“This is it. I’m really going to die. Not going home again. Not going to arrest the spy. Not going to meet my father and tell him what I really think of him. What will the Citizen think of me? Vassily opened his eyes. The whirling continued; he must be spinning five or six times a minute. The emergency suit had no thrusters, and its radio had a pathetic range, just a few hundred meters—more than enough for shipboard use, perhaps enough to make a beacon if anyone came looking for him. But nob...ody had. He was precessing like a gyroscope; every couple of minutes, the ship swam briefly into view, a dark splinter outlined against the diamond dust of the heavens. There’d been no sign of a search party heading his way; just that golden fog of waste water spreading out around the ship, which had been over a kilometer away before he first saw it. It looked like a toy; an infinitely desirable toy, one he could pin all his hopes of life and love and comradeship and warmth and happiness on—one that hung forever out of reach, dangling in a cold wasteland he couldn’t cross.MoreLessRead More Read Less
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