Free Death Dream by Ben Bova Page A

stature than Dr Appleton, darker of skin than Lt. Col. Martinez. He looked extremely uncomfortable. "But according to your own records, Chandra," Appleton was saying, "Jerry was in perfect health."
    "Not perfect. I never said perfect. Not that."
    Martinez said, "He was certified for flight duty, wasn't he?"
    "Yes of course," Narlikar said hurriedly. "He had a slightly high blood pressure but it was not sufficient cause to ground him."
    "And he died of a stroke." Appleton made it half a statement, half a question. His voice was soft, almost a whisper.
    "Yes indeed. A massive cerebral hemorrhage. A stroke, poor fellow."
    "And there was nothing to indicate that he was at risk?" Martinez asked impatiently. Almost angrily.
    "Nothing at all," said Narlikar.
    "His high blood pressure?" Appleton suggested.
    The physician shrugged his slim shoulders. "It was well within normal range. Not as high as the colonel's here, in fact."
    Martinez snorted. His blood pressure had led the medical staff to take him off active flight duty, a fact that infuriated him—and drove his pressure higher.
    "So let me see if I can put all this together," Appleton said slowly, leaning his elbows on his cluttered desk top and steepling his fingers. "Jerry had no significant health problems. He flew the new simulation and suffered a stroke that might have happened to him anyway. Is that right?"
    Narlikar nodded unhappily. "It could have happened in his home, at his desk, anywhere. Many stroke victims are felled early in the morning in their own homes. Nine a.m. is the time when strokes occur most frequently."
    "You're saying the simulation had nothing to do with it."
    Narlikar started to reply, then hesitated. At last he said, "I cannot rule out that factor. You must understand that there is a great difference between a diagnosis and an explanation for the causative factor. He suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage; that we know. What caused his stroke is unknown. We have no way of knowing."
    Martinez looked at Appleton. "No way of knowing," he repeated, more than a hint of disgust in his voice.
    Dr Appleton said, "I don't see what else we can do about this. There's nothing new to add to what's already been reported. Jerry Adair suffered a stroke while he was flying the new simulation and we have no idea if the simulation played a part in causing the stroke."
    "It wasn't the simulation," Martinez insisted. "It couldn't have been. How the hell could a simulation give the guy a goddamned stroke?"
    Appleton shrugged.
    Turning to the physician so abruptly that Narlikar actually flinched, the colonel demanded, "Do you think that a simulation could scare a veteran pilot to death?"
    "I— I am told it is a very realistic simulation," Narlikar said.
    "But it's only a damned simulation!" Martinez insisted. "Jerry's flown real combat missions. He's been a test pilot, for chrissakes. He wouldn't be scared in lousy sim. He knew it wasn't real."
    Appleton said mildly, "We tried to simulate all the physical stresses, remember. You insisted on that, Ralph."
    "Yeah, yeah. So we made the g-suit squeeze and we tilted the simulator and rolled it around in response to the pilot's control forces. So what? We couldn't put in the real g-loads that you'd get in actual flight. The simulator doesn't give you the accelerations, doesn't punish you the way a real flight would."
    "I doubt that the physical stresses of the simulation were sufficient to cause Captain Adair's stroke," said Narlikar, with the slightest of stresses on the word physical.
    "Then what did?"
    Silence. The physician had no answer. He stared at Lt. Col. Martinez for a moment with his big liquid brown eyes, then looked away.
    Finally Dr Appleton got up from his chair and, leaning across his desk, extended a bony arm to Narlikar. "Thank you, Chandra. You've been very helpful."
    Narlikar rose to his feet and took Appleton's hand gratefully. "I'm afraid I have been of very little help, actually. But stroke cases are