SOMETHING WENT "Tick."

He heard it quite distinctl...metallic sound. There it went again: "Tick."

He opened his eyes and was rewarded with darkness, an absolute lack of radiant energ.... or of receptors to detect energy.

Am I blind?

"Tick."

He could not place the source, but it was out there - wherever out there was. The air felt cold in his throat and lungs. But his body was warm. He realized that he lay very lightly on a soft surface. He was breathing. Something tickled his nose, a faint odor o.... pepper?

"Tick."

He cleared his throat. "Anybody there?"

No answer. Speaking hurt his throat.

What am I doing here?

The soft surface beneath him curved up around his shoulders to support his neck and head. It encased hips and legs. This was familiar. It ignited distant associations. It wa.... what? He felt that he should know about such a surface.

After all.... .

"Tick."

Panic seized him. Who am I?

The answer came slowly, thawed from a block of ice which contained everything he should know.

I am Raja Flattery.

Ice melted in a cascade of memories.

I'm Chaplain/Psychiatrist on the Voidship Earthling. W.... we. . .

Some of the memories remained frozen.

He tried to sit up but was restrained by softly cupping bands over his chest and wrists. Now, he felt connectors withdraw from the veins at his wrists.

I'm in a hyb tank!

He had no memory of going into hybernation. Perhaps memory thawed more slowly than flesh. Interesting. But there were a few memories now, frigid in their flow, and deeply disturbing.

I failed.

Moonbase directed me to blow up our ship rather than let it roam space as a threat to humankind. I was to send the message capsule back to Moonbas.... and blow up our ship.

Something had prevented him fro.... somethin....

But he remembered the project now.

Project Consciousness.

And he, Raja Flattery, had held a key role in that project. Chaplain/Psychiatrist. He had been one of the crew.

Umbilicus crew.

He did not dwell on the birth symbology in that label. Clones had more important tasks. They were clones on the crew, all with Lon for a middle name. Lon meant clone as Mac meant son of. All the crew - clones. They were doppelgangers sent far into insulating space, there to solve the problem of creating an artificial consciousness.

Dangerous work. Very dangerous. Artificial consciousness had a long history of turning against its creators. It went rogue with ferocious violence. Even many of the uncloned had perished in agony.

Nobody could say why.

But the project's directors at Moonbase were persistent. Again and again, they sent the same cloned crew into space. Features flashed into Flattery's mind as he thought the names: a Gerrill Timberlake, a John Bickel, a Prue Weygand....

Raja Flatter.... Raja Lon Flattery.

He glimpsed his own face in a long-gone mirror: fair hair, narrow feature.... disdainfu....

And the Voidships carried others, many others. They carried cloned Colonists, gene banks in hyb tanks. Cheap flesh to be sacrificed in distant explosions where the uncloned would not be harmed. Cheap flesh to gather data for the uncloned. Each new venture into the void went out with a bit more information for the wakeful umbilicus crew and those encased in hy....

As I am encased now.

Colonists, livestock, plants - each Voidship carried what it needed to create another Earth. That was the carrot luring them onward. And the ship - certain death if they failed to create an artificial consciousness. Moonbase knew that ships and clones were cheap where materials and inexpensive energy were abundan.... as they were on the moon.

"Tick."

Who is bringing me out of hybernation?

And why?

Flattery thought about that while he tried to extend his globe of awareness into the unresponsive darkness.

Who? Why?

He knew that he had failed to blow up his ship after it had exhibited consciousnes.... using Bickel as an imprint on the computer they had buil....

I did not blow up the ship. Something prevented me fro....

Ship!

More memories flooded into his mind. They had achieved the artificial consciousness to direct their shi.... and it had whisked them far across space to the Tau Ceti system.

Where there were no inhabitable planets.

Moonbase probes had made certain of that much earlier. No inhabitable planets. It was part of the frustration built into the project. No Voidship could be allowed to choose the long way to Tau Ceti sanctuary. Moonbase could not allow that. It would be too tempting for the cloned crew - breed our own replacements, let our descendants find Tau Ceti. And to hell with Project Consciousness! If they voted that course, the Chaplain/Psychiatrist was charged to expose the empty goal and stand ready with the destruct button.

Win, lose or draw - we were supposed to die.

And only the Chaplain/Psychiatrist had been allowed to suspect this. The serial Voidships and their cloned cargo had one mission: gather information and send it back to Moonbase.

Ship.

That was it, of course. They had created much more than consciousness in their computer and its companion system which Bickel had called "the Ox." They had made Ship. And Ship had whisked them across space in an impossible eyeblink.

Destination Tau Ceti.

That was, after all, the built-in command, the target programmed into their computer. But where there had been no inhabitable planet, Ship had created one: a paradise planet, an earth idealized out of every human dream. Ship had done this thing, but then had come Ship's terrible demand: "You must decide how you will WorShip Me!"

Ship had assumed attributes of God or Satan. Flattery was never sure which. But he had sensed that awesome power even before the repeated demand.

"How will you WorShip? You must decide!"

Failure.

They never could satisfy Ship's demand. But they could fear. They learned a full measure of fear.

"Tick."

He recognized that sound now: the dehyb timer/monitor counting off the restoration of life to his flesh.

But who had set this process into motion?

"Who's there?"

Silence and the impenetrable darkness answered.

Flattery felt alone and now there was a painful chill around his flesh, a signal that skin sensation was returning to normal.

One of the crew had warned them before they had thrown the switch to ignite the artificial consciousness. Flattery could not recall who had voiced the warning but he remembered it.

"There must be a threshold of consciousness beyond which a conscious being takes on attributes of God."

Whoever said it had seen a truth.

Who is bringing me out of hyb and why?

"Somebody's there! Who is it?"

Speaking still hurt his throat and his mind was not working properly - that icy core of untouchable memories.

"Come on! Who's there?"

He knew somebody was there. He could feel the familiar presence of. . .

Ship!

"Okay, Ship. I'm awake."

"So you assume."

That chiding voice could never sound human. It was too impossibly controlled. Every slightest nuance, every inflection, every modulated resonance conveyed a perfection which put it beyond the reach of humans. But that voice told him he once more was a pawn of Ship. He was a small cog in the workings of this Infinite Power which he had helped to release upon an unsuspecting universe. This realization filled him with remembered terrors and an immediate awesome fear of the agonies which Ship might visit upon him for his failures. He was tormented by visions of Hel....