Free Asimov's Science Fiction: September 2013 by Penny Publications

to attempt a stunt far more diff icult than escaping from a black hole. I'd been postponing it for years, but now it loomed before me. As soon as I completed this exploit, my next and far more diff icult feat would be to walk away... if only I could persuade Veronica to come with me.
    The impersonator must be one of my rivals, or perhaps one of their secret backups. I could imagine some of my less scrupulous rivals—Perplexo, or Baron Bonne-Bouche—creating a duplicate who grew weary of his secret existence, impatient to return to public life. Rather than deposing his progenitor, he might prefer to replace a rival performer.
    I shivered. No wonder life had become so dangerous behind the curtain, with so much escalating sabotage!
    I didn't bother to refuse the offer. I simply pressed the red button. The star grew closer still, filling my camera's field of vision, and turning my adversary into a mere shadow outlined against the brightness.
    He yelled with rage, and withdrew the drill. A rush of pure relief made me giddy, as I assumed that he was giving up and retreating.
    The respite lasted only for one and a half seconds, the time it took for the drill to transform into a pulse-gun. He fired at the pod, targeting the weak point where the drill had pierced through most of the casing. The pod shuddered under the impact. I knew that a few more blasts would shatter my protective shell.
    Frenziedly, I hopped across universes. The immensity of space had never been more vivid to me. If you hop at random, your chance of materializing inside a star is inf initesimal. Even when you find a star nearby, homing in on it still requires a converging series of hops—
    The pulse-gun blazed again, and this time the smell of melting plastic filled the pod.
    Then the blue-white star swallowed us.
    Within my pod, an alarm alerted me that external conditions surpassed the design specs. The interior of a star is a harsher environment than a quiescent black hole. The brightness was overwhelming, saturating my camera's external view into a featureless blur. The infernal heat registered only as a number on the control panel; the pod maintained its temperature by dissipating heat into other universes, but I nevertheless sweated with fear.
    If I hadn't been strapped down, I would have been smashed to pieces as the pod was thrown in all directions by the writhing, roiling plasma inside the star. It was the ultimate bumpy ride. Yet despite everything—despite the danger of the star and the threat from my antagonist—a fierce exhilaration rose within me. This was escapology at its purest: an elemental struggle. To be the best, I must master every test.
    The pod could barely withstand such a furnace. The thick, rugged exterior was boiling away, second by second. Yet surely my assailant was worse aff licted. Even the magical technology of utopia couldn't manufacture a spacesuit that would last long here.
    My coffin shuddered under another jolt from the pulse-gun, but the shot only glanced off the bottom corner. An immensely strong gust from the stellar wind tumbled the pod end over end. The external camera still showed nothing, whited out in the glare of the star. I had no way of knowing whether my enemy still clung on.
    The star's plasma was threatening to burst through the drill-hole, the weak point in the pod's shell. Desperate for a respite, I punched the red button. The pod materialized in the empty vastness of another universe.
    My passenger had gone. He'd either retreated, or been vanquished: borne away on the stellar gales, if not atomized by the intense heat. The euphoria of survival—of triumph—f illed me.
    I wondered who my enemy had been, but I didn't want to find out. We escapologists have our own curtain, veiling the heart of the performance, creating an aura of mystery. We'd collectively created the figure of Death as our antagonist, to spice up our shows and bolster our egos as death-defying performers. But Death must always remain a