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whole river course. I made a quick check to see that everybody was, indeed,
down, then froze as the thing approached, passed right over us, and continued
on. In this light, and with this shallow, rocky bed, we had to look like rocks
to a copter going any speed at all. But I was pretty sure this wasn't
something TMS did every day; we were being pursued.
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Medusa
When the lights disappeared, I stood up again^ and we all made it to the far
bank and the cover of the trees. I finally allowed myself to let up a bit and
collapsed on the ground. The others did the same, and it was a little while
before any of us could talk.
Finally I said, "Well, the age of miracles has returned. We got away with it
sure enough."
Morphy looked back at me with a grim expression, then at the other two. Except
for our coloration and the total absence of any body hair, we all looked
pretty much as we had, although the transformation or whatever it was had
split our flimsy clothes as well. "Stark naked, in an unknown wilderness,
hunted like wild animals, and without a hair to our name, and he thinks he's
winning!"
"Not to mention starving to death," the strange woman put in.
I grinned. "I am. We are will win. We didn't go through all this to lose now.
And if that tumble in the sludge didn't teach you that we are survival
machines, I don't know what wiU. But I think we'll have to get as far from
here as we can tonight. I don't think they'll hunt us very far or long it just
isn't worth it, even though we're all going to be pretty wanted by this
group."
"After those others tell about what you did back there when we were first
captured, I'd say they'll want you more than anybody," Morphy replied. "What
you did to those monitors wasn't
human.
I wonder if even you realize that you knocked over the armed monitor, grabbed
her rifle, turned, killed four monitors, then whirled back to cover the others
in something under five seconds?"
"Five sec " I was struck speechless for a moment. No wonder the job had seemed
so easy! Five seconds for the entire thing! In my original fine-tuned body,
maybe, just maybe, 1 could have done it, but here and now . . . knowing what
to do and making your body do it are two different things. Ask any
fifty-year-old space pilot. And yet, the answer to it was obvious.
"I knew what to do," I told her, "and the Wardens supplied the rest. I was
under such tremendous tension, picking my position and mentally preparing for
the moves, that the Wardens must have made the necessary survival
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adjustment the same principle that turned us into whatever it was we had
turned into briefly back there. If you had the knowledge and the will it
would've worked for you, too. So you see, we're not exactly helpless out here.
We carry our protection with us. We were made for this planet I
almost said designed for it, and maybe that's right and this is Medusa, not
those comfortable, sealed prisons we call cities here."
"That was some . . . strange thing that happened to us, you can't say it
wasn't," our mystery woman put in.
"I never heard of anybody changing into anything else before, except maybe
sex."
"That's true," I admitted, "but the system's designed against it. We're all
kept in artificial, stable environments where that sort of thing just won't
happen. Even so, I'm sure it has, maybe when somebody's gotten into an
accident or was in danger of drowning or something. Transformations may
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Medusa occur every day. But if so, those people are rescued, hustled off to
psychs, and put right. Even memories are sponged from the minds of people
involved directly or of the people who observed it. And, by the way, I think
we ought to know who you are. I'm Tarin Bul." "Angi Patma, Construction
Guild," she responded. We made introductions all around. I was particularly
concerned with the usually outgoing
Ching, who now seemed quiet and sullen, still in shock. I walked over to her.
"Come on we're gonna be fine," I soothed. She looked up at me. "I. know."
I frowned. "What's wrong, hon? I was proud of you!" She was silent for a
moment. Finally she said, "You killed four people, Tarin. Killed. And you're
not even a little sorry about it."
I sighed. "Listen, Ching I had to do it. It was the only way. When someone is
marching you off to your death, and happy to do it, he forfeits his own right
to life. Those survivors they're still going to get those fifty-five or so who
remained. None of them are going to be left alive, at least not without
destroyed minds. That is a worse crime in my book. Remember, these people were
picked for TMS for the same reason everybody else on Medusa is picked for his
job. They like bullying, scaring, and even killing people." "Don't you?"
That stopped me for a moment. The fact was, I really did love my job, of
course. But there was a difference. At least, I hoped there was. "I'm not
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