He looked at me in thought for a moment, then turned away without another word. I headed for the plane. As I climbed the ladder I saw that the noncom was busy at the radio in the car. This was a mistake on my part; I should have done something about that radio. As I was getting into the cockpit he dropped the radio and bellowed.

“Stop that man! He has no orders for this flight.”

The man steadying the ladder reached for my leg and I put my foot on his chest and pushed. I sent the ladder after him and dropped into the seat.

This situation had rapidly developed in a direction that was not to my liking. I had planned on having enough time to familiarize myself with the controls before I fired up the engines; although I had plenty of jet hours I had never been in a Cliaandian one before. Not only didn’t I know where the starter was but I did some pretty desperate fumbling before I even found the switch for the instrument lights. As I flicked it on the ladder smacked back against the side of the plane. I hated old efficient noncoms, the backbone of the military. Now I had to take out time to open the flying suit and grope inside it for my pockets.

A few happy-gas and sleep grenades cleared away the mechanics for the moment. Some lay cheerfully unconscious while the others laughed themselves sick. The noncom had cowardly stayed out of range and was back on the radio again. I studied the instruments. There! The little black knob with PAUENJE on it. When I slapped it the jets whined and rumbled to life. A rocket slug crashed through the open canopy above my head and I ducked cursing. As I kicked in the throttle I saw the noncom kneeling to take careful aim. The plane began to move—slowly.

His gun flared again and I felt the vibration as the slug buried itself in the seat. Which was probably armored. My first bit of luck. I flipped the tail so it pointed at the gunman, which put the armor between me and him and gave him a good blast of jet exhaust in the face. The plane bucked and shuddered and moved forward again—and I saw the torn fuel hose flapping in the windstream and pumping out its vital juices. Those idiots hadn’t disconnected it! I didn’t know where the fuel gauge was on the cluttered instrument board, nor did I want to look at it. Logic told me that gravity would bleed the fuel out a lot slower than the pumps had forced it into the tanks—but logic had nothing to do with this. I had a vision of the jets dying out here in the middle of the field while the forces of the enemy closed in around me. I could feel my blood pressure going up like an express elevator.

My busy little noncom friend was obviously still working on the radio, because when I turned onto the runway I saw that some trucks were moving into position to block it and something that looked suspiciously like an armored car was roaring up in the background. I cut the throttle back almost all the way and ducked my head down to read the instrument panel again.

What I was looking for wasn’t there! Then I noticed another bank of switches on one side and painfully spelled out their dim messages in the bad light. ISBACIVANJE. There it was!

I looked up and saw that I was about to crash into the first truck. Men were bailing out and running in all directions. My feet paddled about as I groped for the wheel brakes and I threw the rudder hard over. I finally found the brakes, stood on the right one and did a shuddering turn. About a half-meter of wingtip tore off on the front of the truck. There was the orange blast of a gun as someone fired at me, but I have no idea where the slug went. Then the jet was around and I was belting back in the opposite direction. This time at full throttle.

The runway lights were streaming by, faster and faster, and I had to keep one hand on the wheel while I groped for the belts and harnesses with the other. One of the buckles was missing and the end of the runway was coming up before I found out that I was sitting on it. I clicked it into place and grabbed the wheel with both hands as I ran out of runway.

The jet did not have flying speed. The nose was mushy and would not lift when I pulled back on it.

Then I was bumping across the graded dirt heading straight for that stone wall I had been looking at all evening.

Faster and faster to a certain collision.

The timing had to be just right. Too early or too late would be just as disastrous. When the wall loomed up above the jet and I could see the joints between the blocks I figured it was about right and I hit the eject button.

Bam! The sequence was almost too fast to follow—but it worked. A transparent shutter snapped down over my face, the still tilted up canopy blew away with a crack of explosives, and the seat slammed up so hard against me that it felt like my spine had shortened to half its length. Almost in slow motion I sailed up and out of the jet and, for a hideously long second, saw the raw stone of the wall directly in front of me. Then I was over with only the dark sky ahead.

At the highest point in my arc there was another sharp crack at my back and I looked up to see the white column of the parachute swirling up above me. I was falling and the roofs of some buildings looked very close below.

The chute opened with a rustling snap, the seat pushed up against me and, a moment after this jarring deceleration, the wall of a building was rushing past and the seat hit the ground and rolled over. The chute settled slowly down and draped me in its enveloping folds.

I am chagrined to report that I did nothing at all at that moment. Events had moved even faster than I had planned and this final bit had been simply stunning. I gaped and gasped and shook my head and finally had enough sense to bang the quick release and throw off the harness straps. After that I kept my head down and crawled and finally got out from under the chute.

A man and a woman had stopped on the opposite side of the street and were goggling in my direction. No one else was in sight. The only sign of activity seemed to be coming from the other side of the great black wall that loomed behind me. Flames lit the sky and smoke roiled and I could hear the loud popping of burning ammunition. Lovely.

“Testing new equipment,” I called out to the spectators and turned and trotted out of sight around the corner. In a dark doorway I stripped off the flying suit and dropped the helmet on top of it. Unidentified and free I strolled away towards the Robotnik. Brilliantly conceived, Jim, I told myself and gave myself a little pat on the shoulder.

At the same moment I realized that now that I was out of the base I would have to find a way to get back in before dawn, but I pushed this depressing revelation out of sight. First things first. I had to dispose of the real Vaska Hulja in order to take over his identity.

He was stirring when I came in, thrashing about in the bed and rocking his head back and forth. The hypnotic trance was wearing thin and he was fighting against it. Not that the robot cleaner was helping. It had dusted and cleaned the room and was now trying to make the bed with Vaska in it. I booted the thing in its COME BACK LATER button and ordered dinner for two. To take Vaska’s subconscious mind off his troubles I gave him the strong suggestion that he had gone two days without eating and that this was the best meal he had ever had in his lifetime. He smacked and chortled and gurgled with delight while he ate; I just picked at my food. In the end I pushed it away and ordered Strong Drink in the hopes that the alcohol would stimulate or depress my thoughts into some coherent plan.

What was I to do with my companion here, happily shoveling food into his gaping gob? His existence was a constant threat to my existence; there was room enough for only one Vaska Hulja in the scheme of things. Kill him? That would be easy enough. Dismember him in the bathtub and feed the parts and gallons of blood into an easily constructed arc furnace until I was left with a handful of dust. It was tempting, he had certainly killed enough people in his short and vicious lifetime to call this justice. But not tempting enough. Cold-blooded killing is just not my thing. I’ve killed in self-defense, I’ll not deny that, but I still maintain an exaggerated respect for life in all forms. Now that we know that the only thing on the other side of the sky is more sky, the idea of an afterlife has finally been slid into the history books alongside the rest of the quaint and forgotten religions. With heaven and hell gone we are faced with the necessity of making a heaven or hell right here. What with societies and metatechnology and allied disciplines we have come a long way, and life on the civilized worlds is better than it ever was during the black days of superstition. But with the improving of here and now comes the stark realization that here and now is all we have. Each of us has only this one brief experience with the bright light of consciousness in that endless dark night of eternity and must make the most of it. Doing this means we must respect the existence of everyone else and the most criminal act imaginable is the terminating of one of these conscious existences. The Cliaandians did not think this way, which was why I intensely enjoyed dropping gravel in their gearboxes, but I still did. Which meant that I couldn’t take the easy way out of reducing gravy-stained Vaska to his component molecules. If I did this I would be no better than they and I would be getting into the old game of the ends justifying the means and starting on that downward track. I sighed, sipped, and the diagrams I had been visualizing for an arc furnace faded and vanished.