LAST DREAM

12440 CE

Death wasn’t what Doug thought it would be. He felt stiff and cold, and that seemed right, but why was he still trapped in a dead body? Was he going to stay out here in this suit like a mummy and wait for the interstellar hearse to come get him? Then what? Death was supposed to let a person go, not just leave them in the rot like a piece of stone.

Unless he was being punished for killing Turchenko and someone else. Maybe that was it, and nobody would ever come. But somebody had come. But she was gone too, just another hallucination.

He remembered waking up in the middle of the trip, with the shouting voice, and the hole in the ship, and the two dead people he’d found in their refreezers. Now he was floating outside Tompuso in his suit, and the air was all gone, and he was dead.

But he wasn’t dead. He was thinking. If he didn’t think while he was sleeping, how could he think while he was dead? He tried to move a finger. It brushed something soft. He wasn’t in a suit and he wasn’t outside the ship.

A polite voice spoke. “Hau Ren is pleased to welcome you to your destination world. Please take a work suit from the ceiling panel. Exit the refreezer and strip off any excess fluid before wearing the suit. Report to afnaz neeser for raggales finn turbinache. Heeger fissle.”

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