The Works of Clifford D. Simak Volume Two by Clifford D. Simak

Author:Clifford D. Simak
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504049016
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 2017-09-12T16:00:00+00:00

XIII

Adams thumbed the lighter and waited for the flame to steady. His eyes were fixed on Sutton and there was no softness in them, but there was softness and irritability and a certain faint unsureness in the man himself, hidden well, but there.

That staring, Sutton told himself, is an old trick of his. He glares at you and keeps his face frozen like a sphinx and if you aren’t used to him and on to all his tricks, he’ll have you thinking that he is God Almighty.

But he doesn’t do the glaring quite as well as he used to do it. There’s strain in him now and there was no strain in him twenty years ago. Just hardness, then. Granite, and now the granite is beginning to weather.

There’s something on his mind. There’s something that isn’t going well.

Adams passed the lighter flame over the loaded bowl of his pipe, back and forth deliberately, taking his time, making Sutton wait.

“You know, of course,” said Sutton, speaking quietly, “that I can’t be frank with you.”

The lighter flame snapped off and Adams straightened in his chair.

“Eh?” he asked.

Sutton hugged himself. Caught him off base. Threw him for a loss. A passed pawn, he told himself. That’s what it is … a passed pawn.

He said aloud, “You know by now, of course, that I flew home a ship that could not be flown. You know I had no space-suit and that the ports were broken and the hull was riddled. I had no food and water and 61 is eleven light-years away.”

Adams nodded bleakly. “Yes, we know all that.”

“How I got back or what happened to me has nothing to do with my report and I don’t intend to tell you.”

Adams rumbled at him, “Then why mention it at all?”

“Just so we’ll understand one another,” Sutton said. “So that you won’t ask a lot of questions that will get no answer. It will save a lot of time.”

Adams leaned back in his chair and puffed his pipe contentedly.

“You were sent out to get information, Ash,” he reminded Sutton. “Any kind of information. Anything that would make Cygni more understandable. You represented Earth and you were paid by Earth and you surely owe Earth something.”

“I owe Cygni something, too,” said Sutton. “I owe Cygni my life. My ship crashed and I was killed.”

Adams nodded, almost sleepily.

“Yes, that is what Clark said. That you were killed.”

“Who is Clark?”

“Clark is a space construction engineer,” Adams told him. “Sleeps with ships and blue prints. He studied your ship and he calculated a graph of force co-ordinates. He reported that if you were inside the ship when it hit, you didn’t have a chance.”

Adams stared at the ceiling.

“Clark said that if you were in that ship when it hit you would have been reduced to jelly.”

“It’s wonderful,” said Sutton, dryly, “what a man can do with figures.”

Adams prodded him again. “Anderson said you weren’t human.”

“I suppose Anderson could tell that by looking at the ship.”

Adams nodded. “No food, no air.

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.