A Specter is Haunting Texas by Fritz Leiber

Author:Fritz Leiber [Leiber, Fritz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Satire
Published: 1968-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

By now the burning sensation had traveled up into my calves.

Into my darkened mind there floated a dim picture of Rachel Vachel and Fanninowicz gloating over me, the latter saying, “Clearly he will require no other restraint,” the girl agreeing, “That’s for sure, Fanny. He looks as if he’d been glued down yesterday with a quart of stick-tite. Or like a mashed giant spider.”

So Terra’s most hysterical personality-changer had also been a sadist. I hoped I had paid back my tall inamorata well in the only coin women understand, before returning to the Sack. Why in Pluto’s name had Murray tied me down so cruelly? I wished there weren’t so many gaps in my memory of the last half of my trip to Terra. Evidently when gravitation sickness had struck, it had struck hard.

The picture was replaced by a motion one of Fanninowicz battling wildly with Chase and Hunt. The professor’s mouth was open and working, as if he were shouting at them, although I now heard nothing. From time to time he pointed behind me.

He was the more active fighter, but the two bigger men were drunkenly getting the better of him. A bottle crashed and splashed soundlessly. For some reason Fanninowicz was on my side, and I desperately wanted him to win. It didn’t make sense.

Then the vampire-smiling Rachel Vachel floated back again, but this time with her father. Suddenly I could remember sounds again, for Lamar was saying, “Don’t you fret, sugar, we'll get those papers out of him if we have to skin him alive!”

For some unknown reason, this grisly sentiment made me laugh uproariously. The laughter came out as a strangling and highly painful series of dry croaks, but it helped wake me up. I dragged my eyes open.

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