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ours. You'll have friends, and companions, maybe even a family. All the things you'll miss out on here."
    "What makes you think I won't be crippled in that body, too?" Raimey murmured.
    "You won't," Faraday assured him. "For starters, you'll have that artificial spinal cord, with no tissue-rejection problems like you have with your current body. On top of that, Qanskan physiology has a remarkable capability for regeneration, which should complete the healing process. The data you collect on that alone may help hundreds of people who find themselves in the same situation you're in right now."
    Raimey stared up at the ceiling. "And what's my profit in this?"
    He looked back at Faraday in time to see the other frown. "What do you mean, profit?"
    "I mean profit," Raimey said. "I'm a business student, remember? Profit, loss; inflow, outflow; pluses, minuses—"
    "Yes, I remember," Faraday cut him off. "And I just said you could have a real life again. Isn't that enough profit for you?"
    "All deals sound good when they're pitched," Raimey countered. "Let's hear some specifics. You can start with Qanskan life expectancy."
    For a moment Faraday just gazed down at him. Possibly, Raimey thought, reevaluating his choice of who to make this offer to. "Assuming you survive childhood," he said, almost grudgingly, "you'll have about another eight years. Maybe nine."
    Raimey felt his breath catch in his throat. "Eight years? That's all?"
    "That's all." Faraday paused. "Eight Jovian years, of course. Earth equivalent would be ninety-six."
    Raimey smiled sardonically. "Cute," he said. "Standard salesman's tactic: Make it sound bad, then move in with the soother. Hoping I won't even notice that my life expectancy right now is ten years longer than that. Earth years, that is."
    Faraday shook his head. "Read the stats," he advised quietly. "You're a quadriplegic now, with heightened susceptibility to all sorts of diseases and accidents. Your life expectancy from this moment on is another thirty years, max. Probably less. Become a Qanska, and you can triple it."
    He lifted his eyebrows again. "Put that in your profit column."
    Raimey turned his head away again. It was tempting. God help him, this whole insane idea was actually tempting. To be able to move again, even if it was in an alien body.
    To be able to live again.
    "I'll think about it," he told Faraday, not looking back at the other.
    "Take your time," Faraday said. There was the sound of footsteps, and the beep of a business card being swiped across Raimey's hospital room phone. "My number's in the phone," he added. "Call me any time."
    "Don't hold your breath."
    "Good-bye, Mr. Raimey," Faraday said.
    More footsteps, out the door and fading down the corridor, and he was gone.
    "Yeah," Raimey murmured to himself. "Good-bye."
    That was the crux of the whole thing, wasn't it? Good-bye. Good-bye to everything he'd ever known.
    But then, to be brutally honest, how much of it was actually left anyway?
     
    It was three-thirty in the morning, with the silence of a nighttime hospital room pressing in around him, when he finally gave up.
     

TWO
    The Contact Room, as it had been dubbed, seemed very quiet as Faraday passed through the security door and stepped inside. Quiet, but with the sense of a coiled spring about it.
    Or maybe the coiled spring feeling was just him.
    For a minute he stood at the doorway, running an eye over the semicircle of equipment consoles and the backs of the four young people currently manning them. As far as he could tell from here, it all matched the design schematics they'd shown him back on Earth.
    Which, if true, would be nice for a change. SkyLight had always had a bad tendency to change perfectly good plans for no better reason than what seemed to be the unscheduled whims of the people at boardroom level.
    But then, this operation was hardly SkyLight's exclusive baby. Not with what was at stake. This was squarely in the hands of the Five Hundred, all the way.
    And