The Race for God Read Online Free PDF Page A

airspace where a severed little finger once had been, before a childhood tricycling accident. Sometimes he moved the missing finger as if it were in an unseen dimension, even touched it with his other hand and felt it. Now he tucked the affected hand between his flank and the seat cushion, to keep the finger warm.
    Why did it get so cold?
    In the Inner Planet League, prison authorities no longer executed people with gas, electricity, hanging, lethal injections or Damoclean body crushers. Not since Professor Nathan Pelter left his machine to the Inner Planet League when he died. It wasn’t designed as a killing machine, so the story went, but it worked admirably to that purpose, dispatching prisoners on a fantastic journey as they died.
    Gutan was a Dispatcher, a euphemistic title selected for public relations purposes.
    Pelter had died in his own machine, and rumor held that he went out with a broad smile on his face. An accidental death, some said, but there were other theories extrapolated from rumored personal problems. It was said that his unusual machine could not be opened for servicing or adjustment without destroying it and all of its secrets, and that it couldn’t b ‘rayed to see its mysterious inner workings. It was one-of-a-kind, and had to be moved between numerous truck-trailer rigs like the one Gutan was in.
    So far, to Gutan’s knowledge, the machine had required no servicing by the prison system. And it had been used extensively in the half century since Pelter’s death, with inmates brought from all over the solar system to facilities accessible by the truck-trailers. There was an order out that the prison system was not to risk flying the machine, based upon statistics proving that these special trucks were the safest means of transport.
    None of the criminals that Gutan “dispatched” died with a smile, although some entered the machine that way. A standard tough con’s sneer, usually. Gutan had seen it often. But there was nothing standard in the way they died. Always they screamed before it was over, with death masks twisted into nightmare hideousness.
    If Pelter went out with a smile, Gutan thought as the cab door slid open, he must have been one tough son of a bitch. Either that or he hypnotized himself.
    “What’s new and exciting, Harl?” a guard of about Gutan’s height asked, coming around the outside of the truck.
    Gutan stepped down from the cab and grunted a barely civil and purposefully unintelligible acknowledgment. He touched a button on his Wriskron, locking the truck and setting the vehicular alarm system. With a second press of the button, a light on the time dial flashed pink, indicating the alarms were operational.
    The air was cool, with the ground still in shadow and early rays of sunlight glistening from the highest points of the guard towers.
    The magenta and brown of the guard’s armor matched the prison-system shirt and trousers Gutan wore. The guard’s armor was thin but sturdy, of a new and arcane alloy that light artillery projectiles could not penetrate, not even those How-How-tipped, exploding microparticle shells. There were matching helmets, but guards refused to wear them because of razzing from prisoners. It was an act of perceived manhood to go around without a helmet, and it struck Gutan that guards and prisoners were to a great extent of one ilk. He didn’t trust any of them.
    “Show me the new batch,” Gutan said, staring at the door to Death Row. “My schedule is tight, and I want the dispatches ready when the system goes online at seven A.M.”
    St. Charles Beach was a low-lying town just off the old Bluepac Highway that skirted Wessornia’s coast in those days. The town attracted its share of vacationers, mostly in-staters from big cities to the north and south. Its swimming beach was privately owned by one family, the Domingos, and they also owned the general store, the gas pump, and a recreational vehicle campground (Domingo’s Reef) that