All dead, all dead. All danced down the dark cavern. Then up from death I rose to avenge. If you don’t die for your murders now, I meet you. Meet you at Tau Ceti, June Twenty-Two Twenty-Three. Give you plenty, plenty of time. Complete your death tour-I’ll be following. Every time I die, I grow stronger. Death, Wanderer, I am Death-” The image ended suddenly.
“We transferred just then.”
“He’s out of his mind. Mad Wizard!” The computer made no reply, so Virgil asked, “Was there anything else?”
“No.”
“What year is it now?”
“Approximately the summer of Twenty-One Fifty-Two. Mid-July.”
Forty-four years. All I knew, old and gone, except this madman. “And I can only return after completing the tour?”
“No.”
“What?”
“After sustaining severe damage to my neural net, I was recircuited and the tour program adherence command was defeated.”
Virgil rolled over and stared at the speaker grill behind him. “Then calculate a course back. What’re you waiting for?”
“I think we should wait until you have your hand back.”
“What do you mean?”
“In the lower level of the medical bay is the cloning unit. It is currently growing a cell sample, trimming away unnecessary portions, and your left hand-a new one-will be ready in about three months. I have it under intensive forced generation, since we don’t care about the brain or any other organs.”
“I don’t have three months, I don’t care about my hand. I want-want-” Death Angel must be old and dead, taken by Nightsheet for services rendered. Time. Press a button and it’s gone, eaten up. I don’t have time. Time on my hands. Hand.
He touched his lower lip with his right hand and bent it inward so that it rubbed against his teeth. He slid the fold of skin back and forth several times, thinking, then let go of it to speak.
“You’re saying there’s no limit on my individual transfers now?”
“None.”
“Can the cloning unit be disconnected from the medical bay and the computer?”
“It has emergency modular functioning; it can be.”
“Can it be fitted into a lifeboat and set adrift?”
“Yes.”
He sat up in the bed, fighting the forces that doubled his vision. “Then let’s put it in, transfer out a distance of six light weeks and transfer back.”
Silent for a moment, the computer replied, “Acceptable. When you have recovered.”
“I’m recovered.” He stripped the sheets from the bed to stand. “And uncovered. Let’s go.” Rising so quickly in the half-gravity acceleration was enough to pull him to the deck in a faint. He bounced lightly once and lay still. If the computer could have cursed, it would have.
He awoke, rested and refreshed.
“My name is Virgil Grissom Kinney. Wake up, Ben!” He tried to slap his chest, but only one hand hit. The stump of the other thumped as on a watermelon. “I’m ready to go.”
“You should be. You’ve slept for over fourteen hours. The lifeship has been powered to full capacity, the cloning tank and peripherals have been fitted out for independent functioning, and your trunks have been washed.”
Virgil slid out of the bed in one motion, then slowed and lowered his feet to the deck, standing up with easy care. He reached for his trunks and realized he still had no left hand.
Picking them up in his right hand, he turned to the speaker and asked, “Can you cut the acceleration for a moment?” He listened for the sudden silence that accompanied the cessation of gravity. Like a mild roar, I get used to the engines. He found it easier to slip into the trunks when not having to worry about falling.
“How’s the rest of the ship?”
“I have put power on in the passages to the medical bay and the lifeship-temperature and pressure normal. All other sections are losing heat at a rate of three degrees temperature per hour.”
Virgil headed toward the exit. “Meet you in the bay.” He kicked down one level to examine the cloning unit. As big as two coffins. Are you inside, Death Angel? Or are you cold and gone? Do you want me back in the reaches of Nightsheet?
Robots had disconnected the cloning unit from the bulkhead. Virgil pushed it slowly toward the hatchway, weightlessness making it easier for him to jockey the parcel about. In the curving corridor, he gave the unit a strong shove, then walked along the deckplates with the mass of aluminum and electronics over his head, pushing it away from the walls, bending its trajectory until he reached the other side of Ring One.
The steel cylinders fit easily into the hold of the lifeship, so he fastened the unit to one wall, flipped on the ship’s power switches, flitted out, and sealed it up.
“How’s she check?” he asked, floating out of the airlock and into the observation booth.
“Ready to cast off.”
“Do it,” The air cycled out of the lock and the doors slid open. Huge steel hand cradles the silvery wedge and shoves it
out into the stars. Good move. I press a button and time passes. Press a button and Death Angel is gone forever. Pretty Death Angel wraps herself up in her wings and flies away.
The command chair in the superstructure was as he had left it. He strapped in.
“I want the ship to be on full alert and at battle readiness both times we transfer. The instant we return here, we locate the lifeship, bring it onboard, and transfer to one of the habitable planet’s vicinities. Got it?”
The computer answered, “I’d thought of all that already. Stand by to transfer.”
“Do you really need me to press the button? You can transfer without my help, can’t you?”
“Yes. However, the construction plans include it as a check on the pilot. To let me know you’re still there.”
“Transfer,” Virgil said, folding his arms. One fewer tab for Master Snoop to keep on me. One fewer thing to do each time before I die and die and die and die…
Death Angel, why do you curse me? I never thought I’d die a thousand times for anyone, but here I float in blackness, just dead and ready to die again and again and-
“Stand by-transferring.”
Delia, I can’t take it any more. I can only die so many times.
PROGRESS REPORT: DAY 17 AREA: MEDICAL
SUBJECT IN SECOND WEEK OF COMA.
LEFT HAND GRAFT SUCCESSFUL, NO COMPLICATIONS, NOT TO BE CONSIDERED CAUSE OF COMATOSE STATE.
PULSE: 48/MIN-STEADY BLOOD PRESSURE: 87/55/53 MMHG-STEADY
CORE BODY TEMP: 36.1°C-STEADY
MASS: 63.5 KG-DROPPING
EEG: RANDOM ACTIVITY
CONTINUE GLUCOSE I-V
PROGRESS REPORT: DAY 17 AREA: PLANET STUDY-EPSILON INDI-3, CURRENTLY IN ORBIT.
ATMOSPHERE: N2-55.3% O2-41% CO2-3.1% + TRACES: XE, KR, HE, H2S04, CO, CH4.
MASS: 6.32 x 1027GM
AVERAGE SURFACE TEMP: 280°K
SURFACE: LAND-44.2% WATER + ICE-55.8%.
SÄNGER PROBE OF HIGH I-R AREAS INDICATE LIFE. PROBE INTERCEPTED AND DESTROYED BY CHEMICAL EXPLOSIVE MISSILE. SUGGEST EXTREME CAUTION IN FUTURE CONTACT. FURTHER ACTION PENDING CONDITION OF PILOT. CONTINUING ATTEMPT TO DETECT RADIO EMISSIONS.
Memories wash like gentle waves on a great lake. I see Jenine leaving me, wasting away for no reason I could fathom. Three years and suddenly nothing. As though in an instant, as though I had jumped in time a hundred years. She leaves, and I climb into my powersuit, fly all night. Wind stings my face, the engine warms my back through the insulation. I play chicken with unsuspecting fliers. The thrill of near death tingles. I feel alive. Sunrise and I hit El Capitan at the same time. Dawn makes a much bigger splash. The granite eats into my face, buries itself under my shoulder and back. I slide. I hear bones snap and pierce through skin and suit like sticks breaking inside a sausage. Sunshine warms the blood soaking me. A shadow blocks the light and I am lifted, the feeling of release dragged from me. Lifted high and rebuilt, to try again.
They save me every time. Strangers, all tied into Master Snoop’s network. They’re keeping me alive for something, I think. For what? This. What this? Mad Wizard. Circus Galacticus. Valliardi. You’re a pawn of Master Snoop, who’s using you against himself. You are Nightsheet’s agent, returning to take vengeance on Mad Wizard for burning you from his burnall spear.
Returning? To what?
Earth.
For what? She’ll be lost, dead, old and gone before I can reach her.
She had something to tell you.
But I didn’t hear it! Mad Wizard left before I could. I could. I could.
“Delia!”
“I just feel hungry as hell, is all,” Virgil said, finishing the last bit of chicken on his plate and throwing the bones into the recycling chute.
“As long as you don’t give yourself colic.”
Virgil belched. “I’m sure you have an injection for it, if you can scare up one of those robots I never see to administer it.” Hidden robots that move only when I don’t look. Sneakiest of Snoop’s agents, they hide in the walls, watching. “Have you finished calculating a transfer back to Earth?”
“Yes, but there is a prior program restriction on return to the Solar System.”
“I thought all your restrictions were eliminated.” He caught a bone that had drifted backward out of the chute and threw it back in. With his left hand, still in bandages, he held a piece of cloth that had been knotted up into a wad the size of a handball. He worked his fingers across it with gentle pressure, exercising constantly.
“Not this one. We must transfer to the orbit of Pluto first, with our defenses ready and our receivers monitoring every wavelength.”
“Why?”
“Brennen feared the Triplanetary Recidivists as well as the Belter Autarchists. He is no doubt being cautious”
“Possibly.” So, Wizard’s scheme begins to show. What does he expect me to find? And now that the wizard is mad, what will I find? “I’ll be in Con-Two.”
Making his way to the superstructure from the mess hall, he stopped in the armory. Between rows of laser gloves and larger rifles, packages lay securely strapped to the bulkheads. He took one down and opened it. The pressure suit was simple: Späflex webbing that contracted tightly at body temperature, yet allowed a controlled escape of body moisture and heat, and an oxygen recycler with a small tank of liquid oxygen. Virgil slipped into the suit, sealed it shut, and fought the feeling of entrapment he experienced when the net began to shrink.
Back in sheets again, but this time no DuoLab, no Marsface, no soft room of endless white. Now I wrap up for flight and fight. Now I return to face Master Snoop and Nightsheet and turn Wizard’s plan against them all. I swoop in out of the suns to strike without warning.
The suit allowed for complete mobility. He sealed the head-gear, adjusting the mouthpiece, clear eyeplates, and ear cups until they were comfortable. In the battle station conning tower above the ring amidships, Virgil strapped in to the weapons of fire control. Surrounded by instruments, he switched the ship to battle stations.
“What about the planet we have just encountered, Virgil?”
“What about it?”
“The missile that destroyed our probe-”
“They’ll keep for a few decades.”
“Don’t you feel any awe or wonder at discovering another intelligent race?”
“Do you?”
“You know I don’t. I’m not programmed to.”
“Well, I’m not programmed to either, so enter the coordinates for Pluto and let’s go.” His voice sounded pinched and nasal through the mouthpiece. His right hand tapped at the armrest until the transfer button glowed at the ready. His finger hesitated over the button. For a moment the insides of his eyeplates fogged, quickly adsorbed by the semi-porous plastic.
Have to do it myself. To be sure. Death Angel, I’ll get them all. I’ll find Nightsheet and make him give you back.
“Ready to transfer, Virgil.”
Death Angel, I know you’ll be there to wrap me in your wings when I die the real death. Can’t you be there before then? I’ll have you somehow. I have my own wings, now. Strong wings of warped space and twisted time. Wings to take me wherever you fly. You can’t escape me.
“Virgil?”
His finger jammed against the button, cracking the plastic and extinguishing the lamp beneath.
Death Angel I want you. I am Nightsheet. I am Master Snoop. I am Pusher and Shaker and the Mad Wizard. I snap time like a whip. I die again for you. To die and bring you back from death. Blackness pours upon me and I rush through a corridor so black I am blinded.