Once he realized I had pried open the control panel on the bulkhead beside the inner hatch, Forty-niner said softly, “Sir, there is no need for that.”

“Mind your own business.”

“But, sir, the corporation could hold you financially responsible for deliberate damage to the control panel.”

“So let them sue me after I’m dead.”

“Sir, there really is no need to commit suicide.”

Forty-niner had figured out what I was going to do, of course. So what? There wasn’t anything he could do to stop me.

“What’s the matter? You scared of being alone?”

“I would rather not be alone, sir. I prefer your company to solitude.”

“Tough nuts, pal. I’m going to blow the hatches and put an end to it.”

“But, sir, there is no need—”

“What do you know about need?” I bellowed at him. “Human need? I’m a human being, not a collection of circuit boards.”

“Sir, I know that humans require certain physical and emotional supports.”

“Damned right we do.” I had the panel off. I shorted out the safety circuit, giving myself a nasty little electrical shock in the process. The inner hatch slid open.

“I have been trying to satisfy your needs, sir, within the limits of my programming.”

As I stepped into the coffin-sized airlock I thought to myself, Yeah, he has. Forty-niner’s been doing his best to keep me alive. But it’s not enough. Not nearly enough.

I started prying open the control panel on the outer hatch. Six centimeters away from me was the vacuum of interplanetary space. Once the hatch opens, poof! I’m gone.

“Sir, please listen to me.”

“I’m listening,” I said, as I tried to figure out how I could short out the safety circuit without giving myself another shock. Stupid, isn’t it? Here I was trying to commit suicide and worried about a little electrical shock.

“There is a ship approaching us, sir.”

“Don’t be funny.”

“It was not an attempt at humor, sir. A ship is approaching us and hailing us at standard communications frequency.”

I looked up at the speaker set into the overhead of the airlock.

“Is this part of your psychological programming?” I groused.

Forty-niner ignored my sarcasm. “Backtracking the approaching ship’s trajectory shows that it originated at Ceres, sir. It should make rendezvous with us in nine hours and forty-one minutes.”

I stomped out of the airlock and ducked into the bridge, muttering, “If this is some wiseass ploy of yours to keep me from—”

I looked at the display panel. All its screens were dark: conserving electrical power.

“Is this some kind of psychology stunt?” I asked.

“No, sir, it is an actual ship. Would you like to answer its call to us, sir?”

“Light up the radar display.”

Goddamn! There was a blip on the screen.

I thought I must have been hallucinating. Or maybe Forty-niner was fooling with the radar display to keep me from popping the airlock hatch. But I sank into the command chair and told Forty-niner to pipe the incoming message to the comm screen. And there was Donahoo’s ugly mug talking at me! I knew I was hallucinating.

“Hang in there,” he was saying. “We’ll get you out of that scrap heap in a few hours.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, and turned off the comm screen. To Forty-niner, I called out, “Thanks, pal. Nice try. I appreciate it. But I think I’m going to back to the airlock and opening the outer hatch now.”

“But sir,” Forty-niner sounded almost like he was pleading, “it really is a ship approaching. We are saved, sir.”

“Don’t you think I know you can pull up Donahoo’s image from your files and animate it? Manipulate it to make him say what you want me to hear? Get real!”

For several heartbeats Forty-niner didn’t answer. At last he said, “Then let us conduct a reality test, sir.”

“Reality test?”

“The approaching ship will rendezvous with us in nine hours, twenty-seven minutes. Wait that long, sir. If no ship reaches us, then you can resume your suicidal course of action.”

It made sense. I knew Forty-niner was just trying to keep me alive, and I almost respected the pile of chips for being so deviously clever about it. Not that I meant anything to him on a personal basis. Forty-niner was a computer. No emotions. Not even an urge for self-preservation. Whatever he was doing to keep me alive had been programmed into him by the psychotechs.

And then I thought, Yeah, and when a human being risks his butt to save the life of another human being, that’s been programmed into him by millions of years of evolution. Is there that much of a difference?

So I sat there and waited. I called to Donahoo and told him I was alive and damned hungry. He grinned that lopsided sneer of his and told me he’d have a soysteak waiting for me. Nothing that Forty-niner couldn’t have ginned up from its files on me and Donahoo.

“I’ve got to admit, you’re damned good,” I said to Forty-niner.

“It’s not me, sir,” he replied. “Mr. Donahoo is really coming to rescue you.”

I shook my head. “Yeah. And Santa Claus is right behind him in a sleigh full of toys pulled by eight tiny reindeer.”

Immediately, Forty-niner said, “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” by Clement Moore. Would you like to hear the entire poem, sir?”

I ignored that. “Listen, Niner, I appreciate what you’re trying to do but it just doesn’t make sense. Donahoo’s at corporate headquarters at Vesta. He’s not at Ceres and he’s not anywhere near us. Good try, but you can’t make me believe the corporation would pay to have him come all the way over to Ceres to save a broken-down bucket of a waterbot and one very junior and expendable employee.”

“Nevertheless, sir, that is what is happening. As you will see for yourself in eight hours and fifty-two minutes, sir.”

I didn’t believe it for a nanosecond. But I played along with Forty-niner. If it made him feel better, what did I have to lose? When the time was up and the bubble burst I could always go back to the airlock and pop the outer hatch.

But he must have heard me muttering to myself, “It just doesn’t make sense. It’s not logical.”

“Sir, what are the chances that in the siege of Leningrad in World War II the first artillery shell fired by the German army into the city would kill the only elephant in the Leningrad zoo? The statistical chances were astronomical, but that is exactly what happened, sir.”