He punched down at random, searching. A spike of pain shot through his left side. Behind it came biting cold. Slabs of muscle began shaking violently, sending rippling pain through his left side.

He stabbed down with fingers again. Light poured in on him. He had hit the optical nerve net. A gaudy, rich redness. He realized his eyes were still closed. He opened them. Yellow flooded in. He closed them against the glare and punched down again.

The crisp, chill hospital smell. Another stab.

Sound washed over him. A mechanical clanking, a distant buzz, the whir of air circulators. No voices.

He squinted. He was lying on a white slab, staring up at fluorescent lights. Now that he could see, he got back the rest of his nets quickly.

He reached up toward his neck—and his hand went the other way. He stopped it, moved the fingers tentatively. His arm was coming from above his head, reaching down … but that was impossible. He moved the other arm. It came into his vision the same way, from above.

Something was wrong with him. He closed his eyes. What could make …?

He rolled over partway and looked around the medmon bay. The sign on the door leaped out at him. It was upside down. He reached out, clutched the edge of the slab. It was upside down, too.

That was it. When the eye took light and cast it on the retina, ordinary optics inverted the image. The retinal nerves filtered that signal and set it upright for the brain.

So the med tech had screwed that up, too. The retinal nerves weren’t working right. That might be easy to fix, just move a fine-point fiber junction a fraction of a millimeter. But Nigel couldn’t, didn’t know how. He would have to manage.

Nigel began to fumble with the thicket of leads that snaked over his body. It was easier if he didn’t look at what he was doing. He had to carefully disconnect the tap-ins at nerve nexus points. The big knot of them at the nape of his neck was hard to detach. It jerked free.

He felt a hot, diffuse pain from the region, spreading up into his skull. The nerves were exposed, sending scattershot impressions through the area, provoking spasms in the muscles.

He rolled over and studied the work table next to the slab. It was a jumble of connectors, microelectronics, and coils of nearly invisible wires. There was a patch that looked the right shape. He reached out for it and missed. His brain saw his arm moving up and corrected, always in the wrong direction.

It took three tries before he could override his own coordination. He snagged the patch and nearly dropped it. Carefully he brought it to his head. The floppy oval of wires fitted over the gaping hole at the back of his neck. He fiddled with it until it slid—snick—into place. The pain tapered off.

He sat up. Spasms shot through him. He gasped. Pain blossomed with every move. But he felt fully awake and deeply angry. He was in a deserted medical bay.

He studied the liquid-optical readouts on his medical monitor. The program profile was mostly numbers. He couldn’t tilt his head far enough over to read the upside-down numbers. He worked on reading them directly. After a moment it wasn’t so hard. The winking digital program profile told him that his shutdown was scheduled to take another fifty-seven minutes.

He got to his feet, shaky and light-headed. It was good to have his own chemistry back. He was tempted to rest for a moment and let the endless river of sensations wash over him. Even this sterile room of barren white light was lurid, packed with details, smells, sensations. He had never loved life so much.

But he wasn’t safe. Coffee breaks didn’t last forever. He would have to find his clothes, get out—

He started for a side door. The first few steps taught him to keep his head tilted down, toward his feet. He had to move his eyes the opposite way, though, to shift his vision. He bumped into the medmon and nearly fell over a desk. After a moment he could navigate around things. He went carefully, feeling each twinge of lancing pain as his left side protested. His right arm ached and trembled from spasm.

He reached the door, opened it slightly, peered through. The equipment beyond was hard to recognize upside down. Clothes on pegs jutted straight up. Chairs clung to the ceiling. He fought down a sense of vertigo. His eyes were telling his brain that he was standing on the ceiling, and somewhere inside him alarm systems clamored to be heard.

There were open drawers of surgical instruments, a wash up station, electronics gear. A prep room. He eased through.

He found his clothes hanging in a locker, defying gravity. It was easier to put them on if he closed his eyes, going by feel alone. Too bad he couldn’t walk that way.

Eight

Crisp, cycled air cut in his throat. Down the bright claustrocorridors he went, brushing by the few who passed in this narrow side passage, their faces flashing before him. He reached an obscure storage vault and slipped inside, feeling strangely exhilarated. He tapped his fingernail and tweaked a nodule by his ear. Ship-comm:

suggest that in light of the news Earthside I go through these minor items of collective business quickly

His thumbnail, knowing he had come on line late, flashed an outline of the shipwide congress Ted had called. A flashing red dot showed they were still among the first Items of Business.

matter of Nigel Walmsley the facts of which are given in your update. He has shown an attitude in the past which I can only characterize as noncommunal. He weasled by several regs during his ground duty at Isis. He has been nonconstructive in the analysis net. All these are disagreeable features of a man I know many of us revere for his early role in the discovery of the Marginis wreck. However it has come to my attention—the facts are laid out and witnessed in your summaries—that he has been systematically deceiving the medical teams about his declining health. He did this from a misguided sense

Nigel studied the summary, including a detailed analysis of his reaction to the analysis net, to Carlos, to suggestions that he give up his jobs. Quite factual. He returned to the corridor and began to walk, listening, watching the faces that passed.

steady buildup of sociopathic responses, well documented by the therapists

Men and women slid by. They were selected for their compatability, their ease with each other, for who else could endure the long compression between the stars? No sun hung here behind a veiled sky, no sudden rains or dark storms stirred the spirit. Only the slow steady strum of canned breezes, ripples of pressure, a programmed replication of distant Earth. They shared these mild rhythms, smooth faces free of madmen and Mozart, no leaping soaring flying dying. They turned away from the silent steady abyss outside, the long pressing silence that enclosed them, the emptiness that defined their place.

in the midst of studying this constellation of acommunal responses, many of them no doubt the product of his physical deterioration, the therapists also detected the medical deception

So Ted had conned him into the therapy, knowing it would help build a file on him, suspecting it would turn up a glitch in the medical profile. Quite clever.

and as many of you know he has held on in hopes of proving his personal and rather eccentric model of the situation humanity faces

Nigel walked as quickly as he could toward the big bowl auditorium where the bulk of Lancer’s crew would be assembled. He would confront Ted there, have it out.

but that hope has vanished and it would be a kindness for him to not let him wither out here, getting mean and withdrawing even more from the fellowship of his

Quite shrewd of Ted to slip it in before a big discussion of Earthside news, when everyone was champing at the bit to hear.