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be up to the ship. But from what he had read out of the Files of the Throne
World's learning centers, he had no doubt the ship would be able to locate
Earth from the directions he had just given it.
He let go, and went back to sliding away down the tilted corridor. But there
was one thing more yet he had to do. He fought his way back to consciousness
and Ro for a second.
"Galyan burned my side as he died," he muttered to her. "Now I'm dying. So
you'll have to tell them for me, Ro. On Earth. Tell them . . . everything. . .
."
"But you won't die!" Ro was crying, holding him fiercely with both her arms
about him. "You won't die . . . youwon't .. . ."
But even as she held him, he slipped out of her grasp and went sliding this
time with no further check or hope of return down that long tilted corridor
into the utter darkness.
Chapter 11
When Jim opened his eyes at last to light after that long slide into
darkness, it took him a long time with the help of the light to recognize the
shapes of things around him. He felt as if he had been dead for years.
Gradually, however, vision sharpened. Perception returned. He became aware
that he lay on his back on a surface harder than any hassock; and the ceiling
he stared up at was white, but oddly grainy and close above him.
With a great effort he managed to turn his head, and saw shapes that he
gradually made out to be a small bedside table, several chairs, and a white
screen of the sort used in hospitals. In all, a single room, with a window at
the far end that let in a yellow, summer sunlight he had not seen for quite a
while. Through the window he could see only sky, blue sky, with a few isolated
puffs of white clouds scattered about it. He lay staring at the sky, slowly
trying to put things together.
Obviously he was on Earth. That meant that at least five days must have
passed while he was unconscious. But if he was on Earth, what was he doing
here? Where was here? And where were Ro and Adok, to say nothing of the ship?
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All this, leaving aside the fact that he seemed to be alive, when he had
certainly seemed to have had no right to be so.
He lay still, thinking. After a little while, absently, he felt the side
where the flame of Galyan's torch had penetrated as the Highborn had died. But
his side felt smooth and well. Interested, he pulled down the covers, pulled
up the blue pajama top he seemed to be wearing, and examined that side. As far
as he could see, it looked as if he had never been wounded at all.
He pulled the covers up again and lay back. He felt well, if a little
heavy-bodied, as if the lassitude of a long sleep were still clinging to him.
He turned his head and looked at the small table by his bedside. It held an
insulating plastic pitcher, a glass with some remnants of ice floating at the
top of the water within it, and a small box of paper handkerchiefs. The signs
were overwhelming that he was in a hospital. This would not be surprising if
he still had the deep wound in his side that Galyan's rod had made. But there
was no wound.
He investigated further. Below the top level of the table by his bed was a
vertical surface with a telephone handset clinging magnetically to it. He
picked up the handset and listened, but there was no dial tone. Experimentally
he tried dialing some numbers on the dial set in the center of the inner face
of the handset. But the phone remained dead. He put it back, and in the
process of doing so, discovered a button on the vertical surface.
He pressed the button.
Nothing happened. After about five minutes of waiting, he pressed it again.
This time, it was only a matter of seconds before the door swung open. A man
entered a heavy-bodied young man not much shorter than himself, with a thick,
powerful-looking body dressed in white slacks and white jacket. He came up to
the bed, looked down at Jim without a word, and reached to the bed to take
Jim's left wrist. Lifting the wrist, he counted the pulse, gazing at his
wristwatch as he did so.
"Yes, I'm alive," Jim told him. "What hospital is this?"
The male nurse, as he seemed to be, made a noncommittal sound in his throat.
Finished counting, he dropped Jim's wrist back onto the bed and turned toward
the door.
"Hold on!" said Jim, sitting up suddenly.
"Just lie there!" said the man in a deep, gruff voice. Hastily he opened the
door and went out, slamming it slightly behind him.
Jim threw back the covers and jumped out of bed in the same quick motion. He
took three steps to the door and grasped its handle. But his fingers slipped
around the smooth, immovable metal as he tried to turn it. It was locked.
He shook the handle once and then stepped back. His first impulse quenched
almost as soon as it was born by the immediate caution of his now thoroughly
awakened mind was to pound on the door until someone came. Now, instead, he
stood gazing at it thoughtfully.
This place was beginning to look less like a hospital and more like a place
of care for the violently insane. He spun about quickly and went to the
window. What he saw confirmed the growing suspicion in him of his
surroundings. Invisible from his bed, a mesh of fine wire covered the window
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opening completely, some four inches beyond the window itself. The wire looked
relatively thin, but it was undoubtedly strong enough to be escape-proof for
anyone lacking tools.
Jim looked out the window and down, but what he saw gave him little
information merely a width of green lawn bordered on all sides by tall pine
trees. The trees were tall enough to cut off the view of whatever lay beyond
them.
Jim turned around and thoughtfully went back to sit down on the edge of his
bed. After a moment he lay down and pulled the covers up over him again. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]