Agent of Vega by James H Schmitz

Author:James H Schmitz [Schmitz, James H]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-05-24T09:13:57+00:00

THE END OF YEAR ONE

Barney Chard came up out of an uneasy sleep to the sudden sharp awareness that

something was wrong. For some seconds he lay staring about the unlit cabin,

PDF Transform

PDF Transform

Y

Y

Y

er

Y

er

B

2

B

2

B

.0

B

.0

A

A

Click here to buy

Click here to buy

w

w

w

w

w .

w

A B B YY.com

.A B BYY.com

mouth dry, heart hammering with apprehension. Then he discovered it was only

that he had left the exit door open and the window switched on . . . Only? This

was the first time since they had left him here that he had gone to sleep without

sealing the cabin first --even when blind drunk, really embalmed.

He thought of climbing out of bed and taking care of it now, but decided to let the

thing ride. After all he knew there was nothing in the valley --nothing, in fact, on

this world --of which he had a realistic reason to be afraid. And he felt dead tired.

Weak and sick. Feeling like that no longer alarmed him as it had done at first; it

was a simple physical fact. The sheet under him was wet with sweat, though it

was no more than comfortably warm in the room. The cabin never became more

than comfortably warm. Barney lay back again, trying to figure out how it had

happened he had forgotten about the window and the door.

It had been night for quite a while when he went to sleep, but regardless of how

long he'd slept, it was going to go on being night a good deal longer. The last time

he had bothered to check --which, Barney decided on reflection, might be several

months ago now --the sunless period had continued for better than fifty-six

hours. Not long before dropping on the bed, he was standing in front of the big

clock while the minute hand on the hour dial slid up to the point which marked

the end of the first year in Earth time he had spent in the cabin. Watching it

happen, he was suddenly overwhelmed again by the enormity of his solitude, and

it looked as if it were going to turn into another of those periods when he sat with

the gun in his hand, sobbing and swearing in a violent muddle of self-pity and

helpless fury. He decided to knock off the lamenting and get good and drunk

instead. And he would make it a drunk to top all drunks on this happy

anniversary night.

But he hadn't done that either. He had everything set up, downright festively -glasses, crushed ice, a formidable little squad of fresh bottles. But when he looked

at the array, he suddenly felt sick in advance. Then there was a wave of leaden

heaviness, of complete fatigue. He hadn't had time to think of sealing the cabin.

He had simply fallen into the bed then and there, and for all practical purposes

passed out on the spot.

Barney Chard lay wondering about that. It had been, one might say, a rough year.

Through the long days in particular, he had been doing his level best to obliterate

his surroundings behind sustained fogs of alcoholism. The thought of the

hellishly brilliant far-off star around which this

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.