todo
1
HIS WIFE HAD held him in her arms as if she could keep death
away from him.
He had cried out, "My God, I am a dead man!"
The door to the room had opened, and he had seen a giant,
black, one-humped camel outside and had heard the tinkle of
the bells on its harness as the hot desert wind touched them.
Then a huge black face topped by a great black turban had
appeared in the doorway. The black eunuch had come in
through the door, moving like a cloud, with a gigantic scimitar
in his hand. Death, the Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer
of Society, had arrived at last.
Blackness. Nothingness. He did not even know that his heart
had given out forever. Nothingness.
Then his eyes opened. His heart was beating strongly. He was
strong, very strong! All the pain of the gout in his feet, the
agony in his liver, the torture in his heart, all were gone.
It was so quiet he could hear the blood moving in his head.
He was alone in a world of soundlessness.
A bright light of equal intensity was everywhere. He could
see, yet he did not understand what he was seeing. What were
these things above, beside, below him? Where was he?
He tried to sit up and felt, numbly, a panic. There was
nothing to sit up upon because he was hanging in nothingness.
The attempt sent him forward and over, very slowly, as if he
were in a bath of thin treacle. A foot from his fingertips was a
rod of bright red metal. The rod came from above, from
infinity, and went on down to infinity. He tried to grasp it
because it was the nearest solid object, but something invisible
1. BILLION FOR THE JOB
GOT A JOB FOR YOU. PAYS A BILLION.
The message blinked at the top of the screen three times,
then disappeared. Rod Morgan smiled. He had been hearing
rumors about a quasi-multigovernment, quasi-commercial
consortium that was raising capital to sponsor a risky trip to
Saturn. He closed down his game of WARPWORLD, and
switched to net-mail to read the rest of the message. He'd
guessed right, it was from the cosortium. The job must really
be risky for them to be offering a billion dollars. Although the
penny was no longer legal tender, a billion dollars was still a
large fortune.
Rod read the message. They were asking him to be com-
mander of the mission. That didn't surprise him, for after all,
he was the best space pilot in the business. Without hesitation,
he typed his reply.
JOB ACCEPTED. WHO ELSE IS ON MY CREW?
The reply soon made its way back over the ether and opti-
cal fibers of the SolNet. There were five names listed. Two—
Seichi Takeo and Pete Stewart—were unfamiliar, while the
other three were well known to Rod, since they were also in-
