Chapter V

Someone jabbed him in the ribs, and he awoke with a jerk, blinking in the gloom. His mouth tasted like sweaty leather; he knew he had been sleeping. "What's the matter?"

"Wake up!" The girl was standing over him, her voice a harsh whisper.

He was alert in an instant. "The records--"

She thrust a packet into his hands, "We've got to go," she said. "There isn't much time. They were late."

"Just relax a minute." He ripped open the packet. A roll of photostats fell out into his lap, still damp. He threw them on the dressing table, and snapped on a dirty yellow light.

"You can't read them now--"

He didn't even hear her. He stared at the names on the papers before him. Names he had never seen before. Not all new, though. Bob Whittaker had kept his old name. But the others--changed, just as their faces had changed. He read the entries under Whittaker's name. Job after job on Earth, months of drifting, observing, then drifting again. A run on the Mars-Earth line as a crew-hand. Imagine Whittaker a crew-hand on a space liner! Work in the mines on Mars. Back to Earth, and married to a girl he had never heard of.

And then, at the end of the page, a number, and a letter, and a date, and the words: CHECKED THROUGH.

There was nothing else.

Griffin stared at the paper, his heart pounding in his throat. The next was shorter. But at the bottom, the same story. Joe Meyer's picture, with a name Griffin had never seen before--

CHECKED THROUGH.

Phil Steinberg--_Checked through._

It was like a trail in the snow that led one way out into the bright moonlight, into the middle of a field, and then stopped dead, without sign or struggle. Impossible. But the papers were there before him. _Checked through._

Nobody to suspect, nobody to worry about tracing them down. Because they were dead. Free Agents. Beyond the law, beyond search and tracing. Dropped from sight.

The girl was shaking his arm, begging him to hurry. He rolled up the papers, thrust them into his inside pocket. He could not find his hat, and he swore under his breath, and they went out without it. Then they were on a surface car, curving up through the twilight into the New City again, until they spotted a street where cabs were passing. They hailed one, and the girl leaned back in the seat, trembling, as Griffin said, "Rocket Landing. Hurry."

And then he leaned back, a thousand phantoms flickering through his agitated mind.

* * * * *

He had to get rid of her before he could do anything. He glared at the girl as they made their way across the Landing Building pavilion toward the endless rows of loading platforms, wishing he had never agreed to help her. Instinct told him to run, to leave her there and let her get aboard her ship as best she could, but he followed her grimly. The entrance guard passed them without argument when Griffin showed him his green stripe. "Venus ship? Platforms are down to the right--"

They moved down the rows of silent ships, and then she pointed. It was a huge ship, with a single light swinging on top of the gantry. "That's the one."

He glanced up at the ship. The gantry stood tall by her side, and her airlock was standing open. He pushed the crane buzzer; up above, the machinery began to squeak and groan as the platform started down.

"Who's down there?" The voice from above was harsh, and Griffin saw a head appear over the edge of the crane. "What do you want?"

"Free Agent," said Griffin. "I'd like to come aboard and take a look around."

"Not supposed to start loading for two hours," the voice grumbled.

"We're not shipping, we're just looking."

"All right. Come along."

The crane rumbled down and squeaked to a stop. Griffin and the girl stepped on the platform, and it started up again. At the top the guard peered at them suspiciously, hand on his gun belt. He fluoresced the green stencil on Griffin's arm, grunting. "Who's she?" he said.

"Free loader," said Griffin, tense. "Friend of mine."

The guard didn't like it. It was written a yard wide across his face. "Going to be long?"

"Not long. Just want to look around."

"Better keep forward, Free Agent. The pile's active."

"We won't go aft." Griffin moved through the lock, and the girl followed him. He heard a sound, then, a soft, swishing sound that sounded wrong. He whirled too late as the guard moved toward him. Powerful arms trapped him, held him tightly, and a hand clamped unceremoniously across his mouth. Something sharp bit his arm, and he let out a little scream. And then, like pieces in a puzzle the whole grotesque picture slammed into place in his mind, and he fought like a wild man to break loose from the arms that held him.

After a while, he stopped struggling.

* * * * *

The first sound he heard was not a sound at all, but a vibration, low, deep seated, swallowing his whole body as he lay there. He tried to sit up, and felt the leather bands catch his arms and legs and chest. He let out a little cry, and fumbled to unbuckle them, and then he rolled and spun crazily through the air until his boots struck metal, and caught him tight to the floor. A pang of nausea shot through him; he stared wide-eyed at the empty cabin, the dozen slanted acceleration cots, all empty. He struggled to the closed hatchway in front, and fought it open, his mind screaming. And then he was in the control room, staring at the empty seats in front of the panel, and above the rows of glittering keys, the curved plexiglass giving out to the black expanse of space with its millions of bright pinpoints.

He gave a strangled cry, and pushed up against the glass, staring down at the still-dwindling discs below him, one pale greenish-blue, the other, much smaller, dead white against the blackness. And then he was clawing the glass, screaming and sobbing and cursing like a madman. He stared out the glass, and down at the panel, and slowly, like a malignant poison seeping into his mind, he began to realize what it meant.

He knew now where he was going. He knew now the price-tag. Not to Venus, not to Mars--it would be too easy to return from there, it would be idiotic to shanghai a person aboard a ship to take him to Mars or Venus--he could simply turn around and come back home. Not to Venus, not to Mars. Not anywhere in the Solar System--

He saw it clearly, as bits of evidence fell into place. Man had been aiming at the stars for centuries. It was sure to come; the frontier had expanded year by year--across Africa, across Asia, across Antarctica--to the moon, to the planets. Always the expanding frontier, until now, when it had expanded beyond man's reach. For man could not go to the stars. There was no light-speed drive to carry him there, the journey would take too long. Once a man had grown to maturity, and been educated, and reached an age where he could move out on the long journey, he would be too old. The journey could never take less than twenty-five or thirty years, with the rocket drive man had, and man would be too old to be useful when he arrived at his destination. A man aged 25 at the start of the journey would spend his prime years in transit; he would be fifty, or sixty, or seventy or more before he arrived. There could be no round trips, there could be no exploration, or colonization, or anything else. Man would be too old--

_Unless he be born again_--

But Griffin had been born again. He had a new body, and now, in the barest infancy of his new life, with sixty or seventy or eighty years of life left before him, he was on the first lap of the journey--to the stars. This was the price-tag, this was how the government was using the techniques which gave men new lives--in order to carry Earth to the stars.