The Long Result by John Brunner

Author:John Brunner [Brunner, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science fiction
ISBN: 9780575101340
Publisher: Hachette Littlehampton
Published: 2011-09-29T06:00:00+00:00

It drove everything else out of my mind. It wasn’t until I was climbing into the bunk assigned to me aboard the home-bound rocket late on Sunday night that I remembered I hadn’t called Patricia.

Well, I could call as soon as we touched down. But somehow it didn’t seem all that important.

We’d had to take a paired compartment, because we’d left it very late to make our reservations, but at least we had bunks and not merely relaxers. Through the tightly stretched curtain which divided the little room into halves, I heard Micky also climbing into bed. I wished him good night, and some time later dropped into a light doze.

At first I dreamed incoherently of finding my own name in something that served the purpose of a history book but was not actually a book as such. This was pleasant and gratifying, and when I looked further and found Micky’s name there in black letters twice as big, I reminded myself, stirring in half-wakefulness, that this was only just. Below the surface of sleep I looked for the name again.

This time, though, it was growing – looming up from the thing which was not a book: a long flexible black shape, which reached out abruptly and clamped over my face.

I was suffocating!

I panicked awake, and found the sensation was real. I strained wildly to draw breath; then, for the first time, my naturally quick reactions saved my life.

Something soft, warm and slippery covered my face, from the bridge of my nose to my chin. It was perhaps as big as my two hands together. With my gasping for breath it had begun to ooze into my nostrils – and that was what told me the truth and enabled me to breathe out with the tiny volume of stale air my lungs still held. It was a sobbing, choking gasp, a horrible sound, but it served the purpose. The mass entering my nose drew back, and I wrenched a hand from under the cover and clamped a grip on it.

It tried to writhe away, but I forced my finger-tips between it and my face and peeled it off like putty. My lungs ached and I was dizzy with anoxia.

The last of my failing strength went into jerking my arm to full length. The thing flew from my hand and landed in the middle of the floor beside the curtain, making a soft cushion-like thud.

I was too weak with fright to make any further move at once; I simply lay and flooded my chest with air. There was the sound of movement: Micky sitting up, turning on a light, sliding back the curtain separating us.

‘Don’t get out of bed!’ I cried hoarsely, rolling on one elbow.

‘What is it?’ Micky whispered, his face as white as mine.

It – the thing that had been on my face – was a lump of slowly pulsating blue jelly, translucent, veined with red, about six inches in diameter now it was humped on the floor. It

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