Death in a cage Larry Niven Produced by calibre 0.6.40 DEATH IN A CAGE Svetz was coming home. His narrow arms were folded on his chest. His back curved like a bow to fit him into thecurvature of the extension cage. He lay motionless in stoic endurance watching the inertialcalendar. Gravity behaved oddly in an extension cage. The pull was outward now as the cage moved into thefuture. -41 -40. . . Svetz could not have reached the controls without considerable effort. They wereoverhead at the center of the spherical shell. He did not need to reach them. The bulk of thetime machine was fixed in time/space at the Institute for Temporal Research in 1102 PostAtomic. It would simply reel him in. The small armored thing hed captured was strapped to an opposite wall. It had not moved sinceSvetz shot it with an anaesthetic crystal. The numbers on the inertial calendar rolled upward. 16 17 18. . . Gravity jumped andshivered like a car on a bumpy road. Svetz lay on his back and tried to ignore what his bellyand his inner ear were telling him. In a couple of hours internal time hed be home. Something smoky began to obscure the control panel. Svetz sniffed. The air was thick with oxides of nitrogen and sulfur carbon monoxide and carbondioxide and carbon tetrachloride a mixture of industrial wastes that Svetz had been breathingsince the day he was born. He sniffed and found nothing unusual. But the haze was thickening It was not fanning out. It hung before the control panel taking shape. Svetz rubbed his eyes. It was still there a shape like a cloaked and hooded man distortingcolors and outlines where they showed through. A vague