Mission: Earth "Black Genesis" Read Online Free PDF Page A

for being killed—the ordering officer is to stamp here:_________.
    There was the place right there where it could be stamped!
    And that careless Bawtch had not marked it urgent and had not presented it to me for stamping, even though he knew very well that if the form was not stamped in two days, the "unless otherwise directed" would go into effect. A criminal omission! Leaving a line that could be stamped unstamped was about the sloppiest bureaucracy anybody could imagine!
    I hastily thumbed through the next half-dozen forms. Yes, indeed. Old Bawtch was really slipping. I knew that sour temper would do him in someday. There were seven forms here which—unless otherwise directed—ordered people to be hypnoblocked and sent elsewhere. Every one of them had a "discontinued" line which could be stamped! The old fool had missed every one of them. Him and his flapping side-blinders. Oh, it was a good thing for him I wasn't back on Voltar. I would throw them on his desk and say in a haughty voice, "I
    knew you were slipping, Bawtch. Look at those unstamped, perfectly stampable lines!"
    Well, maybe I wouldn't have said that. But the incident cheered me up quite a bit. Imagine old Bawtch forgetting to give me something to stamp! Incredible!
    Then a sudden thought struck me. The Prahd package! The one that contained his overcoat and duplicate identoplate and the forged suicide note. I had been so hurried that night, I'd forgotten to give it to a courier to hold and mail a week after we left. That package was still sitting there on the floor beside my office desk.
    Oh, well, we can't remember everything, can we? A mere detail. Unimportant.
    I plowed on through the rest of the pile and finished them. I was disappointed that I had not consumed more time. I didn't want to go back to sleep. I couldn't, actually. And here I was careening through space, boxed in, in a little steel-alloy cubicle with nothing to do but think. And thinking was something I wanted to avoid just now.
    I saw that the bulkhead clock had acquired a new circle. It said:
    Blito-P3 Time, Istanbul, Turkey
    I did a calculation. My Gods, I had more than twenty-two hours yet to go in this (bleeping) metal box. If this were a self-respecting warp-drive freighter, taking a proper six weeks, I would probably have gotten into some dice games by now or caught up on a backlog of hunting books or even reshows of Homeview plays I'd missed. Heller and his tug! No recreation! One got there so fast, one could only depart and arrive and no time to go.
    Suddenly a blue screen in the wall turned on. A jingling bell attracted attention to it. It said:
    Due to the possible orbital miscalculations of the Royal officer who plotted the travel course, arrival at the destination base would have been just before daylight local time.
    Therefore, the actual commander of this vessel has been forced to apply prudence based on years of valuable experience which some Royal officers do not have and adjust the landing time to early evening at the destination base.
    This means that we must dawdle in warp drive the last few million miles in order to arrive in early evening, after dark, instead.
    This advances our arrival time 12.02 hours sidereal.
    Stabb
    The Actual Captain
    I blew up! (Bleep) Heller anyway. Making a silly mistake like that.
    Keeping me not just twenty-two but another thirty-four hours in this (bleeped) box.
    I was furious!
    I was going back and give him a piece of my mind. The worst piece of it I could locate!
    I got up. An electric arc from the table corner zapped my bare hand. I put my feet on the floor. An arc leaped off a studding and hit me in the toe. I grabbed for a steadying handrail and the blue snap of electricity
    almost burned my fingers. This (bleeped) tug was alive with electricity!
    Somebody had laid out some insulator gloves and boots. I got them on.
    I jabbed at a communicator button to the aft area. "I'm coming back to see you!" I yelled.
    Heller's voice answered,