"Lidd," Linda said. "We're getting over the sub-typer."
"A message?" Liddell asked, only a small part of his mind concentrating on what Linda had said. The rest of his being was riveted on the transfer screen as the figure there floated closer, still shadowy, but the shadow darkening, solidifying, bridging....
"I'll read it to you as it comes. URGENT LUNA OUTWARD TO SUB-SPACE WAY STATION. JOHN SMITH ... that's strange. It's stopping."
"It has to stop. Sub-space can take only a certain number of verbal units at a time. Give it a couple of seconds."
"How's our John Smith?"
"Still shimmering, but getting more solid all the time."
"Here it comes again.... IS ESCAPED LUNA PRISON CONDEMNED KILLER JASON SHORT.... Oh God, Lidd!"
There wasn't a station or budding colony in the galaxy which hadn't heard of Jason Short. His kind was a rarity in the twenty-first century, the strangely mal-adjusted, warped, sneering, conscienceless professional killer. Before his capture, Short had hired out to governments, to private firms, to individuals if they had sufficient capital—as a killer. On capture he had been condemned to death at the luna penal colony but the sentence had been delayed and postponed for several years—all the while Jason Short's notoriety growing—because sociologists and psychologists had insisted on studying Short exhaustively to see if they could prevent a recurrence of his mental sickness.
And now all this, Liddell thought numbingly, had backfired. Now Jason Short had somehow managed to escape—
Was materializing here, a cold, ruthless killer.