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which revealed only that alert watchfulness.
He saw at once that this installation gave a sensitized person the mood of the
ship's computer. He felt a vague sensation as though his viscera had been
exchanged for great baths of mercury, for discs and spools and tapes and print
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drums, that his nerve ends had been transmitted into thousands of delicate
sensors reaching into strange dimensions.
But it was yet a dream. The great creature of wires and pseudoneurons, not
fully awake to itself, lay watchful and alert but with its full potential
still held in a rein of somnolence.
The mood changed.
Slowly, Bickel felt the field gear itself to his reflexes. He felt it arming
him with a total-involvement program as though drawing a bow to its full
capacity, marshaling his energies and throwing them suddenly into an afferent
loop.
With a semidetached feeling of shock, Bickel saw his own right hand slam out
and open a panel concealed by the lines of the religious graphic on Flattery's
bulkhead. Behind the panel lay a trigger, red and ominous. Bickel found
himself barely able to withhold his hand from that trigger. He slapped his
left hand against the cutoff switch beside the couch, felt the generator's
field whine down to silence.
Still, his fingers itched to push that red trigger.
He realized then how deeply Project had infected this ship with
self-destruction fail-safe devices. He had been conditioned for the job . . .
and doubtless all the other crew members, too.
Then how could I resist the conditioning? he wondered.
The implications filtered slowly through his awareness and he saw that he had
been existing for days on a threshold above his reflexes, poised and waiting .
. . for . . . something.
Bickel stared at the red switch. That was the ship killer to which Flattery .
. . to which all of them had been wedded.
Palms slowly wet with perspiration, Bickel eased himself off the couch, closed
the false panel over the switch, began altering Flattery's field-generator
installation. The gate circuits showed up immediately on the color-coded
sheafs. Bickel ripped them out, jacked in his own amplifier, began installing
the black box -- white box circuitry.
The work went rapidly: clip-in, test; clip-in, test.
Now, he took the constant-energy source: a single plastic-sealed block --
air-bearing motors and spools, edge-coded tapes with mobius twists for
continuous-loop operation, a single output through an Eng multiplier. He
checked it, saw the strong, eccentric pulse on the meter, plugged it into the
circuitry.
It was done . . . ready.
A deep sense of loneliness washed through Bickel then. He returned to the
couch, stretched out on it, opened the command circuit transmitter, left the
receiver dead.
"Now hear this," he said, thinking how his voice would roll out of the
vocoders and shock the others to silence. "I'll be starting the white box
interchange in just a few seconds. I've jammed the locks into quarters and my
receiver's turned off. Don't waste your time trying to get in here or calling
me."
Out in their lock trap, Timberlake turned, peered into Flattery's faceplate,
saw the terror in the man's eyes.
"Everybody sit tight," Bickel said. "Don't try violence of any sort. That
killer program's still loose in the circuits. The reason I decided to go
ahead with this . . ." He paused, swallowed. "Tim, I'm sorry, but I got no
response from two hyb-tank units. I think it may've killed two people the way
it did the embryo. It's searching . . . experimenting . . . curious, like a
monkey."
In the lock, Timberlake experienced a shortening of breath, felt himself
sinking back through layers of fog. There was a sensation like hunger in his
stomach. Two hybernating people killed. Oh, God!
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In his position beside Timberlake, Flattery clutched a stanchion, asked
himself: Where is Prue? He thought of the ship hurtling onward with no one
at the big board . . . Prue a lifeless mass of protoplasm drifting somewhere
in the control room. He closed his eyes, thinking: But I'm the ship's prime
target. If it kills now, it'll kill me . . . to protect itself. He opened
his eyes, stared around the metal walls of their trap. No way out. We've
turned on the terrible genie, he thought, and we may not be able to turn it
off. Then: Where is Prue?
Bickel cleared his throat. "Use extreme care until I've removed the killer
program. Anything in the ship could be a murder instrument, do you
understand? The air we breathe, the reclamation systems, robox units, any
sharp edge with poison on it . . . anything."
He depressed the first action switch, said: "Countdown for field buildup
starts in thirty seconds. Wish me luck."
And Flattery thought: He's committing suicide . . . a useless gesture.
Bickel watched the curve of gauges overhead. They registered power in the
circuits, vocoder on and pulsing. A faint hum issued from the vocoder. It
gave a sudden static burp.
Needles slammed against pins on the monitor dials.
I am the Sorcerer's Apprentice, he thought.
A rasping came from the vocoder now. Slowly it resolved itself into a
guttural, almost unintelligible voice.
"To kill," it said.
Bickel studied the meters, saw the demand drain in the computer, pulse action
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