Copyright 1993(c)

                              RE-AN
                        By D.G. Hembroff
 
     Bruce Malloy walked quickly out to his runabout. The
environmental computer was programming rain to start at 0730, and
his wrist chronometer warned him that he had only seconds before
the deluge began. Malloy pulled his access out of the breast pocket
of his hand tailored suit, and aimed it in the direction of his
car. His thumb found the button labeled "ALARM". 
     Only two meters from the little two-seater now, he began to
smile. He would definitely beat the rain. It was such a small thing
to be happy about, Bruce knew, but it was a concept that his mind
was still capable of grasping whole. Bruce frowned then, a cloud
passing on a sunny day. He hadn't always been such a simple sort.
Malloy remembered ... 
     He remembered nothing. Bruce searched his mind, the beginnings
of a memory suddenly gone again. Anyhow, it shouldn't matter,
something in his head told him. Everything was okay, and it was a
great day to be alive. Looking up, Malloy thumbed his nose at the
sprinklers in the ceiling thirty meters above. He pressed the alarm
access switch and began to reach for the door handle. 
     An ear-splitting roar filled the corridor as the runabout
exploded. Malloy, now within an arm's length of the car, was all
but vaporized in the blast. Streetside windows in every apartment
for two hundred meters shattered inward on their startled owners.
An elderly couple, out walking a pair of shi tzu puppies, found
themselves knocked to the ground by the force of the explosion.
Sirens began to wail. 
     The sky opened up only a moment later. The first patters of
rain, a warning of what was to come, dotted the walkways. After
the regulation two minutes, the dribs and drabs quickened into a
steady downpour. More efficiently than the hose of any fire crew,
the rain quickly extinguished the burning car, throwing steam into
the air. Flaming pieces of the runabout, thrown far by the blast,
also went out as soon as the shower found them. 
                              *** 
     "Got another one, Hansin. Ring Three, Section Jay. The fire
crew is on scene," Majors' voice thundered. 
     Hansin looked up from her desk. She ran her slender fingers
through her short blonde hair. Her face, a bit too severe to be
called pretty, screwed up in a look of annoyance. She shouted back
through the doorway to the dispatcher's station. "C'mon Ron, how
about using the 'comm?  We're supposed to be a bunch of
professionals here."  
     The portly dispatcher shrugged his shoulders, setting waves
of flesh into motion around the rest of his huge body. Cerrah
Hansin sighed. "Send Williams and Courte," she said.   
     The panel on her crowded desk bleeped. Brushing stacks of
unfiled reports to one side, she activated the unit. Papers too
close to the edge of the desk fluttered to the floor. Ron's voice
filtered through the tiny speaker, "Williams and Courte on the way,
Ma'am."  Sarcasm dripped from the comm. Hansin grimaced at the
device and bent to pick up the mess on the ground. 
     Hours later, after nearly plowing through all the day's
paperwork, Cerrah pushed her chair back from the desk. She quickly
donned the slippers shucked off upon her arrival at work, and made
her way out into Dispatch. "Gonna grab some lunch, Ron. Be back in
an hour." 
     "You couldn't use the 'comm?" the fat man grumped under his
breath. Cerrah ignored the comment and continued to the lock.    
"Oh, yeah," Ron said before she could clear the doors' outer
detector field, "Devers wants you in his office at fourteen ten." 
Hansin waved dismissively and kept on walking. 
     The fat man scowled, watching her tall, muscular frame
disappear into the corridor. A few lurid images starring the
Security Section chief flashed in his mind. He smiled and licked
his lips. "Uppity bitch," he muttered. 
                              *** 
     "What do you need, Devers?  I gotta section to run." 
     Senior Administrative Partner-Coriolis Station, James Elton
Devers looked up from his monitor with annoyance. "I know that you
are Chief of Station Security, Miz Hansin, appointed by the Board
of Directors, Earthside. However, don't you think it would be more
appropriate to greet your on scene supervisor in a manner befitting
his station?" 
     "You oversee budget and appropriations, Administrator Devers.
I don't answer to you. As far as I'm concerned, you're just a major
pain in my ass."  Hansin took a seat in one of the lounges facing
the huge desk. Devers' wide face began to cloud with emotion. "What
do you need?" 
     The anger in the administrator's features quickly faded, to
be replaced by a look of extreme discomfort. "I need you to do
something for me, as a favor." 
     If Hansin had been the type to laugh at the absurd, she knew
she would have certainly hemorrhaged at the thought of doing a
favor for the sanctimonious shit. Instead she only snorted. 
Devers took her relative silence as a positive sign. He leaned
forward in his chair, "These murders are starting to become a real
embarrassment." 
     "What murders?" Hansin asked, obviously not caring if Devers
answered. 
     "We've had five citizens die in the past eight weeks. Six if
you count this morning." 
     "They're Re-ans, Devers, not citizens. There's no murder
involved here." 
     "Tell that to ... " Devers faltered. He glanced back at his
workstation, "Malloy. Tell that to his family."  The
Administrator's political tone of voice suddenly surfaced. He
sounded to Hansin like every one of the company's public service
commercials on the vid. "He's gone, beyond retrieval. This kind of
wanton disregard for human life is ... " 
     Cutting the Administrator short, Hansin pointed out, "This is
not murder, Devers. They're already dead."  The Security chief's
face was filled with disgust. 
     Devers's neck turned crimson, "Listen, I'm not here to argue
legal jargon with you. Your office has been working on this case
for two months, and you've come up with nothing. Earthside is
becoming insistent that we catch this criminal and take him out of
circulation. In case you missed it in the welcome brochure, we have
the system's largest Re-an clinic here on Coriolis. It's bad P.R.
to also have the highest Re-an termination rate. At the very least,
we need to make him leave the station. Then he can go somewhere
else and kill their Re-ans." 
     "I've got my best men on it. What more can I do?" Hansin
unconsciously aped the shrug Ron Major's had given her that
morning. "It's not like this guy is just begging to be
apprehended." 
     Devers leveled a finger at her, "I don't want your best man,
Hansin. I want you." 
     "Why, Administrator! I didn't know you liked girls." 
He flushed. "Cut the crap. I want you to take over the case
personally. You have a talent for solving this type of sicko
garbage. That's why you were hired." 
     Cerrah began to turn very pale. "I appreciate your confidence,
Administrator, but I don't deal with Re-ans. Maybe you hadn't
heard." 
     Devers was clearly pleased at Hansin's discomfort. "Yes, I
had heard that. I couldn't believe the big, bad Cerrah Hansin in
my Security Division was afraid of Re-ans, though."  He laughed
derisively. "I guess I've seen it all now." 
     "I'm not afraid of anything, Devers, except maybe waking up
after a bad Leth trip with you in my rack," Hansin retorted. 
"Don't get mad, Cerrah Jane. Your nipples are all crinkling up." 
Hansin abruptly wished she had worn a shirt to work that morning.
     Devers, unaware or uncaring of the sexism in his last
statement, waved a paper at the Security Chief, "It doesn't matter
what your objections are. This fax from Earthside makes it clear
that if you don't show some results in the immediate future; you
see they underlined "immediate"; they will assign someone who can."
     "If you had that, Devers, why didn't you just say so?" 
     The Station Administrator pulled the flimsy out of Hansin's
reach and looked down at it. "I wanted to see if you would do it
because I asked, first." 
     "Fat chance, and I mean that." 
     Devers chuckled, "I know, Miz Hansin. That's why I'm going to
enjoy watching you fail. I will personally walk you to the shuttle
back home." 
     "You're a son of a bitch, Devers," Hansin said. 
     "Yes, I am," the Administrator agreed. "Now get out of my
office." 
                              *** 
     It was a beautiful night. The thunder of the surf pounding
the beach out front was drowned out by the jazz playing downstairs.
The revelry of the partygoers filtered up the staircase. 
They were in their room getting changed. He turned to Lydia, still
trying to fasten his tie, "You better hurry. Alex will be getting
antsy." 
     "I'm almost done."  Lydia was always beautiful in red. She
shone like a rare jewel in the dying sunlight. He felt his heart
swell with pride that she chose him to be her husband. "She really
didn't want to come off the beach today, did she?" 
     "Just watching her out there on her sand-trike made it worth
every penny we spent," he answered. "What is she doing now?  She's
being so quiet." 
     Lydia laughed musically, "A quiet two-year old. I guess we
should be worried."  Alex was definitely a handful, they both knew,
and they loved her all the more for it. Lydia checked herself one
more time in the mirror, threw her husband a kiss and disappeared
through the bedroom door. 
     He went back to his tie. He hated the damn things, but,
considering how they had greeted the first of their guests ... 
The Howeld's were so shocked by the bathing suits! He laughed out
loud, remembering. He heard his wife calling to Alexandra. 
Some minutes after Lydia left the room, there was a scream from
down on the beach. He raced out to the balcony and looked over the
side. The floodlights lit up the whole property and out ten feet
past the waterline. Lydia lay sobbing on the sand. 
     He looked around frantically. The gate from the upstairs
balcony was wide open. Did Lydia just re-open it?  Hadn't he closed
it on the way in?  Lydia was forever nagging him to be careful so
Alex couldn't get out to the beach unattended. 
     Somehow he could not remember if he had latched the gate in
their hurry to answer the door. Why was he thinking about the damn
gate anyway?  His mind suddenly made the connection. He looked back
out into the rolling surf, and saw. 
     He flung himself over the rail, falling ten feet to the sand.
Not feeling the pain in his legs as over stressed ligaments and
tendons gave way, he ran. His shouts sounded in counterpoint to
his wife's hysterical sobs. He stopped at the edge of the water,
scanning left and right. The three neon green wheels of the trike
bobbed up and down in the water, tossed by the power of the ocean.
     "Alex!" he shouted, plunging into the waves. Reaching out,
his hand touched something soft in the water ...
                               ***
     The door from the tube station opened suddenly, shaking him
out of the familiar nightmare. 
     "Good morning, sir. It's a great day to be alive!" 
     God, but he hated that common Re-an greeting. "Come with me,
Re-an."  His voice was harsh in the quiet corridor. 
     "Certainly, sir!" 
     It was a simple matter of getting the thing out of any public
surveillance and subduing him. He knew it wouldn't resist. They
never did. 
     As soon as they cleared the door of the maintenance access,
he brought the heavy pipe down on the thing's head. A satisfying
crack signaled the snapping of the thing's skull under the heavy
metal. Without a whimper, it slid to the floor. 
     He grasped through his thick gloves for a handhold on the
thing's slick skin. It wasn't unusual for humans on the climate
controlled station to eschew clothing in casual outings. It was
only trying to blend in with the rest of the populace. Fair enough,
he thought, but damn, it made for slow going. He pulled it through
the cluttered storage area to the airlock. 
     Automatically, his fingers pounded in the correct sequence.
The inner lock door opened. He shoved it through, into the dressing
chamber. He backed out of the chamber and closed the lock door. The
thing's eyes began to flutter as it began to regain consciousness.
"No!!  It's not allowed!" it shouted, realizing where it was. 
     "I'm sorry," he muttered. He pressed the CYCLE key, and then
ACTIVATE. The outer door opened into the black of empty space. The
thing shouted again as it was dragged, along with the atmosphere
and any other loose item in the lock, out into the void. The lock
cycled closed again. He sighed with relief. Maybe tonight, the
dreams would not come. 
                               ***
     Eva Micket was satisfied with her haul. The old coot wouldn't
be so smug when he got home from work. She must have drained half
the account with all her purchases today. This little spree would
teach him to call her spoiled, then leave his credcard laying about
the house. 
     She set her packages down beside her on the catwalk and leaned
against the transparent plexiform wall. Only a foot of the cool
material separated her from the extreme cold and radiation outside.
She watched the whirling asteroids as they spun by the station, and
saw beyond them the faint glow that she knew to be Mars. Ah, the
shopping I could have done there! Eva thought wistfully. 
     As she stargazed, another object passed into view. Roughly
oblong, with tiny appendages, at first she thought it must be some
weird asteroid, but as it came closer, she began to be able to make
it out more clearly. "It almost looks like ... " she began to
mutter, then stopped cold. 
     A shrill scream broke free from Eva's mouth, tearing down the
corridor in both directions. She was quite unconscious before the
first citizen reached her. 
                              *** 
     "He was definitely a Re-an. We recovered the chip first
thing."  Kevin Milton held the tiny computer up to the light.
"Y'know, we never would have found him, except for the gravity
generators. They exert a field strong enough to keep loose items
near the station. That's why we burn most of the non-recyclables.
They'd just keep floating around out there, spoiling our view." 
Hansin listened dully to the coroner, concentrating not on his
words, but on a spot on the wall, the surgical compartment;
anything but the bloated and burned body of the Re-an on the table
in front of her. The room faded out around her as it always did
when she came to the morgue. Her mind raced back to the dreadful
day fifteen years before. 
     "I doubt we can restore him." 
     "What?"  Hansin snapped back to the present. "What did you
say?" 
     The balding doctor of death looked at her with eyes as
lifeless as the corpse on the table. "I said, I doubt he can be
restored. I don't know if they'll even try."  He shrugged, not
really caring one way or the other. "I guess that's up to the
family and the techs." 
     Hansin shuddered, trying to ignore the examiner's
implications. "What killed him?" she asked finally. 
     "Other than a severe case of space sickness?" 
     Hansin rounded on the little man, giving him her best look of
disdain, "You know what I mean, Milton. How did he get to be
walking naked in the great outdoors?" 
     Milton shrank from the tall Security Chief. Hansin's violent
nature was well known on Coriolis Station. "Well, he didn't go out
of his own accord."  Milton walked over to the body, drawing
Cerrah's gaze in spite of her best efforts. He gestured to a spot
on the blackened head, "His skull shows a fracture in the upper
right hemisphere, here. There are bruises under the victim's arms,
and faint traces of  scratches on his back and arms. 
     "The radiation and decompression effects wiped out any DNA
traces we might have found," Milton continued, "so there's not much
physical evidence. I surmise that he was smacked over the head with
a heavy object, knocked senseless, and dragged to an airlock." 
Milton gestured to the corpse's clenched fingers and tensed arms,
saying, "You see this clawing reflex here, don't you?  Judging from
the posture of the body; it's my guess that he was still alive when
he went out. The rest you can see for yourself." 
     Hansin, who had watched Milton's demonstration through ever
widening eyes, nodded curtly. The coroner, eager to finish his
examination, grabbed hold of one of the Re-an's arms and began to
turn it over. Halfway through the process, the arm broke free of
the body with a noise not unlike a dry branch snapping. Hansin
turned quickly and rushed from the room. 
                              *** 
     "We found the airlock our floating friend used."  Choy Lin Mah
threw his report on Hansin's freshly cluttered desk. 
     Cerrah Hansin looked up from the pile of papers before her.
Mah, a political refugee, shipped up during the latest purge in
China, was the newest member of the station's security team. He
had only been on the job for three months. 
     On Earth, he was a high caliber bio-engineer, but he had found
a difficult time landing a position on the asteroid mining
corporation's station. Hansin hired him on as her Deputy after
talking to him for only ten minutes, despite his lack of
experience. She quickly saw in him a fantastically analytical mind
that would match her intuitive ways. Cerrah was awed by Mah's
incredible knowledge. Even more, she admired his quiet, confident
manner. 
     "Ring nine, maintenance hatch sixteen," Mah said. "The
security lockout was overridden with a master code." 
     "Who has access to that kind of code?" Hansin asked. 
     "Only security and maintenance supervisors rated SGS-7 or
above are supposed to have it."  Mah held up his hand, preempting
Cerrah's unspoken question, "That turns out to be over three
hundred people. With those numbers, it could be just about anyone
on Coriolis." 
     Hansin's face screwed up in annoyance. Mah's habit of
anticipating her questions and orders was as uncanny as it was
aggravating. "I hate it when you do that," Cerrah complained.
Changing the subject, she asked, "What about the blunt object?" 
     "We found a piece of ordinary sewer pipe on the deck near the
entry to the access room. We found no prints, and no DNA tracings
on either the hatch or the pipe."  Mah's disgust with the crime was
evident in his face. "I guess this makes seven, right?" 
     "Huh?" Hansin grunted. She had gone back to her paperwork.
"Seven what?" 
     "Seven murders, Chief," Mah reminded her. "This murder matches
the M.O. of all the other ones." 
     Cerrah stopped writing. When she spoke, her voice was ice,
"They're not murders, Choy Lin. Let's get that straight right here
and now. These are re-animated people, walking dead guys. You can't
kill a dead man." 
     "So if it's not murder, what do we charge him with?" 
     Hansin smiled cruelly, "Littering. Unlawful use of station
airlocks."  She softened her tone only slightly, "It doesn't matter
what we charge this guy with. The company is the final law on the
station. What we have is a deviant, and the company wants him
gone." 
     Mah knew better than to argue with his boss when she was like
this. "Okay, we have seven incidents. Whatever. We know nothing
about our kill ... I mean our deviant." 
     Shaking her head, Hansin said, "Untrue, we have a lot more
than you think."  She began ticking points off on her fingers,
"It's probably a man; women are rarely serial killers. Besides,
there aren't many females on Coriolis who could muscle an
unconscious adult male into an airlock. We know he doesn't like
Re-ans. We know he's pretty handy as far as the tech end of it
goes. And," Hansin pointed to the station docking status board,
"the port's been closed since we found the fifth body,  so we know
he's still on the station."  The security chief  leaned back in her
chair, spearing Mah with her eyes, "Unless, of course, he can fly
to Mars or Eclipse Station without benefit of a ship." 
     Choy Lin chose to ignore Hansin's asperity. She got this way
whenever anyone brought up the subject of Re-ans. "I guess we'll
start with a general database search, then. Maybe we can find
someone around here who really hates Re-ans; besides you, I mean."
     "Do that," Hansin agreed. "And consider yourself my deputy on
this case. Dump the rest of your files on Williams." 
     "Whatever you say, Chief." 
                              *** 
     "Mornin', Daddy. Great day for be alive."  Alex's stolid
little body was quickly outgrowing her baby fat, but her vocabulary
refused to grow past the stage she had reached six months ago.
Other than that stock phrase, she hadn't learned a single word
since the accident. He grimaced, accepting a peck on the cheek out
of habit. 
     "What does my big girl want to eat today?" Lydia did not even
notice the blank look on Alex's angel face. "Oatmeal," she answered
herself. "You love oatmeal." 
     He could stand it no longer. Six months of this charade was
more than enough. Surely Lydia must see that. "Why do you even
bother to ask?  God damn it, Lyd, she doesn't know what the hell
she wants."  He slammed his paper on the glass table, glancing over
at a totally unfazed Alex as he turned to face his wife. "She's
got no more brain than the average talking dog." 
     "I don't want to talk about it, Bal."  Lydia continued
preparing breakfast. Her hands were shaking. 
     "Why did you do this?"  He avoided looking at his reflection
in the window beside him. Bal knew he was none too steady himself.
"Why couldn't you let her go?" 
     Spinning, Lydia brandished a serving spoon at her husband,
"How could you even say that?  Alex is not an animal that you put
to sleep when it gets sick." 
     "She isn't sick, damnit. She's dead!" 
     "She's our daughter, Bal. Don't you have any feelings at all?"
     "Not for this thing, Lydia."  Rage welled up inside him, "This
is not our daughter, you twisted bitch. It's a piece of meat that
just looks like she did." 
     The spoon smashed into his forehead, causing him to see stars.
"Don't say that!" she screamed as the subject of their argument
stared at nothing in particular. "Don't ever say that, you
bastard!" 
     Both of them were far past any point of reason now. He watched
the shell of the woman he once loved fall apart before his eyes as
the body of what had been his greatest joy sat across from him.
Bizarre unreality filled the kitchen. "You didn't even leave me the
memory of our little girl, Lydia. All I have left is this thing
that parades around in front of me mocking all she was, all she
could have been." 
     Lydia wasn't listening at all anymore. The contents of the
shelves soon were scattered across the floor. He stalked out of
the house. There was only one solution left. 
                              *** 
     Choy Lin's forehead hit the keypad with a painful thump.    
"Been at it all day?" 
     He jerked back upright, and turned to face the source of the
question. Hansin stood by the beverage dispenser, her face haggard.
     Choy Lin nodded briefly, "It looks like I'm not the only one."
"Just another call from Devers. Seems he's been getting a lot of
heat up from dirtside. Some bleeding hearts in the media are saying
that the company doesn't place enough importance on re-animated
citizens. Devers' sees this as a public relations nightmare that
only I can head off." 
     "Can you?" 
     Hansin turned away from her assistant. "With what we have so
far, I don't know." 
     "You have sympathy for this creep."  It was not a question. 
     Still facing away from him, she waved a hand ambiguously, "Not
sympathy, Choy Lin, but I can identify with the hatred he must
feel." 
     "Care to tell me why?" 
     Letting out a long, slow breath, Hansin made a decision. "My
father died when I was sixteen. One of the Leth gangs in New Boston
shot him. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time and all
that."   She took a shuddering breath. "I had to identify him at
the morgue; my mom was just too messed up over it. A little over
a month later, we were all out camping together." 
     "They re-animated him?" 
     Cerrah nodded, "He was one of the first commercial ones. We
nearly went broke having it done. My mom just couldn't accept that
he was gone." 
     "So why do you hate them so much?  You got your father back,
didn't you?" 
     Eyes blazing, Hansin rounded on him, "It wasn't my father! 
My father died!" Hansin's tone calmed somewhat, but her voice still
reflected her pain. "He went off to work a real man; thoughtful,
caring. I'm not idealizing him, Choy Lin, he was the perfect
father. We used to talk for hours. And he was brilliant!  Hell, he
was a University professor for Christ's sake.
     What we got back from the clinic was worse than his corpse.
It looked and sounded like daddy, but it wasn't."  Hansin found a
chair and lowered herself into it. "He had been dead almost two
days when they found him. Most of his synapses were ruined. All
his memories were scrambled. He couldn't make a decision or even
start a conversation. All he could do was answer simple questions
and smile like an idiot." 
     "So what did you do?" 
     "What could I do?  I had to get out of there."  Cerrah swiped
angrily at a tear running down her face, "I ran away the next
summer, and I've never been back." 
     Leaning in close to her, Choy Lin asked, "Where is he now? 
Did he finally," Mah's discomfort showed in his features, "you
know, die?" 
     Hansin laughed derisively, "Oh, no. He's still around. My mom
even had two more kids after I left home. I get cards from her
sometimes." 
                              *** 
     As he closed the compactor, instead of the thing he had put
in there, he saw the bodies of Alex and Lydia. He hesitated a
moment as his sanity pleaded with him to stop this madness. It was
far too late, however, to change the course he had chosen. He
pulled the actuator and the machine hummed to life. 
                               ***
     "There are five people on Coriolis who have had reported
incidents involving Re-ans in the past year. All of them could have
gained access to the override code for the maintenance lock. Four
of the five are engineers capable of rigging the kind of explosives
that destroyed Malloy's runabout." 
     Hansin looked over the profiles before her. "Get a team
together to pick them all up for questioning. We need to know if
they have alibis." 
     Mah nodded affirmatively, "I have some men from mid-shift
rounding them up now." 
     Looking only mildly annoyed at being preempted yet again by
her second in command, Cerrah pulled a file from her desk. "Well,
since they are on their way, I guess we better figure out how to
attack this interrogation." She pulled off the file cover and read
off, "Three arson fires; two explosions; one lab accident;  a
decompression. What do all these things have in common?" 
     "They are all good ways of taking someone out?" 
     "Yes they are," Hansin agreed. "But unfortunately for your
logic, so is a bullet, or a knife, or good old strangulation. The
victims were not just taken out, Choy Lin, they were obliterated.
Why go to all that trouble?" 
     His face brightening, Mah exclaimed, "So they couldn't be
brought back!" 
     "Good point. Our man not only hates Re-ans, but is dead set
against some tech undoing his handiwork. If the guy was just
terminated, he could be brought back." 
     "Maybe our perpetrator doesn't want to be fingered by any of
his victims." 
     Shaking her head, Hansin countered, "No one knows how much a
Re-an will remember when he's brought back. Sometimes the brain is
just oatmeal by the time he's found. After only one day the brain
pathways degenerate significantly." 
     "And Re-an testimony is subject to suspicion in a court," Mah
added. 
     "What are the chances that our man doesn't know this?" 
Thinking, the security chief dropped the file, "Considering how
careful he has been, and what he seems to know about his victims,
I don't think that idea's a player. I think what this shows is that
he is against Re-animation, not Re-ans." 
     "Why do you say that?" Mah asked. 
     "Because he's not out to hurt them, or make them suffer." 
She gestured to the file, "All the victims were either killed
instantly, or they were rendered unconscious before they were
destroyed." 
     "So he has a humane streak in him." 
     "If you can call it that. It's likely he thinks he's doing
them a favor. The attitudes of our suspects will be the key." 
     Mah began to speak, but was interrupted by Ron Major's
appearance in the security chief's doorway. The dispatcher's six
chins moved in unison as he announced, "They think they just found
a Re-an in the station's main compactor. You better get a move on,
Devers is on his way down." 
                              *** 
     The Administrator's footfalls pounded down the ill-lit
passageway. Dim, old style flourescents flickered behind pipes and
conduits, throwing grotesque shadows of Devers' undersized form on
the walls. The squat civil servant ignored the moving parodies,
focused only on the throng of Security men crowded near the end of
the corridor. Near the floor, a hatch was swung open on its hinges,
the crawlway inside led to the compactor chamber. "If this turns
out to be a Re-an, it pretty much rounds out your short but
illustrious career, doesn't it, Hansin?  As soon as my report
reaches Headquarters, your replacement will be on the next
shuttle." 
     Cerrah carefully crawled from the maintenance access hatch.
Bent down behind her, examining the remains inside the compactor
shaft, Mah whispered, "Take a chill, Chief. He's just a fourth rate
pissant afraid for his job." 
     "It's a Re-an, Devers," Hansin confirmed, holding the memory
chip up in her gloved hand. 
     "Oh, I knew that much, Cerrah Jane. I had no doubt. You
couldn't possibly have solved the one case you personally were
responsible for. We couldn't be on to the next psychopath." 
     Devers's unusually fair skin shone with a yellow pallor in the
poor light. Heat from the other station machinery around them had
sweat pouring down the Administrator's face. 
     Hansin pushed back her anger, "There's not much left for
Milton to play with, but I would bet that our man left nothing here
either. We have some suspects -- " 
     "I could give a shit about your suspects, Hansin!  It's too
goddamn late for this guy, isn't it?"  Devers held up two fingers
to the security chief's face. "Fully two days after I tell you to
make this case top priority, I have two more corpses to deal with.
Your incompetence is without equal!" 
     "Two days is not a lot of time to find one sociopath in a
population of thirty thousand citizens," Hansin reminded the
Administrator. "Besides, you've spent the better part of those
forty-eight hours calling me on the comm and interrupting my
search." 
     "Your excuses mean nothing as far as I'm concerned. Earthside
wants to hang somebody for this debacle. Let me give you a hint,
Cerrah Jane; it ain't gonna be me." 
     Hansin resisted the  urge to pound the Administrator's flabby
face with her fist, "What are you doing here, Devers?  I mean,
besides busting my chops." 
     "I wanted to see if you even bothered to show up." 
     She bent down and began crawling back into the access, "I'm
here," she said over her shoulder. "I guess you can leave now." 
Back in the cramped crawl area beside the Mah, Hansin remarked,
"That went well, don't you think?" 
     Mah ignored her comment. "We have a problem, you know that
don't you?" 
     "What do you mean?" 
     "I checked the logs. Almost all the suspects were in custody
before the compactor cycled." 
     Hansin swore. "So we're back to square one." 
     "Maybe," Mah said thoughtfully, "or maybe not. This reminds
me of something I read about once on Earth. I need to check the
computer." 
                              *** 
     "Take a look at this, Chief."  Mah pointed to the computer
screen. 
     Hansin sat down to read. After a moment she looked up, "Sounds
very familiar to what we found today, doesn't it?" 
     "The same sad story," Mah agreed. "A trash compactor, a Re-an.
The only part that doesn't fit is the fact that the woman, Lydia
Malin, was not a Re-an." 
     Holding up her finger to silence Mah while she thought, Hansin
re-read the newspaper article. "Alexandra Malin was, though. Did
they ever make an arrest?" 
     "No," Mah replied. "From what I remember, they figured it was
the father. He disappeared shortly after the bodies were found.
That same week, seven other Re-ans from the same city died under
suspicious circumstances. All the indicators pointed toward this
guy." 
     "What was his name?" 
     "Jesus, Chief, it was over three years ago. I'll see if I can
reference the file."  Mah began typing in the code for the
Earthside police net. 
     "I don't know if they closed the file or what," he muttered,
fingers flying across the keypad. "Sometimes they just blow off
the investigation ... Hey, here it is." 
     Hansin read over his shoulder, "Balantine Malin. Better call
up the particulars in hard copy." 
     "Do you know what the odds are against this being him?" Mah
asked as the printer spit out Malin's holo and statistics. 
     "What choice do I have?  We really don't have anything else." 
Hansin removed the printout from the printer's exit tray. 
     "The guy never was caught," Hansin's deputy mused. "I'll run
his name through the locator," Mah offered. He worked the computer
for several minutes. Hansin silently leafed through the report from
Earth. "Nope, no Malin recorded anywhere on Coriolis. Of course,
the company isn't all that strict about the identity of
immigrants." 
     "They aren't too sticky about names," Hansin agreed, "but they
do take a lot of pictures." 
     "I don't remember getting photographed when I boarded.
"Hardly anyone does, but they do a complete holo series at the
station in-brief. Security requested it a couple years back." 
Mah found Malin's two dimensional image on one of the printout
sheets, "So all we need to do is look through all the holos for a
match. How many people can come aboard each year?" 
     A wry smile flowed across Cerrah's face, the first one Mah had
seen from her in a long while. "Oh, not too many, Sport," she said,
her voice sardonic. "How does twelve to fifteen hundred per annum
sound?"  Hansin threw a stack of papers at Choy Lin,  "Don't you
read the annual reports?" 
     Catching the fluttering projectile, Mah couldn't help smiling
in response, "Just another night at the office." 
                              *** 
     Garold Hodges, once known as Balantine Malin, was totally
engrossed in his work. A slapdash wooden workbench dominated the
living area of the small apartment cubicle he lived in. He had been
locked inside his quarters for eight hours, laboring fervently on
his greatest project. 
     The job was just too big, he knew. Releasing all the Re-ans
from their unnatural and painful existence, and allowing their
families to get on with life, was too much for a man to do in one
lifetime. He had to try, though. 
     It was clear that by destroying them one by one, he would
never attain his goal, and his activities were becoming too
dangerous. There were simply too many Re-ans, and the authorities
would eventually find his trail. When that happened, they would
surely hunt him down. He had to find another solution. 
     He fastened the final connection in the small box and closed
the lid. Picking up the sealing tool from the workbench, he
carefully ran the emitter end around the seam, heating the two
sides until they fused. A loud snap filled the silence as he
deactivated the tiny laser torch. 
     The man who had once been the father of Alexandra Malin
gingerly picked up the box. The plastic was still warm to the
touch, but not so much so that he noticed the heat as he placed the
device into a leather carrysak. He fastened the satchel and carried
it to the doorway of his apartment. Sliding the closet door open,
he set the bag down inside. 
     It would be tomorrow, or never. 
                              *** 
     Ron Major eased his bulk through the Security Section doors.
In his twenty years of duty, the huge man had always made it a
point to be the first man from his shift to show for work. He
enjoyed the solitude of the office as Graves wound down from their
long night. He had never worked Graves, and made a conscious effort
to discourage idle chatter with the agents coming off shift with
his gruff manner. It was a lot of effort expended so that no one
ever came up to him and interrupted his morning coffee, but he felt
the investment well worth it. 
     By the time High Shift filtered in, he was ready for another
day on the dispatch desk, and, as a bonus, had had first pick of
the morning pastries. It was a long time ritual for Majors, so the
annoyance of seeing his Section Chief on the job before him was
intense, to say the least. 
     "Ron," Hansin called out before Majors could make himself
scarce, "we need you to activate a cross-reference on your console
for all citizens embarking after zero four six day this year. You
can download the compare file from my directory." 
     Majors flashed a sardonic grin, "I'm not on the clock yet."
     "Don't give me any crap, Ron," Hansin shot back. 
     "Jesus, Chief, can I get a cup of coffee first?" 
     The Security Chief sighed loudly. "All right," she allowed.
"Just make it quick. I need the results ten minutes ago." 
     The dispatcher steered himself toward the break area. "I
wonder if I can get a transfer to Mids," he grumbled to himself.
Majors poured his coffee and grabbed a handful of crullers, noting
sourly that the pastry box had already been picked over. 
     Back at his station, he called up the active file on the
Chief's console. A monochrome holo of a middle aged man with light,
thinning hair with sprang to life on the screen. He read with
disinterest the description and identification below the picture.
The subject was one hundred sixteen centimeters tall and ninety
eight kilograms, he had blue eyes, and an average build. Hell, he
thought, this could be just about anybody! 
     He logged on with the Port Authority net, giving his modem
name, "FATBOY", to the security check. One of his connections
queried him about his search parameters. Majors input the
information, and sat back while the computers compared files. Two
crullers and a half cup of coffee later, the console alarm signaled
a match. "Bingo," he said, hitting the PRINT icon. 
     Ron carried the hard copy into the Chief's office. He grunted,
acknowledging Mah, and threw the flimsy printout on Hansin's desk.
"I don't see what is so damn hard about that," he uttered. 
     Both Mah and Hansin looked up from their consoles. Printouts
littered the available desk space and much of the floor. They had
encountered over three hundred partial matches in the last seven
hours, none of them Balantine Malin. Cerrah refused to be
optimistic that Ron Majors had uncovered their man. 
     "What is the probability reading, Ron," Hansin asked in a
tired voice. 
     A puzzled look crossed Majors' heavy brow, "Ninety eight point
five. Why, what reading are you looking for?" 
     Mah was up and scrambling for the flimsy Majors had thrown.
"Ninety eight point five!" Hansin exclaimed. "Good God, we've been
calling in every sixty percent match or better all night." 
     "You said you wanted a match ..." Majors began. 
     "It's him," Mah confirmed. "Garold Hodges. The name is the
different, but I couldn't mistake this face. After last night, I'll
be seeing it in my nightmares." 
     "Good work, Ron."  Hansin threw her arms around the giant's
neck. The Chief's chest pressing on his own bare skin had Majors
feeling a stirring he hadn't felt in years. 
     The dispatcher gently extricated himself from Hansin's grip,
"Anyone with an ounce of sense could have done it."  He reached
down and adjusted the waistband of his shorts. 
     Looking over the printout, Mah said, "They don't have an
address reference for him. That means he didn't check through the
Quarters office. He must have arranged a private lease." 
Hansin took the printout from Choy Lin, struggling to focus her
overworked eyes. There's no mention of a place of employment,
either. He paid his air fee in cash. If this isn't our man, I still
want to talk to him about the reason for all this subterfuge." 
     "It's him all right," Choy Lin confirmed reading the file on
his console screen. "Malin had a few dollars. He eluded Earthside
police for two years by paying with cash and never getting himself
logged into the net."  There was a note of grudging respect in
Mah's voice. 
     "Ah, if there's nothing else, I have a few minutes left before
shift starts."  Majors started for the door. 
     "Just one more thing, Ron," Hansin said, before the big man
could make his escape. "I need you to put an active scanning
program into the corridor monitors. If this guy surfaces anywhere
in public, I want to know immediately." 
     Visions of cold coffee and jelly-filled donuts danced blackly
in Majors' head. He resigned himself to his fate, "All right," he
said. "Where will you be?" 
     "At home," Hansin answered. "I need to get some sleep."  The
Security Chief disappeared out the section doors, followed closely
by her Deputy. 
                              *** 
     Overhead, the gray paneled ceiling was dotted with light
filtering into the apartment through the tattered shades. Judging
by the angle of the spears of illumination, station light rotation
would be sometime in the late morning. He had overslept. The last
thing he remembered from the night before was rolling back and
forth on the cot-like bed's snare drum surface, trying to find a
comfortable position. "Time!" he demanded hoarsely. 
     "The time is ten hundred forty-six hours," the disembodied
voice of the net console replied. 
     Malin, (he still thought of himself as Bal Malin), considered
uttering a string of curses, but then discarded the idea. The
apathy he had felt for the last few years was all encompassing. No
amount of effort could dispel the malaise implanted in him by the
death of his daughter. Not even his mission could shake him back
into feeling again. If anything, he was becoming more embroiled in
bitterness and despondency with every successful Re-an destruction
he carried out. 
     With an effort, Malin rolled off the bed and made his way to
the toilet. After an abbreviated version of his morning routine,
he threw on the clothes he had worn the day before. He pulled the
carrysak out of the entry closet and left the apartment. 
     The emptiness in Malin's eyes caused many of those citizens
who saw him to avert their faces as he approached. They made it a
point to study the surrounding architecture or check their
chronometers, studiously avoiding eye contact with the haunted
looking man in the shabby clothing. For his part, Malin did not
even notice them. He only continued his steady walk toward the tube
station. 
     Hardly a soul could be seen on the station platform. Most
citizens would be at work at this hour, and those off shift would
either be at home asleep, or out on one of the recreation rings.
Malin was able to get an entire tube car to himself. As he took a
seat across from the door, the car began to move. With a pneumatic
whine, the sleek, bullet-like train launched itself from the
station. 
     In alternating fits of light and dark, stations flashed by the
car as it sped down the radial arm through ring after ring toward
the Sciences region in the hub. Malin sat, unmoving, until the tube
car began to decelerate. He pulled himself out of the seat and was
out the door before it completely opened onto the station catwalk. 
     His destination was only a hundred meters outside the tube
exit. Malin stood in the middle of the section promenade and
watched the comings and goings around the huge target building. He
checked his wrist chrono and glanced up the Primary Concourse, the
"main street" for the Hub level. He spotted four men wearing
insignia identifying the as members of the building's maintenance
crew returning from their noon meal. In the weeks he had spent
watching the clinic, the men returned at the same time each day.
Malin quickly began to circle behind them. 
     As the crew entered the facility through a portal near the
receiving area in back, Malin blended into the shadows of the
adjacent structure. The last man was almost completely inside
before he dashed for the door, slipping through with centimeters
to spare. Surrounded by the relative gloom inside, he could hear
the machinery whine and hum. The conversations of the four men
faded into the distance. 
     Edging past a wall and a tangle of pipes, Malin took a look
at the layout of the machine room. He spotted a large spherical
container off in the far corner and made his way to it. The
container, he saw as he drew closer to it, was over twice his
height, and looked to be over ten meters around at its center.
Walking slowly around the periphery of the huge object, Malin
hunted for an identity plate. 
     His eyes were slowly becoming adjusted to the dimness, and
they fell upon a metal plate near the container's base. "Liquid
Oxygen Dewar," he read aloud, no longer caring if he was
discovered. Malin settled down on his haunches and slung the
carrysak off his shoulder. He unzipped the bag and pulled out the
box. 
     The box was still warm to the touch, but now the warmth was
being generated inside. Already the small thermal-electric cell
was gathering a charge. In less than an hour, the cell would be
fully energized, and would discharge. The flood of voltage would
race down the wires and ignite the mining charge hidden within the
little box. The resulting explosion would be large enough on its
to destroy the entire building. With the added force from the
oxygen dewar, the hub would surely be depressurized. "Fair enough,"
Malin thought to himself. 
                              *** 
     The door thundered under Mah's fist. He listened at the portal
for a moment, then pounded once more. With a warning bleep, the
door slid aside. Hansin appeared in the doorway, rumpled and bleary
from sleep. "What is it, Choy Lin?" 
     "Do you always deactivate your comm when you are expecting a
call, Chief?" 
     "Sorry," Cerrah apologized. "Devers won't let me alone. I
finally had to shut off access to get an hour's shuteye. I knew
you'd be by if you couldn't reach me." 
     Mah shook his head, astonished to find that he was so
predictable. "We have a sighting in Ring twelve, Section Kilo. The
causeway video transmitters picked Malin up as he was leaving a
sublet efficiency apartment." 
     "Whose apartment is it?" Hansin asked. "I'd like a chance to
talk to the owner."  The Security chief stepped back out of the
doorway, motioning for Mah to follow. 
     "We tried to contact the landlord, but it turns out the
cubicle belongs to some off-station conglomerate."  Mah shrugged
as the door slid shut behind him, "No luck there." 
     "Where is he headed?"  Hansin pulled a body suit off its
hanger and quickly slipped off her old clothes as Mah answered. 
     "Last we could tell, he was on a tube bound for the inner
rings. We've sealed off section Kilo in all habitats. Security
teams are enroute to the tube stations. He won't get away." 
Hansin considered for a moment, "Did you cover the Hub?" 
     Her deputy nodded, "Ring Level was sealed off as soon as he
got on the tube, so he can't get above or below the Primary
Concourse. Two officers are making a sweep of that area now."  Mah
looked perplexed, "Why do you ask?  There isn't much in the Hub
that Malin would be interested in. Not too many Re-an's can work
in the Sciences Section." 
     Hansin tapped her forehead. "Think, Choy Lin," she said,
zipping up her suit, "what are we famous for here on Coriolis? 
I'll give you a hint, it ain't mining." 
     Mah's face lit up in realization, "The clinic!" 
     The Security Chief stepped out of her quarters. "Come on,"
Cerrah urged. Before the doors slid completely shut behind her,
she had Mah by the arm and was racing down the corridor to the
tube. 
                              *** 
     In the tube, Mah spoke urgently into his portable comm unit,
"No!  Evacuate them all. I don't give a damn if they are
reconstructing God himself, they have to go now." 
     "I wonder exactly what he is planning," Hansin said to
herself. 
     Mah shut off the comm. "Maybe he'll destroy the Re-an storage
freezer, or the animation equipment. 
     "Possibly," Hansin allowed. "But how could he get through all
the security?  The clinics are wired in every nook and cranny. You
can't use the toilet without being observed." 
     "You sound like you have some experience," Choy Lin observed. 
"I went to identify my father," Hansin replied by way of
explanation. Hansin watched the ring stations flash past. Citizens
on the platforms stepped forward in anticipation of the approaching
tube, then jerked back, realizing it wasn't going to stop. She
could see the gold epaulets of the security forces in the crowds,
searching fruitlessly for Malin. 
     She watched the digital overlay of the tube system. The small
yellow blip that was her car sped through the rings, approaching
a huge nexus area that was the hub. What if Malin had branched off
at the main terminal?  With Mah's net of Security agents in place,
their suspect would be trapped, but only if he had not branched out
to the rings again on another tube. 
     Somehow Hansin knew that Malin's target was the Coriolis
Re-animation Clinic. If he was the man responsible for the other
Re-ans, and she believed that he was, Malin would be set on ending
the re-animation process at its source. "But how will he do it?"
she wondered. 
     The tube slammed to a halt. "Hub," the overhead speaker
announced. "Ring Level." 
     Cerrah and Choy Lin piled out of the car, running at full
speed to the station exit. As they reached the Primary Concourse,
they could see the crowd gathered outside the Re-an Clinic.
Security agents hustled the doctors and technicians away from the
building, while Station Maintenance personnel set up crowd control
barriers. Alarms rang up and down the length of the Concourse as
panicked citizens hurried to put as much ground as possible between
themselves and the clinic. 
     Nearing the crowd, Hansin picked out the senior Security man.
She pulled him aside and said, "Hold them all here until we find
our suspect." The agent nodded affirmative and Hansin continued to
the clinic, only to be intercepted by James Devers. 
     "What is the meaning of this spectacle, Hansin?  The clinic
administrators are chewing my ass for this shut down." 
     Hansin barely paused, "Shut the hell up, Devers. I'm still
Chief of Security, and if I say evacuate the clinic, I expect no
bullshit from your office. If I am correct, we may just have our
man. Give me some room and let me do my job." 
     Devers exploded, chasing Hansin toward the clinic, "You've
shut down the entire clinic on the weak assumption that this one
man will do what?" 
     An inspiration burst into the Security Chief's brain. She knew
just what Malin intended to do. She stopped so abruptly that Devers
nearly ran into her. "Remember what happened to Malloy?" she said
evenly. 
     Devers's jaw worked soundlessly as again Hansin walked away
from the Administrator. "He's not with the evacuees," Mah observed.
"Do you think he left already?  He probably got spooked by the
evacuation." 
     The Security Chief shook her head, "I don't think so." 
A tall agent approached them. "Chief," he said, getting Hansin's
attention, "we've swept this level. He must have slipped through
before we got the cordon set up." 
     Mah turned to Cerrah. "He might be inside," he suggested. 
     "He couldn't be," the Security agent cut in. "We swept all
occupied areas of the clinic not ten minutes ago. There's no one
in there." 
     "Occupied areas," Hansin murmured. "Did you run through the
environmental section or the boiler room?" 
     "We checked the cameras. There wasn't anyone down there." 
     "C'mon," Hansin pulled Mah after her into the clinic. "He's
in the basement." 
                              *** 
     In the gloom of the Maintenance area, Hansin led Mah to the
supervisor's office. She opened the door to the tiny cubicle and
keyed the monitors. 
     "What are we looking for?" Mah asked over her shoulder. 
     "They used the cameras to sweep this level from upstairs, but
I'd be willing to bet that they didn't use infrared," Hansin
explained, studying the monitor board layout. She activated two
switches. "The scopes in most environmental levels are equipped to
monitor heat as well as visible light." 
     The CRT's, which had been giving a dim view of the machinery
humming in the poor light, abruptly brightened. Mah could clearly
see the outlines of the various air purifiers and gas generators
on the screen. "There's a lot of heat down here," he noted. "It
will be hard to pick one man out in all this clutter." 
     "Not if he stays in one place, waiting for Security to leave,"
Hansin pointed out. "The body puts out a lot of radiant energy,
even compared to all this equipment. 
     They scanned the monitors in silence. "I can see two isolated
regions showing a lot of warmth," Mah said, pointing. 
Cerrah studied the areas Mah indicated. "One looks like it is by
the Oh-two reservoir, the other one is near a refrigeration unit,"
she observed. "We'll split up. I can take the first one." 
They left the small office. Hansin circled left toward the dewar,
while Mah continued straight out. Cerrah crouched low to the
ground, masking herself in the jumble of equipment. She could see
the dewar rising up in front of her. Cautiously, she made her way
to the foot of the huge sphere and began hunting through the
supporting framework. 
     Mah was more straight forward in his approach. He kept the
area where he had seen the heat source in sight as he climbed over
jumbles of piping and ductwork. His eyes were becoming more and
more used to the darkness in the machine room. Suddenly, he caught
a flash of movement in the corner of his eye. He turned, and
something hard and heavy smashed into his forehead. 
     The Security Chief was about ready to give up her search when
she literally stumbled over the box. She caught her balance on a
piece of the support and cursed softly. Bending down, she could
see its outline faintly at the foot of the dewar. Hansin gingerly
reached out and picked it up. The heat was coming off the box in
waves, nearly burning her hands. "Holy shit!" she exclaimed. 
Behind her, she heard Mah cry out. The sound of something metal
hitting the floor and running footsteps filled the air. "Choy Lin! 
Are you all right?" Hansin shouted. 
     Mah's angry, pain-filled voice answered, "He smacked me in the
head with something. Did you see where he went?" 
     "No," Hansin answered. "But I think I know what he was doing
down here." 
     Mah made his way over to the dewar, "What is it?" he said,
motioning to the box. 
     "Feel it," Hansin replied. 
     Mah withdrew his hand quickly. "A thermal-electric detonator?"
he guessed. 
     Hansin nodded. "By the size of the box, I'd say he's got about
a half kilo of C-twelve in here." 
     "Enough plastique to take out most of this section," Mah
calculated. 
     "And some of the next ring," Hansin agreed. 
     A shaft of light cut through the darkness. They both turned
to look behind them in time to see an access door slide shut. "You
go after him," Hansin ordered. "I'll take care of this." 
     Without argument, Mah plunged after Malin. Walking carefully,
Hansin followed the two men out through the access door. In front
of the clinic, Devers pounded at her. "Well, where the hell is he?"
the fat man demanded. 
     Hansin kicked out with her left leg, catching the
Administrator in the solar plexus. Devers fell to the ground with
a sound not unlike a balloon deflating. She waved away the Security
officers that came to help her, shouting, "Get everybody down!" 
Looking up and down the Concourse, her eyes hunted for an
environmental pod. 
     Ignoring the rising heat in the box, Hansin used her hands to
feel around the box for an access to the inside. Blisters had begun
to raise on her fingers by the time she spotted the red and yellow
evacuation pod sign. She raced for the airlock, using her tortured
hand to hit the OPEN stud. She tossed the explosive between the
retracting doors and thumbed the EVAC toggle. The doors slammed
shut. Behind them, hydraulic actuators hummed, extending the pod
away from the station's outer skin. The computer began a three
second countdown, "Three ... Two ... " 
                              *** 
     Malin's retreating footfalls echoed down the alley behind Choy
Lin. Four times he lost sight of Malin, having to backtrack and
listen down the tiny alleyways and corridors off the Concourse.
"It's no use running, Malin," he shouted down the alleyway. "We've
got this section locked off."  Malin's footsteps did not pause. 
     "Okay, lets do this the hard way," Mah grumbled. Choy Lin ran
two hundred meters up the abandoned Concourse. He stopped at what
he judged was the exit to the alley Malin was making his way
through. Listening closely, he heard the steps advancing toward
him for the first time. 
     Mah stood to the side of the alley exit, his body shielded by
the corner of a store. He heard Malin's labored breathing as the
man came at his position. Tensing in anticipation, Mah abruptly
extended his arm at shoulder height across the alley. Malin looked
ahead of himself a moment too late, and was clotheslined by Mah's
outstretched arm. Both men were thrown to the ground by the impact.

     Drawing his stunner weapon, Mah stood up. Choy Lin took aim
directly at Malin's head. His quarry struggled upright, still
dazed, and tried to run again. Malin's legs gave out and he sagged
against the wall. 
     "Stay where you are, Malin," Mah warned. With his free hand
he pulled his identification from his pocket. "Choy Lin Mah,
Coriolis Security. You are under arrest." 
     Malin straightened, but did not turn around. "Just kill me
now, Mister Mah, and lets have this over with." 
     "That's not how we do things here, Malin," Mah informed him.
"Let's go." 
     Malin turned quickly, a knife flashing is his right hand. Mah
raised his stunner, and the roof caved in on both of them. 
                              *** 
     " ... One." 
     An explosion ripped through the airlock doors, as Hansin
sprinted for cover in the alley. The force of the blast shoved both
six inch titanium bulkheads in toward the Concourse. The doctors
and technicians from the Re-an clinic, all laying face down one
hundred meters from the pod entrance, were thrown back like straw
in a hurricane. Hansin felt the air itself pick her up and throw
her at the clinic wall. 
     Immediately, the air began rushing from the station through
the rupture between the twisted pod doors. Decompression alarms
rang all along the shattered Concourse. Isolation bulkheads slammed
down from overhead, closing the breached section off from the rest
of the station. Hansin found herself being pulled inexorably toward
the shattered pod airlock. She looked back at the Re-an clinic and
saw the trail of blood smeared behind her, then to the widening
aperture she was approaching and the open space beyond. 
     Devers, laying motionless on the Concourse, was picked up like
a rag doll and sucked through the opening. He howled faintly over
the roar of the escaping air, and disappeared into the blackness.
Hansin felt nothing as she watched him go, only fear that she would
follow the Administrator out into the void. 
     Weak from loss of blood, she clawed for purchase on the slick
decking. Her fingers would find holds, then slide off as the force
of the escaping atmosphere pulled her outward. Hansin's feet hit
the outer rim of the airlock doors with a curiously detached thump.
Looking down the length of her body at the gaping threatening to
swallow her, Cerrah saw a fragment of the damaged doors embedded
in her midsection. 
     "Dear God!" she cried, feeling the pain for the first time.
Cerrah felt her knees buckle. 
     Without warning, the wailing of the rushing air was silent.
Hansin felt the drag on her ruined body subside. Through the
smashed airlock, she could see an outer set of blast doors sealing
themselves into position. She rolled onto her side, off the
fragment piercing her body. 
     Mah's face suddenly appeared before her. "Chief!" he shouted,
looking over her devastated form. "Oh, God ... " 
     "Did you catch him?" Cerrah rasped. "Tell me you got the son
of a bitch." 
     "I got him, Chief," Mah assured her. "He tried to kill me,
but the blast knocked a wall on both of us. I disarmed him and the
boys have him in custody right now."  The shock in Choy Lin's
youthful face gave lie to his next words, "You'll be all right,
Cerrah Hansin. Just hold on. The doctors are on their way." 
"Give it a rest Mah," Hansin chided her deputy. 
     "We can fix it, Cerrah," Mah insisted. "I swear. We are right
outside the clinic ... " 
     Hansin shot her arm up at Mah's collar. "Don't you dare
Re-animate me, Choy Lin."  She let go of Mah's shirt and collapsed
to the deck. She screamed in agony as she rolled back onto the
shard inside her. 
     "Damnit, Chief, they can bring you back," Mah pleaded. 
     "Just let me go, Choy Lin," Hansin begged. "Let me go." 
     Mah saw the mixture of fear and pain in Hansin's eyes, "All
right," he said reluctantly. "I won't let them do that to you,
Cerrah." 
     Relief filled Hansin's face. She looked up at Mah with
gratitude as life flowed from her. 
                              *** 
     "All rise," the bailiff announced. "The corporate district
court of Asteroid Station Coriolis is again in session. His Honor,
Judge Bruce Andrews, presiding."" 
     Andrews entered the courtroom and took his seat. With
appropriate ceremony, he called the court to order. Once the packed
audience in the courtroom had once more seated themselves, he
turned to face the accused. "Balantine Malin," he began gravely,
"the nature of the crimes of which you have been indicted and
convicted are especially grave. I have asked for, and received
special dispensation from the Superior Court of the United Nations
of Earth, under whose jurisdiction this station resides, to deal
with these matters. I have also been given a free hand in
sentencing. 
     "Although the act of murdering a Re-animated person remains
ill-considered by the criminal code, I do still conceive it to an
especially heinous act against humanity. Unfortunately, until this
act is debated and addresses in by the People's Congress of the
United Nations, I can not pass judgment on it, nor can I levy any
punishment for its commission. 
     "However, there is no shortage of laws against the murder of
a human being, or the reckless endangerment of human lives. Mister
Malin, you have been charged with, and found guilty of, the murders
of Security Chief: Coriolis Station, Citizen Cerrah Jane Hansin;
Senior Administrative Partner James Elton Devers, and your wife,
Lydia Malin. For these crimes you are sentenced to die by lethal
injection this fortnight. I do so order. May God save your soul."
     Judge Andrews brought his gavel down three times, ending the
trial and sealing Malin's fate. For the first time in many months,
Choy Lin Mah let a smile touch his lips. 
                              *** 
     "So, Malin, are you ready?" 
     Malin's serene face turned toward Choy Lin. In the man's eyes,
the new Security Chief could see no emotion at all. "I am more
ready than you will ever know, Mister Mah. Finally, I know I will
be at piece." 
     Mah nodded with understanding. "You feel death will release
you from the torment in your life, and the torment you have caused
others." 
     "I was trying to help all of them. I freed them from an
unnatural existence." 
     "And what of the living beings you also killed?" 
     "I made mistakes, Citizen Mah. I will regret those deaths for
eternity." 
     "In the afterlife, you mean." 
     "Yes, if there is one." 
     Mah held up a tiny computer chip. "Do you know what this is?"
he asked Malin. 
     "It is a Re-animation chip," he answered. Malin's eyes focused
on the tiny chip with hatred. 
     "Cerrah Hansin would have had this chip," Mah explained. "She
would have had it if I would have let them make her live again. I
am glad she chose to die naturally." 
     Mah leaned close, bringing the chip near Malin's calm face.
The criminal flinched only slightly. I don't think that having
thirty kilograms of titanium slice you in half can be called a
natural death," Choy Lin growled. 
     "I have told you that I will regret Hansin's death forever."
     "Yes, I know."  Mah grinned savagely, "But you don't know how
long forever can be."  Before Malin could question his cryptic
statement, Mah produced a piece of paper from his pocket, "Do you
know what this is?" 
     "No, I do not." 
     "As a convicted criminal sentenced to death, all your rights
as a citizen are forfeit. Did you know that?" 
     "I was not aware . . . " 
     "Were you aware that a member of the court, any court, can
sign your power of attorney over to any willing citizen upon your
conviction?" 
     "I did not ... " 
     Now Mah leaned in very close. "I am a willing citizen, Malin,
and this paper is your power of attorney. It is in my name." 
Standing abruptly, Mah began to pace the tiny preparation room. He
regarded the power of attorney closely. In less than one hour, the
men will come and take you away. They will inject chemicals in your
veins that will kill you in a very humane fashion. But, of course,
you know all this." 
     Choy Lin smiled and held up the chip again. "Fifteen minutes
later, technicians from the Coriolis Re-animation Clinic will act
on your order, signed by me, and they will place this chip into
your head."  Mah stopped pacing and looked at the doomed man, "You
will be my Re-an for the rest of your unnatural life." 
     The door to the preparation room slammed shut behind Mah, very
nearly drowning out the anguished cry of the condemned man. 
                               END