The timer beside his head moved with an agonizing slowness: 2:48. It seemed to him that it took an hour shifting to 2:49. The sentries were silent now.

Why didn’t the sentries mark her passage?

As though to answer him, a voice on the circuit said: “She just rounded East Eighty-Nine!”

“Who the hell is that out there?”

“She’s still too far out to identify.”

Thomas drew his lasgun and put a hand on the hatchdog. The word was that the last minutes were the worst, Pandora’s demons ganging up on the runner. He peered out into the moon-shadows.

2:50.

He spun the hatchdog, opened it a crack. No movement. . . . Nothing. Not even a demon. He found that he was swearing under his breath, muttering: “Come on, Legata. Come on. You can do it. Don’t blow the fucking run at the end!”

Something flickered in the shadows off to his left. He swung the hatch wide.

There she was!

It was like a dance—leaping, dodging. Something large and black swerved behind her. Thomas took careful aim and burned another Dasher as she sped past him without breaking her stride. There was a musky odor of perspiration from her. He slammed the hatch and dogged it. Something crashed into the barrier as he sealed it.

Too late, you fucker!

He turned to see her slipping through the Lab One hatchway, her singlesuit in hand. She waved to him as the hatch hissed shut.

Legata, he thought. Then: Ten klicks in twenty-three minutes!

There was a babble of conversation on the sentry circuit.

“Anybody know who that was?”

“Negative. Where’d she go?”

“Somewhere over near Lab One dome.”

“Sheee-it! That must’ve been the fastest time ever.”

Thomas slapped the switch to shut them off, but not before a male voice said: “I’d sure like to have that little honey chasing . . .”

Thomas crossed over to the Lab One hatch, heaved on the dog. It refused to move, sealed.

All that just to put a hashmark above her eyebrow?

No . . . it had to be much more than the mark of success.

What were they doing down there in Lab One?

Again, he tried the hatchdog. It refused to budge. He shook his head and walked slowly back to the autosentry gate where he picked up a servo and rode it to his quarters. All the way down he kept wondering:

What the hell’s a Legata?

Chapter 34

Chapter 34

The clone of a clone does not necessarily stay closer to the original than a clone of the older original. It depends on cellular interference and other elements which may be introduced. Passage of time always introduces other elements.

—Jesus Lewis, The New Cloning Manual

OAKES SNAPPED off the holo and swiveled his chair around to stare at the design on the wall of his groundside cubby.