Selene said dully: "Almon told me people always say that when they see their doubles. It's funny, isn't it? He looks just like you, really."
"How was my body to be disposed of?"
She produced a small flat box. "A shadow suit. You were to be left here and somebody would come tomorrow."
"We won't disappoint him." Reuben pulled the web of the shadow suit over his double and turned on the power. In the half-lit room, it was a perfect disappearance; by daylight it would be less perfect. "They'll ask why the body was shot instead of knifed. Tell them you shot me with the gun from under the pillow. Just say I heard the double come in and you were afraid there might have been a struggle."
She listlessly asked: "How do you know I won't betray you?"
"You won't, Selene." His voice bit. "You're broken."
She nodded vaguely, started to say something and then went out without saying it.
Reuben luxuriously stretched in his narrow bed. Later, his beds would be wider and softer, he thought. He drifted into sleep on a half-formed thought that some day he might vote with other generals on the man to wear the five stars—or even wear them himself, Master of Denv.
He slept healthily through the morning alarm and arrived late at his regular twentieth-level station. He saw his superior, May's man Oscar of the eighty-fifth level, Atomist, ostentatiously take his name. Let him!
Oscar assembled his crew for a grim announcement: "We are going to even the score, and perhaps a little better, with Ellay. At sunset there will be three flights of missiles from Deck One."