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insistence. “This is not real. We’re in Star City, my friend. The whole point of this exercise is to measure our alertness, our ability to see through delusional constructs. Escaping from the ship is the objective, the end-state.”
    I knew then that reasoned argument wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I gave myself a hard shove in his direction, hoping to overwhelm him with sheer momentum. But Yakov was faster. His hand sprung to his pocket and came out holding one of the tasers, aimed straight at me. The barbs sprang out and contacted my chest. I’d never been shot before and I wasn’t ready for the pain. It seemed to crush me into a little ball of concentrated fire, like an insect curling under the heat from a magnifying glass. I let out a brief yelp, biting my tongue, and then I didn’t even have the energy to scream. The barbs were still in me. Bent double, blood dribbling from my hand and mouth, I lost all contact with the ship. Drifting, I saw Yakov leave the taser floating in mid-air while he returned his attention to the wheel and redoubled his efforts.
    “You stupid fucker,” I heard Galenka say, behind me.
    I didn’t know whether she meant Yakov—for trying to escape—or me, for trying to stop him on my own. Maybe she meant both of us.
    The pain of the discharge was beginning to ebb. I could just begin to think about speaking again.
    “Got a taser,” I heard myself say, as if from a distance.
    “Good. So have I.” I felt Galenka push past me, something hard in her hand. Then I heard the strobing crackle of another taser. I kept drifting around, until the door came into view again. Through blurred and slitted eyes, I saw Yakov twitching against the metal. Galenka had fired barbs into him; now she was holding the prongs of the taser against his abdomen, the blue worm of a spark writhing between.
    I reached out a hand and managed to steady myself. The pain had now all but gone, but I was enveloped in nausea and a tingling all-body version of pins and needles.
    “You can stop now.”
    She gave the taser one last prod, then withdrew it. Yakov remained still, slumped and unconscious against the door.
    “I say we kill the fucker now.”
    I wiped the blood from my lips. “I know how you feel. But we need him to get us home. If there’s the slightest problem with the engine ...”
    “Anything happens, mission control can help us.”
    I worked my way down to the door. “He’s not going to do this again. We can sedate him, confine him to one of the modules if necessary. Until Baikonur advise.”
    Galenka pushed her own taser back into her pocket, with the barbs dangling loose on their springy wires. She started turning the wheel in the opposite direction, grunting at first with the effort.
    “This was a close call.”
    “You were right—I should have been more worried about him than I was. I didn’t think he was really serious about all that Star City stuff. I mean, not this serious.”
    “He’s a basket case, Dimitri. That means there are only two sane people left on this ship, and I’m being generous.”
    “Do you think Baikonur will be able to help?”
    “They’d better. Anything goes wrong on this ship, we need him to fix it. And he’s not going to be much use to us doped to his eyeballs.”
    We manhandled the stunned Yakov back into the main part of the Tereshkova. Already I could tell that he was only lightly unconscious, and that we’d have a struggle on our hands if he came around now. He was mumbling under his breath. Sweat began to bead on my forehead. Why the fuck did this have to happen to us?
    “What do you reckon we should do? Confine him to his quarters?”
    “And have him loose aboard the ship again, looking for a way to escape?”
    “I’m not sure we have any other choice.”
    “We lock him in the forward module,” Galenka said decisively. “He’ll be safe in there. We can seal the connecting lock from our side, until Baikonur come up with a treatment regime. In the