Click on image to enlarge.

	Regular				Club
You Pay:	$0.95				$0.81

eBook Category: Science Fiction/Mystery/Crime
eBook Description: Justin Schramm, trying to find out why a fellow professor committed suicide, and why the body immediately disappeared afterwards, finds himself under suspicion by the police because of his own erratic activities.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Analog, 1989
Fictionwise Release Date: October 2002

7 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [100 KB], eReader (PDB) [39 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [26 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [24 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [72 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [96 KB], hiebook (KML) [93 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [56 KB], iSilo (PDB) [22 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [27 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [55 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [40 KB]
Words: 7668
Reading time: 21-30 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

A sharp report echoed through the hall. I thought little of it: a backfiring car outside Engleman, I supposed. A moment later Kristin Belken shoved herself in my door, a wild expression on her face.

Mine must have been the first and probably only door open on the floor. We sat at the dead point of mid-afternoon, when the professors had wandered off to their last classes or to Commons for coffee around the lounge's professorial bull-table, where all the usual interpersonal business could be put to rest for another twenty-four hours.

Kristin Belken panted, as if her lungs hungered for more than mere air. A stricken look filled her eyes.

"I was just entering Engleman," she said, her voice high and tense.

"What's the matter?" I said.

"I heard it," she said, "and I ran up! And--oh my god!"

"Tell me what's the matter!"

"It's Professor Manock!"

"Yes, yes, what about him?"

"He's dead!"

"What do you mean?"

"He's lying in a pool of blood!"

We ran from the office and down the hall, past the staircase up which she had run after hearing the shot.

It feels odd, always, when time slows and nearly stops. It slowed for me while running. The unbelievability of Kristin's exclamations weighted the moment: the starkness of this revelation--of death, of suicide, of that ultimate self-judgement, occurring in this placid hall, where aging yellow paint made even sunlight through the skylight above the stairs seem aged and sere, and where several hundred student feet plodded and scuffed each morning and afternoon across undistinguished tile. Suicide? Here? It hardly felt possible. Yet time came near standing still. I ran, and made no progress, seeing through a portal into a different reality, one in which people moved through air as through gel, their movements fluid and moment-by-moment defined. Kristin, ahead of me, moved with determination, shooting me only one knifelike glance to see if I followed--a dully knifelike glance, in this gel-slowed time--and aimed for Lloyd's door on the left-hand side of the hall ahead, at the end.

The door stood ajar by only the slightest degree.

I nudged it open. Glanced in.

My blood fled my skin and head and senses. I nearly swooned backward into the hall. Kristin put a hand on my arm, steadying me. An iota of reason returned:

"The police," I said.

Somehow we made it to the central staircase and down the steps, taking the left turn at the bottom for the department office, the door of which stood open. Instinct took me there. I could have gone to my office, but felt I needed a neutral phone. An official one.