（外文电子版资料）Niven, Larry - Rammer.doc

Rammer by Larry Niven I Once there was a dead man. He had been waiting for two hundred years inside a coffin whose outer shell held liquid nitrogen. There were frozen clumps of cancer all through his frozen body. He had had it bad. He was waiting for medical science to find him a cure. He waited in vain. Most varieties of cancer could be cured now, but no cure existed for the billions of cell walls ruptured by expanding crystals of ice. He had known the risk when he took it and had gambled anyway. Why not?. He’d been dying. The vaults held millions of frozen bodies. Why not? They’d been dying. Later there was a criminal. His name is forgotten and his crime is a secret, but it must have been a terrible one. The State wiped his personality for it. Afterward he was a dead man: still warm, still breathing, even reasonably healthy—but empty. The State had use for an empty man. Corbett woke on a hard table, aching as if he had slept too long in one position. He started incuriously at a white ceiling. Memories floated back to him of a double-walled coffin and sleep and pain. The pain was gone. He sat up at once. And flapped his arms wildly for balance. Everything felt wrong. His arms would not swing right. His body was too light. His head bobbed strangely on a thin neck. He reached frantically for the nearest support, which turned out to be a blond young man in a white jumpsuit. Corbett missed - his arms were shorter than he had expected. He toppled to his side, shook his head and sat up more carefully. His arms. Scrawny, knobby—and not his. The man in the jumpsuit asked, “Are you all right?” “Yah,” said Corbett. His throat was rusty, but that was all right. His new body didn’t fit, but it didn’t seem to have cancer, either. “What’s the date? How long has it been?” A quick recovery. The checker gave him a plus. “Twenty-one ninety, your dating. You won’t have to worry about our dating.” That sounded ominous. Cautiously Corbett postponed the obvious question: What’s happen