BIO WRITER TEST:
ESSAY
Subject: Describe a space ship bobbing in inter-galactic space.
UNIVERSAL TIME 45372.
Essay:
The space ship bobbed gently in the magnetic tide. The galaxy shone
with the brilliance of diamond-dust.
Mark: 7/10.
Not a bad effort, but could do better. Temper those poetic flights.
END TEST: Apt for service.
Blood had had a close shave. Moreover, during the jump, every space jock's nightmare had come true: cloning.
(The effects of cloning are hair-raising. There are now an army of Bloods, all but one of whom are fakes. The cloning process has triggered a gradual cellular degeneration in the original Blood. His only hope of survival is to find all those clones in the destination galaxy, in order to recover the vital fluid.)
A daunting prospect. Finding the NUMBERS (that was the name Blood gave
his clones) among that mass of stars wasn't going to be easy.
Meanwhile, Honk, Ark's bio-consciousness was working on a series of
complex biomech supports designed to back up the Captain's weakening
life systems. One by one, his heart, lungs, liver and kidneys were
replaced by artificial organs.
Blood struggled corageously against a formidable force summoning him to become a wholly synthetic being: a ROBOT...
