were boarded up on its first and second floors, but he lived on the fourth, where all but one of the panes seemed to be intact. Someone was storing a broken set of springy Mars buggy wheels on one of the balconies. From another balcony, a crazy old coot was shouting obscenities at those making their way along the curving sidewalk. Most of the people were ignoring him, but two kids—a grimy boy and an even grimier girl, each about twelve but tall and spindly in the way kids born here tend to be—decided to start shouting back.
Pickover lived alone, so there was no spouse or child to question about any changes in him. That made me suspicious right off the bat: if one were going to choose an identity to appropriate, it ideally would be someone without close companions.
I buzzed him from the lobby. A drunk sleeping by the buzzboard was disturbed enough by the sound to roll onto his side but otherwise didn’t interfere with me.
“Hello?” said a male voice higher pitched than my own.
“Mr. Pickover, my name is Alex Lomax. I’m from the NewYou head office on Earth. I’m wondering if I might ask you a few questions?”
He had a British accent. “Lomax, did you say? You’re Alexander Lomax?”
“I am, yes. I’m wondering if we might speak for a few minutes?”
“Well, yes, but . . .”
“But what?”
“Not here,” he said. “Let’s go outside.”
I was pissed, because that meant I couldn’t try the screwdriver trick on him. But I said, “Fine. There’s a café on the other side of the circle.”
“No, no. Outside. Outside the dome.”
That was easy for him; he was a transfer now. But it was a pain in the ass for me; I’d have to rent a surface suit.
“Seriously? I only want to ask to ask you a couple of questions.”
“Yes, yes, but I want to talk to you and . . .” The voice grew soft. “. . . and it’s a delicate matter, deserving of privacy.”
The drunk near me rolled onto his other side and let out a wheezy snore.
“Oh, all right,” I said.
“Good chap,” replied Pickover. “I’m just in the middle of something up here. About an hour from now, say? Just outside the east airlock?”
“Can we make it the west one? I can swing by my office on the way, then.” I didn’t need anything from there—I was already packing heat—but if he had some sort of ambush planned, I figured he’d object to the change.
“That’s fine, that’s fine—all four airlocks are the same distance from here, after all! But now, I really must finish what I’m doing . . .”
* * *
Of course I was suspicious about what Rory Pickover was up to and so I tipped Mac off before making my way to the western airlock. The sun was setting outside the dome by the time I got there to suit up. Surface suits came in three stretchy sizes; I put on one of largest, then slung the air tanks onto my back. I felt heavy in the suit, even though in it I still weighed only about half of what I had back on Earth.
Rory Pickover was a paleontologist—an actual scientist, not a treasure-seeking fossil hunter. His pre-transfer appearance had been almost stereotypically academic: a round, soft face, with a fringe of graying hair. His new body was lean and muscular, and he had a full head of dark brown hair, but the face was still recognizably his own. His suit had a loop on its waist holding a geologist’s hammer with a wide, flat blade; I rather suspected it would nicely smash my fishbowl helmet. I surreptitiously transferred the Smith & Wesson from the holster I wore under my jacket to an exterior pocket on the rented surface suit, just in case I needed it while we were outside.
We signed the security logs and then let the technician cycle us through the airlock.
Overhead, the sky was growing dark. Nearby, there were two large craters and a cluster of smaller ones. There were few footprints in the rusty sand; the recent storm had obliterated the thousands that had doubtless been there earlier. We walked out about five hundred meters. I turned around briefly to look back at the transparent dome and the ramshackle buildings within.
“Sorry for dragging you out here, old boy,” said Pickover. “I don’t want any witnesses.” There was a short-distance radio microphone inside that mechanical throat for speaking outside the dome, and I had a