"I'm sorry, sir, but now the ship has gotten away. Look down at the
board."
* * * * *
Gross stared down, Kramer over his shoulder. The black dot had slipped
through the white dots and had moved off at an abrupt angle. The white
dots were broken up, dispersing in confusion.
"He's an unusual strategist," one of the officers said. He traced the
line. "It's an ancient maneuver, an old Prussian device, but it
worked."
The white dots were turning back. "Too many yuk ships out that far,"
Gross said. "Well, that's what you get when you don't act quickly." He
looked up coldly at Kramer. "We should have done it when we had him.
Look at him go!" He jabbed a finger at the rapidly moving black dot.
The dot came to the edge of the board and stopped. It had reached the
limit of the chartered area. "See?"
--Now what? Kramer thought, watching. So the Old Man had escaped the
cruisers and gotten away. He was alert, all right; there was nothing
wrong with his mind. Or with his ability to control his new body.
Body--The ship was a new body for him. He had traded in the old dying
body, withered and frail, for this hulking frame of metal and plastic,
turbines and rocket jets. He was strong, now. Strong and big. The new
body was more powerful than a thousand human bodies. But how long
would it last him? The average life of a cruiser was only ten years.
With careful handling he might get twenty out of it, before some
essential part failed and there was no way to replace it.
And then, what then? What would he do, when something failed and there
was no one to fix it for him? That would be the end. Someplace, far
out in the cold darkness of space, the ship would slow down, silent
and lifeless, to exhaust its last heat into the eternal timelessness
of outer space. Or perhaps it would crash on some barren asteroid,
burst into a million fragments.
It was only a question of time.
"Your wife didn't remember anything?" Gross said.
"I told you. Only that he kept a goat, once."
"A hell of a lot of help that is."