She rummaged through the kitchen cutlery drawer, found a pair of shears, and did a neat job of cutting away the sleeve and cleaning the burned flesh for dressing. Monroe talked as she worked.
“Howard, I want you to do me a favor. Get a pencil and paper and take down a list. I want a flock of things to take back-all of them things that you can pick up at the fraternity house. You’ll have to go for me-I’d be thrown out with my present appearance — What’s the matter? Don’t you want to?’
Helen hurriedly explained Howard’s preoccupation. He listened sympathetically.
“Oh! Say, that’s tough lines, old man.” His brow wrinkled –“But look — You can’t do Estelle any good by waiting here, and I really do need your help for the next half hour. Will you do it?”
Jenkins reluctantly agreed. Monroe continued,
“Fine! I do appreciate it. Co to my room first and gather up my reference books on math-also my slide rule. You’ll find an India-paper radio manual, too. I want that. And I want your twenty-inch log-log duplex slide rule, as well. You can have my Rabelais and the Droll Stories. I want your Marks’ Mechanical Engineers Handbook, and any other technical reference books that you have and I haven’t.
Take anything you like in exchange.
“Then go up to Stinky Beanfield’s room, and get his Military Engineers Handbook, his Chemical Warfare, and his texts on ballistics and ordnance. Yes, and Miller’s Chemistry of Explosives, if he has one. If not, pick up one from some other of the R.O.T.C. boys; it’s important.” Helen was deftly applying a poultice to his arm. He winced as the tea leaves, still warm, touched his seared flesh, but went ahead.
“Stinky keeps his service automatic in his upper bureau drawer. Swipe it, or talk him out of it. Bring as much ammunition as you can find-I’ll write out a bill of sale for my car for you to leave for him. Now get going. I’ll tell Doc all about it, and he can tell you later. Here. Take my car.” He fumbled at his thigh, then looked annoyed. “Cripes! I don’t have my keys.”
Helen came to the rescue. “Take mine — The keys are in my bag on the hall table.”
Howard got up. “OK, I’ll do my damndest. If I get flung in the can, bring me cigarettes.” He went out.
Helen put the finishing touches on the bandages. ‘There! I think that will do.
How does it feel?”
He flexed his arm cautiously. “Okay. It’s a neat job. kid. It takes the sting out,”
“I believe it will heal if you keep tannin solution on it. Can you get tea leaves where you are going?”
“Yes, and tannic acid, too. I’ll be all right. Now you deserve an explanation.
Professor, do you have a cigaret on you? I could use some of that coffee, too.”
“Surely, Robert.” Frost hastened to serve him.
Monroe accepted a light and began,
“It’s all pretty cock-eyed. When I came out of the sleep, I found myself, dressed as I am now and looking as I now look, marching down a long, deep fosse.
I was one of a column of threes in a military detachment. The odd part about it is that I felt perfectly natural. I knew where I was and why I was there-and who I was. I don’t mean Robert Monroe; my name over there is Igor.” Monroe pronounced the gutteral deep in his throat and trilled the “r.” “I hadn’t forgotten Monroe; it was more as if I had suddenly remembered him. I had one identity and two pasts. It was something like waking up from a clearly remembered dream, only the dream was perfectly real. I knew Monroe was real, just as I knew Igor was real.
“My world is much like earth; a bit smaller, but much the same surface gravity.
Men like myself are the dominant race, and we are about as civilized as you folks, but our culture has followed a difficult course — We live underground about half the time. Our homes are there and a lot of our industry. You see it’s warm underground in our world, and not entirely dark. There is a mild radioactivity; it doesn’t harm us.