Ashling opened his eyes and found himself looking up at a ceiling past parts of machine and loops of cable. The only sound was the subdued humming of motors and cooling fans, punctuated by the intermittent beeps of check routines timing out. His head was restrained by pads, and he could feel probes positioned around his skull. He blinked, hardly daring to believe it. Was this real? Had the machine really done its task?
He moved his hands up to his head and, working by touch, carefully removed the probes and slackened off the restraining pads. Then he sat up cautiously. Yes, this was the machine chamber at Pearse. He felt strong, young, and vigorous—sensations that he hadn't known for years. On looking down, he saw that he was wearing Gordon's clothes. But to his surprise, there seemed nothing unusual about his arms and hands. Evidently there was an effect that he hadn't thought through sufficiently. But there could be no doubt that what now constituted him was functioning in a different body. His watch showed it to be a little after five, not yet dawn.
He braced himself, and then went through into the adjoining room. But curiously he experienced little of the emotions that he had expected. The figure slumped over in the chair was a stranger. Oh, yes, it possessed all the attributes that Ashling could recite in a purely intellectual fashion as having pertained to himself: white hair, hawkish nose and chin, tired features, but the details were all as he might have remembered of an acquaintance. He felt no sense of identity with the person he was looking at, no intuitive recognition of self. He turned and found a glazed panel on the front of one of the instrumentation racks, which in the prevailing light returned a reasonable reflection of himself. Young, olive-skinned face, wavy black hair, large, dark eyes, and full mouth. Again, he knew from his memories that he should be seeing the face of an old man, but the face peering back at him looked familiar. He shook his head, unable to explain it. Then he turned away and moved closer to the form that had been him, in the chair. It was dead and already cold. There could be no going back now.
In his intended defection, he had planned to take with him information on the most important aspects of his work. It was all in his briefcase, written onto a thin package containing an ultra-high-density holographic storage film that he had concealed behind the lining in the lid. The papers that the briefcase carried ostensibly were innocuous. To supplement the film, he now wrote the procedures he'd discovered in Nordens's files onto a second holofilm, and sealed it into a sandwich between two inch-square pieces of card. That would be his present to Ulkanov. Then he reset the equipment to its quiescent condition and cleared away all traces of his activity. That done, he lifted the Ashling body from the chair—a much easier task than before, now that he had Gordon's musculature to work with—and took it back through the connecting corridor into the apartment. He retrieved the holofilm of his own work, and put both of them in his pocket, to be prepared for Gordon to carry with him, later.
While tidying up the apartment, he thought over the next step: getting out. He didn't want to use Gordon's car if he could avoid it—the smashed windshield would be bound to attract attention. He wondered about the pickup truck. It was parked at the end of the path leading up to the apartment, and there seemed to be no other doors nearby. Maybe Gordon had been using it for some reason. If so, he should have the keys. Taking both sets with him, Ashling went back outside and tried them. Sure enough, he found a key that did the trick. He got out of the cab and checked the toolbox in the rear. It contained tools for just about every eventuality imaginable, including a shovel. The first streaks of daylight were showing. He would have to move fast.
He carried the body out, put it in the back, covering it with a tarp, and he went back inside for the two briefcases. On checking the clothes he was wearing he found a magnetic passcard to a room in the Hyatt, along with a card reminding that the door number was 1406. His jacket pocket contained a wallet with ID and contents carrying the name Maurice J. Gordon. So, everything seemed fine. Gordon would wake up tomorrow back in his own room, but with a gap in his memory from the time he'd been with Ashling in suite 7319. He could place his own interpretation on that.
Ashling took one final look around the apartment and closed the door. He backed out and drove at a leisurely speed to the Annex gate. The guards there evidently knew him and waved him through. Minutes later he was back on the highway, heading south, with the tip of the sun's disk just breaking over the hills to the east.
When he was about ten miles from Pearse, he turned off into a narrow lane leading up off the main road and disappearing among trees. He followed it and came to a deserted spot, hidden in a dell. There, amid the undergrowth, he dug a grave and placed his former body in it, along with his briefcase, which he would no longer need. Before covering the body over, he removed the container of Panacyn medication and a few other personal effects that might prove useful for constructing the kind of trail of clues that he had in mind.
He completed the task and stared at the spot for a while with mixed feelings. Then he replaced the shovel in the toolbox and drove back down the trail. At the highway he stopped and looked around, noting the landmarks to the place, wondering if he would ever return here. There was no obvious reason why he should. He drove back onto the highway and headed south once more, back toward Atlanta.
He arrived at the Hyatt less than two hours later and went straight up to room 1406. There was a leather traveling case of Gordon's there, and some clothes in the closet. The first thing to take care of was the three unconscious members of Pipeline who were still in suite 7319. At least, he assumed they were still there—Josef had said that he and Kay wouldn't be back until later today. He called the number and let it ring for a while. Nobody answered. He called the hotel switchboard on an outside line, but was told there was nobody there. If anything irregular had been discovered concerning that room, he reasoned, the operator would surely have shown more interest in him. Therefore it was as Gordon and he had left it.
His first thought had been to call Josef on the emergency number, relate the whole story, and recruit their cooperation in getting him, as Gordon, across to the FER. But as he thought more, he decided that wasn't the way to go about it. When he awoke as Gordon tomorrow morning, he would know nothing about the events of -today. Any contact or action by Pipeline that hinted of cooperation would be the surest giveaway that something was wrong. If he was going to believe himself, totally, to be Gordon, then so should everyone else who might get -involved; then they would all play their roles faithfully.
Better, then, if only Ulkanov knew. With the advantage of unrestricted communications to the FER, Ulkanov would be in a far better position to coordinate everything, even from Copernicus. And Ashling already knew that Pipeline had its own ways of getting messages up to Luna.
He didn't want to talk to Josef, since that would have invited too many awkward questions. Besides, with Gordon's body his voice would have changed. He therefore composed a text message and sent it via the room terminal to Josef at Pipeline's number. It began:
Unforeseen developments have resulted in drastic change of situation. Regret am unable to proceed with plan. Imper-ative you clear your suite at Hyatt immediately. Also convey following to Ulkanov. Will explain all when opportunity permits. Grateful for your efforts. Ashling.
The message that he appended was encrypted in a code of scientific jargon that scientists inside the Consolidation had developed among themselves to flout official restrictions and censorship, and had been using to circulate infor-mation around their own professional network for some years. Basically it outlined Ashling's scheme for luring Gordon to Luna and indicated the kind of help that he needed, though leaving Ulkanov plenty of latitude in implementing the details. It also advised that the physical clues listed—Ashling's Panacyn container, a matchbook from the Hyatt, and a few other things that he thought Ulkanov might be able to use—would be forwarded to a scientist in Volgograd, whom Ashling and Ulkanov both knew. All further references to Ashling, the message stipulated, were to be coded as "Headman." Satisfyingly amusing, Ashling thought to himself.
He obtained some packaging and wrapping material from the bell captain, made a parcel of the Panacyn container and other items, and handed them over to the front desk to be mailed to the scientist in Volgograd. On the required customs form he described the contents as "personal -mementos," which was accurate enough if it was checked, and sufficiently innocuous. Then he returned to his room to take care of the rest.
The next part was to launch Gordon on the course that would lead him to Ulkanov. However, to allow Ulkanov enough time to get the communication through Josef and lay his own plans in turn, Gordon shouldn't be dispatched too soon. Ashling should be made to "disappear" from Atlanta and the U.S. as soon as possible, however. That meant that Ashling should leave soon but travel slowly. The obvious way of achieving that would be to have him go by sea.
Ashling used the room terminal to access published tables of shipping routes and schedules, and after some studying found a connection from Jacksonville to Hamburg that suited his purpose. In case there were problems with the later clues that he hoped Ulkanov would arrange, it would be preferable if, right up front, this initial pointer also included a hint of Ashling's final destination. Accordingly, he took the hotel memo pad supplied for the use of guests and wrote on the top page: Headman to ship out via J'ville, sometime Nov 19. Check ref "Cop 3." Gordon would find that waiting for him when he awoke the following -morning.
Now, Ashling was a scientist, not an intelligence agent. He didn't know if Gordon would communicate such information back openly to Nordens. Somehow he doubted it. So he called Nordens's number at Pearse and left a message on the machine there, saying only: "The bird has slipped its cage and is planning to migrate. Have details of route and destination. Will advise tomorrow." Gordon and Nordens could then figure out what it meant when they compared notes, and would deduce that Gordon had discovered Pipeline's plans somehow during the period in which he was blacked out following a presumed attack by somebody unknown, but nevertheless had enough presence of mind left to record the information.
Lastly, he bought a pack of razor blades and adhesive from the shop in the lobby, and back in his room carefully opened a seam in the lining of Gordon's briefcase, into which he inserted the two holofilms that he had brought from Pearse. He resealed the seam and satisfied himself that the join was practically invisible. That would be -another item that Gordon wouldn't know he'd be carrying.
By the time he had completed his preparations, it was afternoon. He went out of the hotel to walk in the fresh air, then returned for an early dinner. Afterward, he went back to his room, feeling tired. He looked around the room, took a long look at himself in the mirror, then showered and retired to bed. If this fantastic scheme went as planned, a lot of things would have happened and he'd have traveled a long way from Atlanta by the time he was next aware of anything. The words echoed through his mind again as he lay back on the bed. If it went as planned . . . But nothing was certain. It had all been done under too much stress. There hadn't been enough time.
He closed his eyes, and slept . . .
. . . and woke up in a cot in a bright, clinical-looking room that could have been in a hospital. He lay for a while, letting his senses reintegrate themselves, and wondering. Could it really be possible?
Out of curiosity, he extricated an arm from the sheets and stretched it out. It felt extraordinarily light.
By the cot was a cart with a pitcher of water on top. He picked the pitcher up and weighed it experimentally in his hand. It too seemed very light. About a sixth of what it ought to have weighed, in fact. He still found it hard to believe, but already an expression of wonder was spreading across his face.
And then a figure who had been watching from the doorway came forward, smiling. He was big in stature, with gray hair, clear, striking features, and rebellious eyebrows. Ashling's face creased with exuberance as he recognized him. "I'm here?" Ashling murmured. "This . . . it's really Luna?"
"Correct," Professor Andre Ulkanov told him. "Yes, my old friend, you are on Luna. Welcome to Copernicus."
Slowly, the message sank in. In spite of it all, somehow he had succeeded. Ashling closed his eyes again, smiling. His mind let go, and he drifted away again, into sleep.