The Bloody Herring. Phyllis Ann Karr

Al Gadore would’ve taken off without back-ups of the ship’s own?”

      “Enough?” Sister Harriet asked weakly.

      “For starters,” Misaki replied, “I switched our own pylon’s computers out of shipnet at the first glimpse of the death symbol.”

      Deuces shook his head. “First glimpse, already too late.”

      “That might have been true back on Old Earth,” said Dr. Falcon. The scope of it was sinking in. Shipnet, their entire store of knowledge brought from the home planet plus everything they’d learned and gathered in eight years through the galaxy…the controls that maintained climate, growing conditions, gravity…life itself! in 24 pylons and the gigantic core…their very ability to get—even to communicate—from pylon to core to pylon via comps and insul-tubes…the steering that kept them on trajectory, the shielding that turned aside space debris, guarding Papa’s Pride from collisions… “Here,” she reassured herself as much as everyone else, “acting at the first glimpse should keep most of the infection out.”

      “I’d feel happier,” said Sister Harriet, “if we could have inoculations against these kinds of viruses.”

      Misaki said hotly, “Who’d ever have thought anybody would play the computer virus trick in Papa’s Pride? That’s like signing a death warrant on the whole ship and everyone in it!”

      “Probably th’ last little piece uv Old Earth anywhere in the universe,” said Osborne. “Outside the blame memory uh God.”

      “It…it probably…” Sister Harriet shook her head and tried again. “Whoever did this…probably thought of it as just a…just a practical joke.”

      “Yeah?” Osborne snarled. “Like t’ ‘practical joke’ them.”

      “Thank God you’re safe, anyway, Dr. Falcon,” said Misaki. “Who knows what it could’ve done to your brain?”

      “Who knows what it’s doing to poor Bob’s?” As if she’d just been reminded, Sister Harriet made to lift the virtual helmet off Lozinski’s head.

      “Leave it,” snapped Dr. Falcon.

      Osborne gave an approving grunt and Sister Harriet looked aghast, but Dr. Falcon went on:

      “When you brought me out—thanks, by the way, I’d just been groping for the helmet—it looked like a dark fog settling over his virtual world. Nothing they couldn’t survive. It might be more dangerous to jolt him out of it now, all at once, than to leave him in.”

      Sister Harriet began, “But you—”

      “I’m the secondary one ‘in there.’ Bob Lozinski is the primary builder of that little world. Now. Inertia should be keeping the ship turning, keeping up our gravity, for quite a while. That gives us some time. We’ll have to isolate every computer we can reach—meaning in this pylon, terminal by terminal, give it an individual cleansweep, then filter data back into it from the others. Using a double virgin-fine set of filters.”

      Osborne seemed to relax a little. “Yeah. And if they’re handlin’ it like that in the rest uh th’ pylons an’ th’ core, then mebbe, just maybe, we can get through this, after all.”

      “If we thought of it,” said Chandra Falcon, “you can be sure so did Papa Gadore’s brain trust. Probably beat us to it. Misaki, start with the computers here in this lab. As soon as they’re cleaned, I’m going back ‘in.’”

      Deuteronomy Osborne said, “Why bother, Doc? If this kid is even partly responsible, he deserves everythin’ that can go wrong to him ‘in there.’ Call it th’ pangs uh bad conscience.”

      “And if he isn’t?” she replied. “If Steve Davis was going to bring him along to Ishmael’s Downtown to warn you about this? Does Bob Lozinski still deserve it in that case?”