Chapter 10

The first sensation that penetrated, agonizingly, to Taranto’s consciousness was that of heat. Heat, and then the damp itch of soaking sweat.

The next feeling, as he groggily sought to take up the slack in his hanging jaw, was thirst. It was a raging demand that brought him entirely awake. Before he could control himself, he had emitted a groan.

Immediately, he was dropped from whatever had been supporting him in a swaying, dipping fashion. He landed with a thud on the hard ground.

A chatter of Syssokan broke out above him. It was answered by other Syssokan voices farther away. Taranto kept his eyes closed and lay limply where he had sprawled, while he tried to figure out what had gone wrong.

Shortly before dawn, he and Meyers had each swallowed his capsule as directed. He remembered a period of vague drowsiness after that, then nothing more until he had been awakened just now. From his still dizzy mind, he sought to drag the outline of events expected.

They had hoped to be taken out to the desert, possibly to a Syssokan burial ground according to the local custom, and left to be dried by the dessicating blaze of the sun. It had been planned that a spaceship would land in the late afternoon to pick them up. Undoubtedly, it would take the Syssokans several hours to report the “deaths” and to secure official permission for disposal of the bodies, even though they were less given to red tape than Terrans. Still, they should have abandoned the “bodies” long before Taranto had expected to awake.

He risked opening one eye a slit. Syssokan legs crowding around blocked his view, but he could tell that it was dusk. The heat he felt must be that of sand and rocks that had baked all day.

It must have taken the Syssokans a long time to get this far. He wondered whether they had brought him an unusual distance into the desert, perhaps to avoid contaminating their own burial grounds, or whether they had simply indulged in some long-winded debate as to the proper course to pursue in regard to deceased aliens.

My God! he thought. What if they’d decided to dissect us? I never thought of that! I wonder if the joker that sent those pills did?

Whatever had gone wrong, he was well behind schedule. He could imagine the chagrin of the D.I.R. man watching the proceedings through his little flying spy-eye. Taranto hoped that the spacers hired for the pick-up were still standing by--at the worst, they would have water. Cautiously, he tried to move his tongue inside his mouth. It stuck against his teeth. He suspected that the taste would be terrible, if he could taste at all.

The heat! he thought. I’ve been soaking up heat all day and not sweating. Now it’s jetting out of every pore.

Whatever the drug had done or failed to do, it must have nearly suspended most of the normal functions of the body. No wonder he was perspiring so heavily as he began to recover! Even so, he felt as if he had a fever. He began to hope that he had not been carried for very long. Unless he had been lying in the cell--or, better, in some examination room at ground level--for most of the elapsed time while disputes held up disposal of his body, some instinct told him, he was very likely to die.

Someone rubbed a hand roughly over his face, slipping through the film of sweat. At this demonstration, renewed exclamations broke out above him. One of the Syssokans shouted some gabble, as if to another some way off.

A moment later, Taranto heard a hoarse yelp that could have come only from a Terran throat. Then words began to form, and he realized that it must be Meyers.

That blew the pipes! he thought, and opened his eyes.

A Syssokan looking down at him hissed in astonishment. Others, who had been watching another group about twenty feet away, turned to stare down at Taranto. He was hauled to his feet by the first pair that thought of it. One, a minor officer by his red uniform, sputtered a question at the Terran, forgetting in his evident excitement that he was speaking Syssokan. Taranto wiped his face with his shirtsleeve. He was beginning to feel a trifle cooler as his perspiration evaporated in the dry air, but his surroundings seemed feverishly unreal.

He could not quite understand what Meyers was shouting now, but even in the hoarse voice could be detected a note of pleading. Taranto thought it must be something about water. The Syssokan before him gathered his wits and repeated his question in Terran.

“What doess thiss mean?” he demanded, glaring angrily at Taranto with his huge, black eyes.

The Terran tried to answer, but could not get the words out. He gestured weakly at a waterskin secured to the harness of one of the soldiers. After a brief moment of hesitation, the officer waved permission. The soldier detached the container and handed it suspiciously to Taranto. Fearing the effect of too much liquid in one jolt, the latter forced himself to take only a few small swallows. He wished he could afford to stick his whole head inside the skin and soak up the water like a blotter.

“You are dead!” declared the officer impatiently.

The tiny greenish-gray scales of his facial skin actually seemed ruffled. Taranto dizzily sought for some likely apology to excuse his being alive. He decided that there might be a slim chance of getting away with a whopper.

“If it is officially declared, then of course I am dead!” he croaked. “What d’ya expect. Look how weak I am!”

The Syssokan swiveled their narrow, pointed skulls about at each other.

“I’m in the last minutes,” said Taranto sadly.

“What lasst minutess?” asked the officer.

“It’s the way Terrans pass on,” asserted the spacer. “Didn’t you ever see a Terran die?”

The officer silently avoided admitting so much, running a hand reflectively over his thick waist, but his hesitation provided an opening.

“That’s the way it goes,” said Taranto. “First a blackout ... we sleep, that is. Then the last minutes, the sweat of death, and ... blooey!”

He raised the waterskin and sneaked a long swallow, risking it because he feared he might not be allowed another.

He was right. The officer snatched away the skin and thrust it into the long fingers of its indignant owner.

“If you are sso dead,” he demanded, not illogically, “why do you drink up our water?”

“Sorry,” apologized Taranto. “Where are we?”

“What difference iss it to you?”

“I ... uh ... don’t want to make hard feelings or bad luck by dying in one of your burial grounds.”

“It will not happen,” said the officer grimly. “We have been ssent in another place to guard against that. Look back--you can see the city over that way.”

Taranto turned. The outline of the city walls, with lights showing here and there on the watch towers, loomed up about five miles away. A small rise in the rolling ground of the desert hid the base of the walls and the greater part of the rough trail they had evidently followed. It would have been a fine spot for a spaceship to drop briefly to the surface.

“Do you wish to lie down here?” asked the officer politely. “We will wait until it iss over.”

Don’t be so damn’ helpful! thought Taranto.

He looked desperately about, striving to give the impression of seeking a comfortable spot. He felt the situation turning more and more sour by the minute. It would be very difficult to feign death successfully again now that the Syssokan suspicions were so aroused. They might well make sure of him in their own way.

Near him stood half a dozen brown-clad soldiers. Four of them, spears slung on their shoulders by braided straps, had apparently been carrying him while two others acted as relief bearers. Besides the officer, there was a sub-officer, also in brown but wearing a red harness. In the background, a similar group clustered about Meyers.

Taranto saw that he had been tumbled from a sort of flat stretcher of wickerwork. It was of careless craftsmanship, as if meant to be abandoned with the body it served on the last journey. He wondered if it could be assumed to be his property.