Mindscan

"You probably want Brian Hades," I said. "You can't have him."

"We'll gratefully accept anyone you care to send out, Jake. Your choice."

I looked around at my crew. Hades had a defiant expression on his round face.

Chloe Hansen looked terrified; I wanted to say some soothing words to her. I shut off the phone.

"What about you?" I said to Akiko Uchiyama. "You want to go?"

"You want me to beg?" she said. "Fuck you."

I was taken aback. "I— I'm not trying to be mean here."

"You're fucking us over, you son of a bitch. Not to mention everyone who cares about us."

"I was going to let you go."

"Was. The benevolent tyrant."

"No, I mean if you—"

"Let me go. Or don't let me go. But don't expect me to fucking thank you for it."

"All right," I said. "You can go. Cycle through the airlock."

Akiko looked at me for a second, no change in her facial expression.

"But when you get back home," I added, "wash your mouth out with soap."

She got up from the chair she'd been sitting in and headed for the airlock. I watched her cycle through, then went back to the videophone. "Smythe," I said.

There was a pause. "Smythe's not here just now," said the voice of the female traffic controller.

"Where the hell is he?"

"The washroom."

Lucky bastard — although I wondered if that was really true, or if they were playing more mind games with me. "Well, tell him I've just sent him a present."

The rocket's cargo hold was cylindrical, about three meters long, and a meter in diameter. It made steerage look elegant.

"How, um, how do you want to be arranged?" asked Jesus Martinez, the muscular, bald man who was overseeing the loading of cargo.

I looked at Karen. She raised her eyebrows, leaving it to me. "Face to face," I said.

"There's no window, so it's not like there'll be anything to look at."

"There's no light, either," said Jesus. "Not once the hatches are sealed."

"Can't you throw in some glowsticks?" I said. "Luciferin, something like that?"

"I suppose," said Jesus. "But every gram costs money."

"Put it on my tab," said Karen.

Jesus nodded. "Whatever you say, Mrs. Bessarian." He told a man standing near him to go get the glowsticks, then, turning back to us: "You realize we'll have to strap you in for the first hour, while you're undergoing steady acceleration — although you can undo the straps later if you like. As you can see, we've already lined the chamber with padding. Your bodies are durable, but the launch will be rough."

"That's okay," I said.

"All right," said the man. "We're at T-minus sixteen minutes. Let's get you in there."

I entered the vertical cylinder of the hold, and positioned myself against the far curving wall. I then opened my arms, inviting Karen to step into them. She did so, and she slipped her arms around me. Why shouldn't we travel hugging each other? It wasn't as if our limbs were going to get tired.

Jesus and two assistants worked on positioning us just right, and then they strapped us in. "Guys like you — artificial bodies — might be the future of manned space-flight," Jesus said as he worked. "No life support, no need to worry about prolonged exposure to high gees."

The person Jesus had dispatched appeared a few minutes later, clutching some glowsticks. "These are good for four hours a piece," he said, breaking one open now, shaking it up, and letting the — green, I guess that was also a shade of green — light fill the chamber. "You guys have normal night vision?"

"Better than normal," I said.

"Then one stick should be plenty to have going at a time, but here are the others."

He put them in a webbed storage pouch attached to the inner curving wall, where Karen could easily reach them.

"Oh, and one more thing," said Jesus. He handed me something I hadn't seen in a long time.

"A newspaper?" I said.

"Today's New York Times," he replied. "Well, the front section, anyway. They do a thousand hardcopies every day, still on paper, for deposit at the Library of Congress, and for a few eccentric old subscribers who are willing to pay over a thousand bucks for a printed copy."

"Yes," I said. "I've heard about that. But what's it for?"

"Instructions came through from the folks up on the moon. This'll help prove that you came from Earth today; there's no other way, except by express rocket, that a copy of this could get to the moon in the next twelve hours."

"Ah," I said.

Jesus wedged the newspaper into another storage pouch. "All set?" he asked.

I nodded.

"Yes," said Karen.

He smiled. "My advice: don't talk about politics, religion, or sex. No point having an argument when neither of you can get away from the other." And with that, he swung the curved door shut, sealing us in.

"Are you okay?" I said to Karen. My artificial eyes adjusted to semi-darkness faster than my biological ones had; another difference, I suppose, between an electronic and a chemical reaction.

"I'm fine," she said, and she sounded sincere.

"Say, have you been to space before?"