The shuttle headed toward the orbital city.

A huge ball and stick. Like God’s baby rattle it turns. Mad Wizard hunted me in it. This one is different, though. Older. Repair plating. Loose cables. I can’t escape, but I can watch.

Baker maneuvered the tiny shuttle toward the non-rotating central shaft of the habitat. Diffuse white light glowed from an open docking bay. Cutting back to less than a meter per second, he checked alignments on the HUD and decelerated to a decimeter per second. The nose of the craft nudged the impact cushion inside the bay and slowed to rest.

Now what? He powered down the shuttle and switched on the aft camera. On a vid, he watched the bay door close, cutting him off from the stars. He sat still, listening to the air cycling into the chamber. I’m home again. He looked at the stranger’s hands grasping the chair arms at his side.

I’ll never really be home again. He unstrapped while planning his next action.

A hatchway slid open. A score of men bounded into the docking bay. Using bulkheads and struts as kick points and pivots, the troops surrounded the ship, holding themselves securely in place against the walls. They aimed their laser gloves at the airlock. It eased open slowly.

Baker stood with his feet squarely on the shuttle deck as if he possessed his own personal gravity field. Arms folded, he waited. Patience is power, he recited. Calm is courage.

An old man lowered his arm and lightly kicked toward the impact cushion. He wore black overalls, as did the other men. The military insignia on his breast and shoulders, though, did not match those of any of his fellows. Their insignia varied as much as their sizes, ages, shapes, and colors. The old man inclined his head with curt formality.

Baker mimicked the action and, easing his feet from the deck toeholds, moved forward to meet his hosts.

“Welcome onboard Fadeaway,” the old man said. “I am Commander Norman Powell, of the destroyer Scranton. Retired,” he added with a wry smile.

Baker kept his eyes roving about the bay, watching the other men. “Where’s your destroyer?”

Powell maintained his smile. “Destroyed. This is a veteran’s colony, though not by intention. Come along. We’ll do a few scans on you and your ship, and then go to morning mess.” The other men lowered their arms, but kept the business end of their gloves pointed in Baker’s general direction. Powell gestured toward the air lock and waited for Baker to come up beside him. That was when one of the men to Baker’s right raised a pistol and fired. His own body might have reacted in time, but not Virgil’s. Something sharp burned in his thigh. At least all my deaths have been painless. A fast stab and then numb-

I’ve never wanted anything more than to fly. When I soar, there’s no pain or fear-just the sun, stars, and planets, motionless even at my greatest final vees. And when I drop a ship into the atmosphere, ion colors whorl about and the ocean below appears through the glow and I skim it as close as I can, the world suddenly brighter and then I’m over land, valleys wrapping up to cradle me and I skip out of their reach and then I’m free and climbing, Earth at my back and sky ahead-

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that this man is Jord Baker. He’s been babbling on like that for the last hour and we’ve given him everything we’ve got.” The Pharmaceutic increased the voltage to one of the electrodes attached to Baker’s freshly shaven head.

Blue, purple, black, and the thrill of motion is lost in vastness. Now comes the urge to push faster and faster until I can see things move again. Ultimate speed-

Powell punched a few buttons on the console where he sat and looked at the readout. He turned back to the Pharmaceutic to say, “Bio reports no infestation detected. Serologies are negative. Evidence of clonegraft on his left wrist, probably done by a boxdoc.” He slid his hands in his pockets and eased back in his chair. The quarter-gravity of the hospital always made him feel lazy. Still he frowned.

“The photo we pulled from the file matches another pilot named Virgil Kinney. What kind of game is going on here?”

“Does it matter?”

“You bet it matters.” Powell watched Baker twist aimlessly on the operating table, trying to fight the restraining straps and the images electrochemically triggered within him.

“We’ve got a destroyer-sized Valli ship out there with a pilot who thinks he’s a man long dead. Our crew can’t board the ship because its computer says that if we do, it will set off its antimatter bombs-and why the hell does it even have those?-and now I’ve got a neutrino reading from trans-Plutonian orbit indicating something about the size of a full warship accelerating at twelve gees toward the inner planets.”

“Norm, the war’s been over for years.”

I finally found the ultimate speed when I woke up inside somebody’s body after I died; and I died again and then slept and then died and then worked and then slept and they-

“What’s he saying?”

– made me run the tour when I wanted to die and now I find I don’t want to die but rid this sleep that comes and numbs me and makes me act unknowing.

Powell leaned over Baker to observe his unfocused eyes in their random movements. Baker’s lips moved wordlessly for a moment.

Grind me up and stuff me like some nucleic sawdust in this scarecrow skin, then put him in control?

“There’s your answer,” the Pharmaceutic said.

“What answer? No RNA transfer’s ever resulted in shared personality, in one guy taking over the other guy’s body. Not without the brain being wiped first. The electrochemical ordering is way too strong for-”

“It happened. Or seems to have.”

“Are you saying he’ll be no help in getting that computer to let us onboard?”

“What do we need with the ship, Norm? The war’s over, everyone’s moved out. We’re just living in an abandoned home in the slums and nobody’s going to bother us. We’ll die on Fadeaway boring one another with old war stories.”

Powell looked at the Pharmaceutic and nodded. “The war’s over.”

Get even. Switch the locks. Die my own way.

“Shut him off and send him to Recovery. Jord Baker is as good as Virgil Kinney for what we can get out of him.”

The Pharmaceutic flipped toggles and turned dials to zero. A nearly audible buzz dropped in pitch.

“He seemed rational enough when he came on board.”

“We’ll see.”

It’s crazy to try tampering with my mind. I need help. I can’t lose control again. Lose control, you crash.

Crash.

Baker’s head turned to one side and his voice fell silent.

Virgil awoke screaming.

The assistant medic jumped up from the chair leaning up against the wall. It slid to the floor with a sharp slap as the man hit an alert buzzer and bent forward over Virgil, watching. Staring up at the medic, Virgil considered him for a moment, then began to weep.

Never any escape. I’m forced into hiding and when I find a way out I’m trapped again. Pearhead glares with pitted eyes over ripe cheeks and gibbers to the wall. I break his cipher with a snap of my mind.

“He’s awake, sir.”

“Anything else?”

“Just the scream and the bawling. He’s watching me now.”

“Well,” Powell said, “talk to him.” Powell’s image vanished from the scrim, replaced by that of the Pharmaceutic.

“If he gets violent, give him twenty ccs of Torp Eight.” The Pharmaceutic’s face faded away.

Faces peer from the walls. Master Snoop has caught up with me again. The dead man in me brought me back to them.

“Easy, fella. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“But be afraid of itself.”

“Huh?”

Virgil strained at the belts. “How long will you keep this up?”