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Dr. Waymer, Morgan thought, I hope you knew what you were doing when you made this armor I'm wearing. |
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He blinked and swam up to straddle the missile. The warhead was six feet in diameter and slick with the residue of a year in water. It was difficult to maintain his balance, but he freed the last fastener. The inspection plate fell out of the light and vanished in the gloom. |
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Inside the warhead, nested among pipes and braces, lay the digital windows of the timing mechanism, and they were just as Arkady had described them, over and over. Butno they weren't. God, he thought, the glowing digits had the right year and month, but the hours and minutes did not match those on his watch. The timer on the Device announced that it was 0821, just nine minutes to detonation. |
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The discrepancy shocked him into a momentary stumble. He lost his balance on the slippery metal and fell, twisting, two meters to the bottom, where he sprawled, disoriented, surrounded by a cloud of disturbed mud and sediment. |
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