presumably doing something internally that switched radio frequencies. “Okay, Lomax,” he said. “Talk.”
“We all want to walk away from this, Stuart,” I said. “Think about what’s on the line. You’ve uploaded—you can live forever. You’ve found great fossils, and you’ll find even more—you’re rich.” I paused, wondering if bringing Lacie into it was wise or not, but decided I needed every bit of persuasion I could muster. “And you’ve got an amazingly beautiful wife waiting for you. You don’t need to throw all that away.”
I wanted some feedback—some evidence that this was making sense to him—but he said nothing and so, after a time, I went on. “And you don’t have to throw it away,” I said. “If Uno, over there, accepts the role of the real Willem Van Dyke, then Van Dyke isn’t dead, see? No homicide. No need for you to take a hostage. No need for any of this. All you—”
Motion caught my eye. Uno—in the body of Dazzling Don Hutchison—still had his hands held up, but he must have just crouched low, and then snapped those powerful legs straight, because he was flying up, up, up into the dark sky. He kept his right arm bent, but then stuck his left arm straight out from the shoulder; he looked, for all the world, as he flew higher and higher, like he was going to throw a Hail Mary pass. But he wasn’t holding anything in either hand, and—ah—he was actually twisting around his vertical axis as he went up, and now was starting the slow descent. I’m sure he wanted to come down faster, but—
Yes, he’d angled backward a bit. He was going to come down right on top of Mac. Mac was fumbling to get the disruptor disk aimed up over his head, but soon abandoned that notion and simply scrambled to get out of the way. Even under Martian gravity, having 150 kilos of mass conk you on the head could do a lot of damage.
As Uno came down onto the planitia, he flexed his knees, and they bore the brunt of the impact. Still, a cloud of dust went up, and for a moment I wasn’t sure what was happening. But soon Uno came barreling out of the cloud, heading straight toward Mac, who was hunched over and scuttling away. And then this Dazzling Don did what the real Dazzling Don had done countless times—he tackled the other player, driving Mac face first into the dirt. Mac landed on the disruptor; Uno pushed himself up off Mac, then grabbed Mac’s shoulders and tossed him aside. He seized the disruptor disk and started running toward me.
No, not toward me. Toward Rory Pickover and Stuart Berling. “You killed Actual!” Uno said, no sign of exertion in his mechanical voice—just raw fury. I realized that he, too, must have selected frequency twenty-five; even from forty meters away he could make out the finger signs I’d presented to Berling.
He was closing the distance fast. “Uno, don’t!” I yelled. “Don’t!”
Uno slowed a bit, but only to get a good look at the disruptor and find its controls. And although I knew from experience that turning it off was harder than it should be, turning it on had never been a problem . . .
There were now only about fifteen meters between Uno and the Berling/Pickover pair, still on the ramp. It was my turn to jump. The airlock was higher up than I’d have liked, but I stepped onto the ramp, then leapt off. “Berling!” I shouted, as soon as I’d landed on the planitia. “Let Pickover go. Get back into the airlock! You’ll be safe inside.”
Berling didn’t move.
“For God’s sake!” I called. “Lock yourself back inside the ship!”
He stood there. Of course he couldn’t do that; he could never lock himself in that death ship again.
Uno had come to a stop now. He held the disruptor in front of him, one hand in each of the grips on the opposite sides of the disk.
“Uno, for God’s sake, let Dr. Pickover go! You don’t want to do this!”
But he did. He must have pressed the twin triggers, because suddenly both Berling and Rory went stiff and then their bodies started spasming and—
And—Christ!—Berling was still gripping Rory’s forehead, and his hand was clenching.
The high-pitched whine of the disruptor was barely audible in this thin air, but its effects were obvious. Both transfers looked like they were receiving massive electrical shocks.