Ticket to Anywhere

Начало книги

Richard Falk was a sane man. Up until three months ago he had been, so far as he could discover, the only sane man left in a world of lunatics.

Now he was a dead man.

He lay in a metal coffin twenty yards long by three wide, airless, soundless. Behind the faceplate of his helmet, under the rime of frozen air, his lips were bright blue, his cheeks, nose, forehead a lighter color, almost violet. The flesh was stiff as frozen leather. He did not move, breathe, or think: he was dead.

Beside him, strapped to the bulging torso of his suit, was a metal box labeled: SCATO HEART PROBE, SEE INSTRUCTIONS INSIDE.

All around him, strapped tight to the walls by broad loops of webbing, were boxes, canisters, canvas bags, kegs. Cargo. His coffin was a freighter, going to Mars.

In his frozen brain the memories were neatly stacked, Just as he had left them. Not coupled now, each cell isolated, the entropy of his mind fallen to zero. But uppermost among them, waiting for the thaw that might never come, were the memories of his last few hours of life.

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