soft, smiling, pupils wide between the long lashes, and “Hm-m-m indeed,”
she crooned.
Thunder ended a dream. Nothingness.
He woke, and wished he hadn’t. Someone had scooped out his skull to make
room for the boat’s nuclear generator.
No … He tried to roll over, and couldn’t.
When he groaned, a hand lifted his head. Cool wetness touched his mouth.
“Drink this,” Djana’s voice told him from far away.
He got down a couple of tablets with the water, and could look around
him. She stood by the bunk, staring down. As the stimpills took hold and
the pain receded, her image grew less blurred, until he could identify
the hardness that sat on her face. Craning his neck, he made out that he
lay on his back with wrists and ankles wired–securely–to the
bunkframe.
“Feel better?” Her tone was flat.
“I assume you gave me a jolt from your stun gun after I feel asleep,” he
succeeded in croaking.
“I’m sorry, Nicky.” Did her shell crack the tiniest bit, for that
tiniest instant?
“What’s the reason?”
She told him about Rax, ending: “We’re already bound for the rendezvous.
If I figured right, remembering what you taught me, it’s about forty or
fifty light-years; and I set the ‘pilot for top cruising hyperspeed, the
way you said I ought to.”
He was too groggy for the loss of his fortune to seem more than
academic. But dismay struck through him like a blunt nail. “Four or five
days! With me trussed up?”
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I don’t dare give you a chance to grab me
or–or anything–” She hesitated. “I’ll take care of you as best I can.
Nothing personal in this. You know? It’s that million credits.”
“What makes you think your unknown friends will honor their end of the
deal?”
“If Wayland’s what you say, a megacredit’s going to be a microbe to
them. And I can keep on being useful till I leave them.” All at once, it
was as if a sword spoke: “That payment will make me my own.”
Flandry surrendered to his physical misery.
Which passed. But was followed by the miseries of confinement. He
couldn’t do most isometric exercises. The wires would have cut him. A
few were possible; and he spent hours flexing what muscles he was able
to; and Djana was fairly good about massaging him. Nonetheless he ached
and tingled.
Djana also kept her promise to give him a nurse’s attentions. Hers
weren’t the best, for lack of training and equipment, but they served.
And she read to him by the hour, over the intercom, from the bookreels
he had along. She even offered to make love to him. On the third day he
accepted.
Otherwise little passed between them: the constraints were too many for
conversation. They spent most of their time separately, toughing it out.
Once he was over the initial shock and had disciplined himself, Flandry
didn’t do badly at first. While no academician, he had many experiences,
ideas, and stray pieces of information to play with. Toward the end,
though, environmental impoverishment got to him and each hour became a
desert century.
When at last the detectors buzzed, he had to struggle out of
semi-delirium to recognize what the noise was. When the outercom boomed
with words, he blubbered for joy.
But when hypervelocities were matched and phasing in was completed and
airlocks were joined and the other crew came aboard, Djana screamed.
XI
—
The Merseians treated him correctly if coolly. He was unbound, conducted
aboard their destroyer, checked by a physician experienced in dealing
with foreign species, given a chance to clean and bestir himself. His
effects were returned, with the natural exception of weapons. A
cubbyhole was found and curtained off for him and the girl. Food was
brought them, and the toilet facilities down the passage were explained
for her benefit. A guard was posted, but committed no molestation.
Prisoners could scarcely have been vouchsafed more on this class of
warcraft; and the time in space would not be long.
Djana kept keening. “I thought they were human, I thought they were
human, only an-an-another damn gang–” She clung to him. “What’ll they