Chapter 33

To begin with I printed out a couple of the smallest of the Liberator parts, plastic pins that would be used to hold the thing together. So far as I could tell they came out as clean as had my Golden Gate ornament. They seemed quite sturdy enough to serve their purpose.

Now it was time for the real test—and a convenient time as well, since after my tense day of sitting around waiting for the delivery I was ready for bed. Twelve of the 14 parts I needed to produce (the 15th and last one was the firing-pin nail) were fairly small, including the polymer coil springs that would drive the mechanism. Two, though, were considerably bigger—the pistol's stock around which you wrapped your hand, and the barrel. The directions had warned that they were likely to take hours for the printer to produce.

So I set the thing going on the biggest of the two, the stock, and decided to turn in. With the printer going whsht-whsht in the background I was fast asleep within a couple of minutes. I didn't dream at all, at least not that I could remember.

Somewhere around 4:00 in the morning I woke up to a silent room; the thing had finally quit. I glanced at the bedside clock and wondered idly if I should get up and reset it to work on the barrel. I mulled the idea over muzzily, but before I could do anything about it I was back in slumberland.

But I was up and at 'em by 7:00. I took my time in the john and made myself coffee before checking over the stock. So far as I could tell it looked exactly like the downloaded picture said it should. And it felt appropriately solid as well. I nodded to myself in satisfaction and went down to breakfast, carefully putting a do-not-disturb sign on the knob; if housekeeping came in they might upset my hard-achieved balance of the printer. I could dispense with their services for the day.

After breakfast the printer head first needed cleaning; I used the Q-tips to apply the acetone carefully. After another calibration reset and a careful check with the spirit level—no adjustment needed—I set the printer to work on the second big piece, the barrel. While that was going I got out the acetone again and fiddled with my Golden Gate replica; the Liberator instructions recommended using it as a final finish on the main pieces, and I needed to know just how much to use and how thoroughly to apply it.

The rest of the Liberator print-out took me until mid-afternoon, with a brief break to fetch back a sandwich and soda and consume them. Susan had observed the initial processes with interest, but was clearly bored by then. She kept carefully silent while I was working actively, but in between—while I was waiting for the individual bits and pieces to print out—she seemed restive. Bad thoughts had re-invaded her mind.

"Larry, this can't be right!" she protested. "It's coming up on three weeks now. They have to have tried to bring me out of that coma by now. I mean, don't they? Don't you think?"

"I just don't know, sweetheart," was all I could tell her. "And I've got no way at all of checking. I don't even know where you are any more, your body, that is. We just have to have faith."