The Big Wheel

It was midnight, Wheeltime, before Morgan returned to his cabin. The last thing he did before turning in was to place the cassette of meteorological data at a carefully haphazard angle next to his computer terminal. A bright blue daylit arc of Earth revolved slowly outside his port. He watched it turn to crescent, then to a burning bow, then to a delicate band of red-filtered colour where the soft afterglow of the Sun scattered through the band of atmosphere. He drew the light thermal cover around his ears and closed his eyes.

With a finger on his pulse he inhaled slowly and deeply and as his respiration slowed his pulse rate came down to fifty-five, sank to fifty, hovered, touched forty-five and stayed there. The trick was not so much to persuade Wheeldata that he was asleep as to stay awake. His pulse, respiration, and the airtight door of his cabin filled his consciousness. The Eastern rim of Earth had taken fire before the red indicator winked on the panel next to his door, and he saw the silhouettes of two men as they entered. Morgan closed his eyes. He waited. After half a minute he knew he had to take the risk. He opened his eyes. One man was standing beside the door. The other snapped the cassette into the terminal which wrote up the program identification. Its blue light illumined the face of the operator.

’This it?’ Morgan heard him breathe.

His colleague moved beside him. ‘Yeah. It’ll do.’

Morgan’s feet swung to the floor.

‘Let’s go.’ The intruder ejected the cassette into the palm of his hand. Simultaneously a blow to the back of his knees dropped him to a sitting position and Morgan was reaching out to the light switch…