“Do you have any preliminary scans of the solar system?”

“That will take several hours.”

“Straight.” Delia, Delia. Why must I always wait? You’ve waited longer, though. Long and frozen. And the years you waited before freezing down. Why wait for me? What has Master Snoop got in mind for you to do to me? Or has the Death Angel merely been waiting to claim her toughest catch? And what has changed since the last message, forty-seven years ago? What made Wizard risk madness to escape Earth? Too much. The roar… the roar!

Under the assault of changing events, Virgil’s battered mind shut down.

The body drifted limply about the confines of the command chair, driven by random muscle twitches and restrained by the single safety harness.

“Wake up,” the computer said, three hours later.

Virgil tried to roll over. “Didn’t anyone program you not to interrupt dreams?”

“What is your name?”

“Call me Ishmael.”

The computer made no sound for a moment. “That name is not entered in my files.”

Damned right. He kept his eyes closed.

“I am programmed to shut down in the event of a security breach by unknown personæ.”

“Virgil, damn it. Virgil Grissom Kinney.”

“Sequence Kinney. Virgil, you had thirteen days of sleep when you were being operated on. That ought to have been sufficient.”

“Where were we?”

“Epsilon Indi.”

“Where are we?”

“Sol.”

Virgil shifted in the chair and smiled. “Then I’ve gone over eleven years without sleep, objectively speaking.”

The computer was not amused. “I’ve finished the preliminary scans.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“The only neutrino flux I can read is from the sun itself. There are some low-level infra-red sources throughout the system, but concentrations are evident near Earth orbit, in the asteroid belt, and here, near the orbit of Pluto.”

Virgil opened his eyes and sat up. “Where’s Mercury?”

“The other side of the sun.”

“Calculate a transfer there.”

“I would advise transferring first to a position from which we can observe directly our destination. I calculate a possibility that the space surrounding the planet may be seeded with flak.”

“To keep us from transferring in?”

“To destroy us if we do.”

“That’s stupid. You couldn’t fill enough of space to guarantee that.” He began to loosen the headpiece of his pressure suit.

“A density of units of one gram per six million cubic meters would be sufficient to cripple this ship. They could fill space to an altitude of twenty thousand klicks and would require less than four hundred million kilograms of mass.”

Virgil unsealed the headpiece and pulled it back, removing the breathpiece. “They’d go through all that expense not even knowing if I was coming back? That’s ridiculous. It’s uneconomic.”

“True. If we were the only Valliardi ship.”

Could they be scared of the Mad Wizard? “What makes you suspect otherwise?”

“Anything could have happened in the past half century. I think we should be cautious.” Suddenly, the computer changed its speech pattern to one of extreme urgency. “Alert! Put your helmet back on and go to battle stations.”

“Why?”

“We are not the only Valliardi ship. Six of them just appeared eight seconds ago.” Sirens wailed. Virgil fumbled with the head-piece, his left wrist aching. “No offensive action on their part yet. I have lasers trained on each. We’re surrounded. One each fore, aft, port, starboard, topside and below. I await orders.”

Virgil tried to speak with the breathpiece half in his mouth. Words and saliva tumbled over one another. “Don’t fire unless attacked first. They may have Brennen’s laser shielding, if they’ve got the transfer.” His left hand lifted a protector cap from three red switches. “If we can’t get out, I’ll cut the electrostatic fields on the anti-matter pods and erase this portion of space.”

“I don’t like that idea.” The lights under the switches winked out.

“Hey! You can’t do that!”

“I just did. I am sending a hailing message.”

Ben, you fool, you’re ruining my plan. “Stand by to transfer to any random point between Jupiter and Saturn on my command.” His right hand covered the transfer button.

A man’s face appeared on the HUD. He wore a breathing device but no space suit. His head was bald, or shaven; dozen of wires and electrodes covered his scalp. He stared directly at Kinney without blinking. His voice sounded old and rasping and it wavered, as though he could not control his speech well.

“This is Wing Commander Sterkoy of Akros Gamma Protection. We have half-gram Valli pellets set to transfer into six vital points in your ship. Surrender now. We have identified your ship as Circus Galacticus, which left the solar system Twelve June, Twenty-One Oh-Seven.”

“How fast can you transfer out of here?” Virgil asked in a low voice.

“One nanosecond from decision to execution. After that, the transfer is instantaneous.”

“Program this-at some random moment in the next minute, transfer out without any warning. You have a destination plotted?”

“Yes.”

Virgil looked out the viewport at the ship off the bow. Spaceship design had not changed much in half a century. It looked like a cone that had been laid on its side and stomped. Its exterior displayed the ravages of many transfers-pits and scratches and even a few small craters covered the plating. The ship was only half again larger than the average executive shuttle.

Hardly seems a threat, but if they transfer six half-gram pellets into Circus, they could cripple it. They might even have one aimed in here.

“Please begin shutting down power. We shall board in full armor.”

“Start shutting down, Ben. Nonessential equipment first.”

“Complying.”

Even Ben does not know when we’ll transfer. He’s leaving it up to a random number generator. Will they be able to track us somehow? Why did Trapper look so… so intently at me when I wasn’t transmitting my own image back to him? Why-

The control room closed in on him and Circus Galacticus vanished from the orbit of Pluto.

I tried to listen when I knew she lay dying in the hospital. Lovely Jenine lying there, aging decades within days from the progeria plague epidemic, youth sucked from her by a viral time machine. I try to be cold. The medics look at me and I hear a roar and they begin to speak in a Language I can’t decipher. I race from the room, their eyes swiveling to follow. Crash of body and metal. Trays smash to the floor, scalpels glittering. I take a fistful to lance me into red darkness. I cry as I see myself below, twisted and foamy, medics running around. Something begins to open up-

“Counterattack! Fire all-What? What?” Jord Baker twisted around in the command chair. He stared at the room, then at his pressure suit.

“How did I get here?”

“What is your name?”

“Baker.”

“Sequence Baker. We escaped from Beta Hydri and are currently sixty-nine degrees above the plane of the ecliptic from Jupiter’s orbit.”

“The solar system?” Baker looked out the viewport and saw only stars. “Calculate a course back to Earth on fusion engine power. I’m not going through a transfer again.”

“It would be inadvisable.”

“God damn you,” he said, reaching for the engine switches and input board. “I’ll do it myself.” The lights under the keyboard winked out.

“Hey! Who’s in command of this ship?”

“I have often wondered myself.”

Baker slammed his left fist against the enclosure button. The controls pulled away from him and he grasped his wrist where a sudden pain burnt. Unstrapping, he drifted to the viewport and hung on to the railing.

“Look-” he turned around to face the speaker grill. “I’m sick of the way I’m being used like some sort of robot you can turn off when you don’t need me. I wanted to die and you stuck me in someone’s body and now I wake up in different places where things have changed from the last time I was around and I don’t remember sleeping or what happened in between. Now”-he swallowed the saliva that had accumulated around the breathpiece-“Why can’t we go to Earth?”