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Updated: June 22, 2025
He glanced up, discovered the other surveying him critically. "You're not in uniform " "No, sir," he admitted. "I couldn't find my own kit." "Where are your badges?" Shann's hand went up to the marks left when he had so carefully ripped off the insignia. "My badges? I have no rank," he replied, bewildered. "Every team carries at least one cadet on strength." Shann flushed.
Fragile bones crunched under Shann's boots, but as he drew away from the entrance, the pale glow of the crystal increased its radiance, emitting a light not unlike that of the phosphorescent bushes, so that he was not swallowed up by dark. The cave behind the nose hole narrowed quickly into a cleft, a narrow cleft which pierced into the bowl of the skull.
There remained the stunner. Life on the Dumps tended to make a man a fast draw, a matter of survival for the fastest and most accurate marksman. And now one of Shann's hands swept down with a speed which, learned early, was never really to be forgotten.
Therefore, between your people and mine there can be a common speech. And I may show you my dream store for your enjoyment, star voyager." A flickering of pictures, some weird, some beautiful, all a little distorted not only by haste, but also by the haze of alienness which was a part of her memory pattern crossed Shann's mind. "Such a sharing would be a rich feast," he agreed. "All right!"
He hesitated, almost diffidently, before he asked: "Have you met anyone else here?" "Yes." Shann had no desire to go into that. "People out of your past life?" "Yes." Again he did not elaborate. "So did I." Thorvald's expression was bleak; his encounters in the fog must have proved no more pleasant than Shann's. "That suggests that we do trigger the hallucinations ourselves.
Trav raised one of those small claws toward the Terran's face, crooning a soft caressing cry for recognition, for protection, trying to be a part of Shann's life once more. Trav! How could he bear to will Trav into nothingness, to bear to summon up another harsh memory which would sweep Trav away?
Shann thought them suicidal in their indifference as fork-tail, short legs sending the fine sand flying in a dust cloud, made a rush toward its enemies. The Wyvern who had led the beast ashore did not move. But one of her companions swung up a hand, as if negligently waving the monster to a stop. Between her first two digits was a disk. Thorvald caught at Shann's arm. "See that!
Flick, flick, the slight dance of the lash in a master's hand as those thick fingers tightened about the stock of the whip. In a moment it would whirl up to lay a ribbon of fire about Shann's defenceless shoulders. Then Logally would laugh and laugh, his sadistic mirth echoed by those other men who played jackals to his rogue lion. Other men.... Shann shook his head dazedly.
Thorvald had lost some of the bright hard surface he had shown at the spaceport where Shann had first sighted him. There were hollows in his cheeks, sending into high relief those bone ridges beneath his eye sockets, giving him a faint resemblance to the skull of Shann's dream. His face was grimed, his field uniform stained and torn. Only his hair was as bright as ever.
The Warlockian who had given him the bowl was the one who struck it on the bottom, causing a rain of splinters. To Shann's astonishment, mixed as they had been in the container, they once more formed a pattern, and not the same pattern the Warlockians had consulted earlier. The dampening curtain between them vanished; he was in touch mind to mind once again. "So be it."
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