“Our situation analysts have run this entire plan through the computer one additional time, to see if there are any loopholes to be plugged.”
“And?”
“And they have come up with an elegant suggestion. They think that you, Colonel, should be in New York with this Kinsman character when the troop shuttle takes off.”
Colt controlled his surprise with a reflex clamp-down on his emotions. He kept his voice noncommittal. “Why?”
“If Kinsman has any slight shred of doubt about a Trojan horse situation, your presence in New York should ease his fears.”
“Or put him on his guard.”
“No.” The State Department man smiled. “We have analyzed Kinsman’s personality profile quite thoroughly. He tends to trust people rather easily, especially people he has known for a time. You were friendly with him for many years. He undoubtedly still feels deep ties of friendship toward you. He will see your presence at the UN as a gesture of amity, and that should put him off his guard quite nicely.”
He does trust people too easy, Colt admitted to himself.
The ISA agent smirked. “Beautiful. You two can watch the takeoff on TV together.”
“The final few hours of countdown will be more-or-less automatic,” the Major chipped in. “There’s no real need for you to be physically present at the Kennedy launch center, or even at Patrick.”
Colt said, “I don’t like it. I’d rather be where the action is, at the launch complex.”
“But the computers,” said the State Department man, “show that the plan’s chances for success increase from eighty-five percent to ninety-three if you are in New York with Kinsman.”
You want me to kiss him on the cheek, too? Colt fumed silently. But he hid his anger, hid his fear, and looked into the three white faces, each in turn.
“Okay,” he said at last. “I’ll do it.” 517
Wednesday 29 December 1999:
0525 hrs UT
KINSMAN SNAPPED awake.
For a moment he could not remember where he was. Then it came to him. The VIP suite in the low-gravity section of Space Station Alpha.
He got up slowly. There was a plastic tube in his thigh, carefully wrapped in protective bandaging. He glanced at the digital clock set into the bulkhead. In another hour and a half that tube would be connected to a pacemaker and electric motor. Inside his leg, the tube wormed through his femoral artery and up his torso into the aorta, where the plastic balloon pump rested. It was quiescent now. Once the pace- maker and power unit were connected the balloon would act as an auxiliary heart, helping with the blood-pumping work that his natural heart would be too weak to do on Earth.
Jill had frowned through the entire surgical procedure. “The pump can’t take more than fifty percent of the workload off your heart,” she had said. “You’re still going to be in trouble when you reach Earth.”
Kinsman padded into the sanitary stall and dry-bathed, letting the sonic vibrations cleanse and massage his skin. Silly, he told himself, knowing that he could have luxuriated in a water shower. But the habit prevails. And I shouldn’t get the bandage wet, I guess. He did not want to admit that a water shower would smack too much of a last-chance-of-my-life ritual.
He shaved carefully, then started to dress. Briefly he thought of putting in a call to Diane, back in Selene. But he shook his head against the idea. Better to leave it this way. If I get back—when I get back—maybe we can start putting our lives together. But not now.
He pulled on a T-shirt, shorts, and slipper socks. Noth- 518 ing else. The bandage showed beneath the brief shorts and bulged against the inside of his thigh. It felt like an extra pair of balls.
Kinsman hesitated at the door to his compartment. He took a deep, calming breath, then slid the door open and headed out to meet with Jill and her medical team.
Two hours later he was sitting in a special foam cushion chair aboard a rocketplane as it bit into Earth’s atmosphere. Kinsman was encased in a mechanical exoskeleton: a frame- work of metal tubing that ran along his legs, torso, arms, and neck. The silvery metal tubes were jointed in all the places where the human body was jointed, although the broad metal plates running along Kinsman’s back could never be as supple as a human spine. Tiny electrical servomotors moved the suit in response to Kinsman’s own muscular actions.