her-always trouble-free, sometimes amusing, often
comforting, and by now almost as automatic as his
relationship with the strange person wh ‘ o lived inside
his skull-had also been damaging in some hidden
respect, there would be no faster way to find out than
having her stripped away from him for good and all;
for she would not last until his problematical return.
She could live only a little over a day without hin-L
The prospect was anything but pleasant.
He saw the last of the residence conclave on the twenty-first day. From
then on be was permanently stationed, not in room a-10-prime, but in a
geographically indefinite, quasi-abstract entity simply called The Project.
Its headquarters was an immense camp and launching field, ultra-secure
behind high wire fences
And all the Stars a Stage 43
in the middle of an appalling salt desert, located Jorn could not say where.
He was flown there, along with four other recruits (all female), and saw
only that the government rocket spent most of its time crossing an ocean, by
a route which was devoid of any checkpoints he might have been able to
recognize. Quite possibly this was unplanned; since Jorn had never before
flown in anything that went higher, faster and farther than a jitney before,
he knew nothing about how to read terrain from a great altitude.
‘Me camp on the salt flats, however, proved to be little more than a
sally-port for Jorn and the other recruits. Though there was obviously a
great deal of construction, testing and other activity going on there, Jorn