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that his encirclement

was only apparent, that there was a clear path to the rear.

He turned and leaped once more through the steel wall of the vault.

Forgetting that the floor of the inner chamber was raised two feet

above the floor level of the hall, he found himself standing knee-deep

in steel again.

Like a wading pool, he thought, and the thought saved his life.

For, if he could wade in it, should he not be equally able to swim in it?

Filling his lungs, he bent double and plunged his whole body into the

yielding floor. With his eyes closed and the handle of the attaché case

clenched between his teeth (Priority-A was, after all, the ultimate

security rating), he went through the motions of swimming underwater.

His limbs moved through the metamorphosed steel more easily than through

water, but he had no way of knowing if these motions were propelling

him forward.

There was no sensation, as there would be for a swimmer, of water flowing

over his skin; only a feeling through his entire body, internally as well

as externally, of tingling -- as though he had been dipped into a mild

solution of pure electricity, if such a thing could be.

He "swam" until he was sure that, if his swimming was having any effect

at all, he was out of the hall. Then he changed direction, angling to

the right. At last, starved for oxygen, he had to "surface." He came up

inside a broom closet. It was as good a place as any to catch his breath

and gather his wits.

He rested there, only his head projecting out of the floor (his body,

cradled in its substance, showed no tendencies either to rise or sink),

fearful that his labored breathing might betray his presence to the . . .

What were they -- mutineers? Phantoms?

Or phantasms, the product of his own paranoia?

But he knew perfectly well that he was not mad, and if he were ever to

become mad he would not have inclined in the direction of paranoia.

He had taken an MMPL only last December, and Pittmann had shown him the

results. It was scarcely possible to be more sane than Nathan Hansard.

In the dim light that filtered into the closet through the crack under

the door Hansard could see motes of dust riding in the air. He blew at

them, but his breath did not affect their demure Brownian movement. Yet

he could feel the movement of that same air against his fingertip.

Conclusion? That he, and the crew that had come baying after his blood,

were of another substance than the physical world they moved in. That

he was, in short, a spirit. A ghost.

Was he, then, dead? No -- for death, he had long ago decided, was mere

insentience. Or, if he had died inside the transmitter and this were some sort of afterlife, the system of Dante's Inferno was evidently not

going to be of any use as a guide.

Whatever had happened, happened during the time Hansard was in the

transmitter. Instead of going to Mars at the moment of the jump there had

been a malfunction, and his new immaterial condition (for it was simpler

to assume that it was he who had changed and not the world about him)

was its result.

And all the other wraiths -- the three separate Worsaws, the two Leshes,

the pile of corpses -- were all of them the result of similar malfunctions?

The bearded Worsaw, he who had first stepped into the vault and would now

step out of it no more, was probably, by this theory, the product of some

earlier transmission breakdown. But what then of the two other Worsaws?

Where had they come from? From subsequent breakdowns, presumably.

But this would mean that the original Worsaw who had gone through the

machine, the real Worsaw, had continued the course of his own life in

the real world, served his term of duty on Mars and returned to earth --

and made the Mars jump again. Twice again, counting today's jump. And

this real Worsaw went on with his life in complete ignorance of the

existence of the Doppelgangers splitting off from him. And if all this

were true . . .

Then there